Episode 1480: Needles and Camels

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1480 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:00:07] Rob Cook: I'm Rob Cook. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to focus on what is really important while achieving success is key.

[00:00:23] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend, Scott Maderer,

[00:00:39] Scott Maderer: when the money and the stuff that we have becomes something that we use to bless others, not something that has us and weighs us down, and causes us to grieve in our heart. Jesus wants us to have riches beyond imagining. And in that richness, we will find grace. [00:01:00] Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:01:05] If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling. In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself. Invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:33] In today's Spiritual Foundation episode, I talk about Mark chapter 10 verses 17 through 31. I share how this passage is about money and about stuff, but it's about so much more. I also talk about how love is the answer, even here. Mark chapter 10 verses 17 through 31 says, As he was sitting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked, Good teacher, what must I [00:02:00] do to inherit internal life?

[00:02:02] Jesus said to him, Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. You shall not defraud. Honor your father and mother. And he said to him, Teacher, I have kept all of these since my youth.

[00:02:21] And Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, You lack one thing. Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come and follow me. When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions. Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.

[00:02:44] And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God. And they were greatly astounded and [00:03:00] said to one another, Then who can be saved?

[00:03:02] And Jesus looked at them and said, For mortals it is impossible, but not for God. For God all things are possible. Peter began to say to him, Look, we have left everything and followed you. And Jesus said, Truly I tell you, There is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for my sake, and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age, houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions, and in the age to come, eternal life.

[00:03:35] But many who are first will be last, and This is one of those passages that you've probably heard around, used as a way of telling people that if they're rich, they're evil, or they're not ever going to be able to go to heaven. There's a humorous line about, It's easier for camels to go [00:04:00] through needles and so on that you've probably heard talked about.

[00:04:03] We've used this passage to condemn and shame people with wealth. We've used it to talk about money. We've used it to talk about stewardship and ways in the church that often really isn't healthy. But it reminds me too of What happens in some situations when maybe we're put in a situation, for instance, where we don't have full control over what's going on in our life.

[00:04:32] Maybe we're in the hospital being taken care of, maybe we're getting older and now someone else is making decisions about certain things. Maybe it's something like someone with Alzheimer's or other situations where others have to step in and make decisions and control schedules and decisions and choices in life.

[00:04:55] And often that makes us rather unhappy. [00:05:00] So the truth is we all want to be king of our own kingdom. We all want to be in control of our own stuff. That's one of the reasons that stuff has an appeal. When we own our own house, when we own our own stuff, when we have money, it gives us an illusion that we're in control.

[00:05:19] We're able to define our own existence, that we have the power to shape the world to our design. We have the latest thing, the next thing, the gadget, the upgrade, the bells, the whistles, and it makes it all happen. There's a book called The Generous Church that talks about stuff as it's like gravity. It pulls on us.

[00:05:42] Money is something that has a pull on us, and we talk about stewardship a lot in the church, and one of the things I've claimed is I'm trying to reclaim the word stewardship from we're starting a building campaign, or it's our annual stewardship series, and now we're going to talk about money, because yes, [00:06:00] stewardship is about money and budgets and those things, but it's really not.

[00:06:04] It's a spiritual issue. And Jesus thinks money and our relationship with money is important. You can see that because the two things that Jesus talks about most in the Bible is the kingdom of God and money. And we often spend all of our time talking about one of those things and not the other. But Jesus clearly feels that the effect of money, of riches, of stuff is potentially so dangerous, so destructive, so able to remove us from a good faith journey, that he spends time warning us.

[00:06:37] Pay attention to the way that wealth and money can pull on you. By the way, this is not an argument to say that you have to be poor or that rich people are evil or that if you have money you're never able to have a good faith walk, but it is saying that this is a warning. This is something that can pull you away from a faith walk.

[00:06:59] In the [00:07:00] passage, the rich young man comes up and asks Jesus a question. He rushes up asking for affirmation and approval and then at the end he goes away grieving. That's what it seems is going on here. Maybe he just wanted Jesus to say, you're doing great, just keep it up. But instead he got bad news.

[00:07:19] He got a warning, a challenge, and he went away grieving. The pull of the stuff was too great and he couldn't break away. Or at least, perhaps he couldn't. The truth is, the story doesn't say what happens after. He may have gone away grieving because he made a decision that he needed to sell his stuff and follow Jesus.

[00:07:38] And, I don't know, that may be part of the story that we don't get to see. It's not 100 percent clear. But it seems to imply that he was struggling with the idea of getting rid of his stuff and going and following Jesus. At least that's how it's usually interpreted. He had an invitation to join the greatest party on earth, and he walks away from it.

[00:07:59] But [00:08:00] notice in Mark's telling, and this is different than the Matthew version, Mark says, after the young man replies, I've kept these commandments all my life, he says, Jesus looks at him and loves him. And then he says, hey, there's one thing you lack, go and sell it all and follow me. Jesus loves him. That's maybe why he wants to help him.

[00:08:21] out of love. The man's grieving, the man's pain, the man's struggle is important to Jesus because he loves him. But if you go back to the beginning of the conversation, it seems like Jesus is being somewhat adversarial. He's being confronting to him. Why do you call me good? Only God is good and these things.

[00:08:40] Jesus has to be good, right? That's, we know that. Was he trying to get under the young man's skin to make him on edge, to put him on the defensive? But then later he says, I loved him. So maybe that's not it. Maybe it's a test. Maybe it was a hint. Maybe Jesus, who at least elsewhere [00:09:00] in Mark, seems to want to hide his true identity, wanted this one person to know something about the one he came to question.

[00:09:08] Maybe it was actually out of his love for this man who was burdened in ways that most folks would never have seen. That brought Jesus to the place of dropping a hint about the closeness of the eternity he was seeking. Maybe it was an invitation into a relationship of love and of kingdom and of relationships.

[00:09:29] What difference would it would make if instead of approaching those who are lost, those who are hurting, those who are burdened by an unsustainable life, instead of approaching them with judgment and shame and fear and anger and hatred, we approach them with love. Maybe Jesus knew that the only thing that could overcome the gravity of the riches of his life was something that is stronger even still, something that is greater even still.

[00:09:56] Love. His love can redeem, love can [00:10:00] rescue, love wins, and Jesus knew that. He knows that even now, and he loved him, even though apparently it didn't work. The young man walked away grieving. The burden had increased instead of lightened, but Jesus said, I have the antidote, I have the prescription. The prescription is love, and maybe that love was too bitter for the man to swallow.

[00:10:23] Then it's a good thing we know better, right? We aren't sucked into the stuff cycle, the money cycle. We don't put our security in money instead of God. We're smarter than that, right? Yeah, next time you drop your phone and you have that pit in your stomach or you have that moment of fear about it being destroyed, recognize that you're attached to your stuff too.

[00:10:50] That's the gravity of stuff. I would probably walk away from Jesus grieving if he said the same thing to me. I would struggle with that. [00:11:00] And then Jesus goes on after this, and he talks further about the burden that he's talking about. How serious the weight of wealth can be. That's where the camels and the needles and all of that comes in.

[00:11:18] And we can explain that away. We can talk about it being a joke. We can talk about whether that's the name of a gate, all of these other things. But the point is still the point, which is that God blesses us. God makes all things possible. That's where the generosity of the kingdom of God comes into conflict with the generosity of this world.

[00:11:42] Here we want fair, but in God's kingdom we get grace. Jesus wants us to have grace, enough grace that we float free from that which weighs us down, where we can find joy and happiness when we have much and when we [00:12:00] have little, when the money and the stuff that we have becomes something that we use to bless others, not something that has us and weighs us down and causes us to grieve in our heart.

[00:12:13] Jesus wants us to have riches beyond imagining. And in that richness, we will find grace. Thanks for listening.

[00:12:28] Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this episode, do me a favor, go over to facebook. com slash inspired stewardship and like our Facebook page and market that you'd like to get notifications from us [00:13:00] so that we can connect with you on Facebook and make sure that we're serving you to the best of our abilities with time and tips there.

[00:13:10] Until next time, invest your time. Your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact the world.