Sermons

“What’s Your Camel’s Name?”

Hebrews 4:12-16; Mark 10:17-31 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – October 11, 2015

Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words, that we might begin to dare to put our trust in you and find our way into your reign of peace and love. We pray in the name of Jesus, Amen.

Artists and philosophers have been trying to get that silly camel through the eye of the needle for centuries. I think it’s partly just that it’s a hilarious image and an especially provocative metaphor. Who wouldn’t enjoy finding a way to make the impossible possible? It sounds like a trick, a riddle to be figured out. But I think the other reason humanity is so easily obsessed with this metaphor is because, somewhere deep within us, we really want rich people to get into heaven. And I think this concern is rooted in a basic, and possibly willful, misunderstanding of Jesus’ point in this story.

The rich young man, and all of us readers who hear about him, really want this story to be about following the rules. The goal is eternal life – as the young man puts it, or entering into the kingdom of God – as Jesus puts it, or getting into heaven, as I’m sure lots of modern-day readers put it in their own heads. And the young man hears from Jesus that he has done really well at following the rules. He knows the commandments and he’s followed them his whole life. It’s nice to have clear set of rules, to know what to do and what not to do. We like clarity.

But Jesus pushes him beyond following rules. “Go, sell what you own and give the money to the poor; then come, follow me.” And the young man goes away sad, because he can’t possibly do that. And Jesus talks about how hard it is for rich people to get into heaven. And somehow, we end up making this about rules again. We listen to the story and we conclude that there’s a new rule: No rich people allowed in heaven. And since, secretly in our hearts, we love rich people and we want to be rich people, we resist this rule, even though it satisfies our desire for clear guidelines. And so we try with all our might to get that camel through the eye of the needle.

But in resisting this presumed new rule, we are missing the point. Jesus doesn’t say that rich people aren’t allowed in heaven. He says it is really hard for them to enter into the kingdom of God. That is not the same thing. He’s not talking about a commandment, or at least not a commandment not to be rich. The key here can be found in the direction suggested by a text note on verse 24. If you look back at your Bible, you’ll see a tiny little superscript f in the middle of verse 24. If you follow it to the bottom of the page, you’ll see that “other ancient authorities” have Jesus saying “Children, how hard it is for those who trust in riches to enter the kingdom of God!” there. There is no need to debate which version is more authoritative, because that is not the point. The additional words do not change the meaning of the other version of the sentence; they clarify it. The point is not that they have riches; the point is how they relate to them. And that is why this story is more personal that we may at first realize.

For most of us, it’s not that hard to hear Jesus saying difficult things to rich people, because we don’t consider ourselves rich people. We are aware, if we bother to think about it, that comparatively within the world economy, we are, in fact, quite wealthy. But as a general rule, living in a place like San Diego, with fairly consistent coverage of people with obscene amounts of money, and sky-high rents, and rising tuition, and substantial property taxes, we don’t mostly feel like rich people. But again, it’s turning out that this story isn’t about a rule not being rich. It’s about how we relate to money. More accurately, it’s about how we relate to God, and whether we relate to something other than God the way we should be relating to God.

The bottom line Jesus is introducing here is that entering the kingdom of God isn’t about following the rules; it’s about how we relate to God. It’s about where we’re placing our trust. All he’s saying is that it’s hard to enter into the kingdom of God if we don’t really trust in God. And as it turns out, there are a lot of things we put our trust in other than God.

Let’s pause here for a moment to think about what it means to “put our trust in” something. I am defining it as finding our security and our identity in something. It’s what we allow to define our world for us, what we look to for guidance about what is worthy and what isn’t, how to value things, how to measure things, how to make sense of our situations and assess how we’re doing. This may be a somewhat extrapolated definition, but I think it holds up if we’re willing to include the consequences of trust in its definition.

The difficulty is that if we understand trust that way and then return to this story, including that extra text note, we suddenly realize that the story isn’t just about rich people; it’s about all of us who “put our trust in riches,” that is, all of us who let money define the world for us, telling us what is valuable and what is worthless, what will provide security and what is risky. We know from the substance of our lives that you don’t have to be rich to relate to money this way. It’s just as possible to be defined by something your life is lacking, as by something you have in excess.

But here’s the thing: I don’t even think this story is just about money. Money is important, of course, and Jesus’ warning about how it affects us is vital to heed because money is such a definitive force in our society. But money isn’t the only camel in our lives. Assuming here that your camel is whatever misplaced loyalty makes it difficult for you to put your trust in God, there are lots of different camels to choose from.

Maybe your camel’s name is Anger or Resentment. Maybe you’ve been finding your identity in a determined conviction that the world has wronged you and owes you way better than it’s provided. When we go through life focused on what we haven’t been given, it’s hard to recognize God’s abundant gifts and let them shape our hearts with gratitude. This is an easy trap to fall into if our lives haven’t been that easy. All around us, it seems others are better off, getting all the breaks and having an awesome time. Allowing resentful anger to shape our spirits is a natural, but unproductive response to hard times. It encourages us to trust in an erroneous notion that the universe is out to get us, which colors our every interaction and often turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Is your camel’s name Anger? Or even just Grumpy?

Maybe your camel’s name is Pride. This is what happens when we put our trust in ourselves instead of in God. Those riding around on a camel named Pride are going to have trouble entering the kingdom of God, because it simply won’t occur to them that they should want to. When your own kingdom is so satisfying, what would be the point of trying to gain entry into a different one? When you’ve always managed to hold things together on your own power, why would you need to seek out God? Our culture has a lot of ways of dressing this camel up. We celebrate supposed self-sufficiency and independence. We buy into the myth of the “self-made man.” We demean those who need help and underpay those who offer it. This camel is definitely a cousin to the camel named Money that Jesus brought up first. There are so many tricky ways these camels have of pulling our trust away from God.

Another camel I want to bring up is from another family. This one starts carrying us around when we’re really young, most of the time. You might call this camel Shame or Low Self-Worth. This is the camel we’re riding when we put our trust in a pack of lies that tells us we’re not worth much. It’s what we’re riding when we believe the voices that tell us we’re not smart, or we’re too fat, or we’re just a girl or just a kid or just a… whatever. This is the camel that we’re riding when our identity has been shaped by abusive relationships with people who have used us in unhealthy ways to build up their own sense of self, by putting us down and making us think we don’t deserve to be treated any better.

You see, our camels don’t have to be comfortable to keep us from turning to God; they just have to be familiar. For some reason, we humans are prone to settling for familiar, even when it’s awful, rather than risking the unknown, even when we know it’s probably an improvement. Maybe this camel’s name is Fear.

Maybe all of these camels’ middle names are Fear. Because regardless of what thing other than God we’ve been putting our trust in, at some deep down level, a part of us knows it’s misplaced trust. We know, deep down, that we can’t rely on money for security or happiness. We know, deep down, that we can’t do it all ourselves. We know, deep down, that those lies people told us do not really define us. But when you’ve been riding a camel for so long, your saddle starts to shape itself to you. And your legs start to shape themselves to your saddle. And the idea of walking around without your camel is pretty scary. Impossible almost. I can’t get through the eye of that needle on my camel, and I can’t possibly get off my camel. It’s a quandary. We may ask, with the disciples, “Then who can be saved?”

And what does Jesus say? “For God, all things are possible.” You don’t have to get down off that camel on your own. The camel certainly isn’t going to make it easy, but God is there to help you. Walking around on your feet after riding that camel so long will be disorienting and hard, but God is there to help you.

The writer of Hebrews talks about the word, the Living Word – our Christ – being sharper than a two-edged sword, able to slice between joints and marrow or soul and spirit. It’s certainly going to be able to find the line between you and your camel, and help you separate yourself from that beast and burden. We may be painfully aware of all the barriers, all the misplaced loyalties and trust in false gods that holds us back from entering the kingdom of God, but as it turns out, we can still approach the throne of grace with boldness, as the writer of Hebrews puts it, because of Jesus – because of the truth of Jesus, that God lived among us and knows our weakness, knows our temptation, knows how easy it seems to trust in money or lies or our own abilities. It may be impossible to get into the kingdom with our camels, but by the grace of God that we have in Christ, we can leave those camels behind. Regardless of what your camel is called, you can stop riding that crazy-making ride and stand upright in Christ, because it is God’s love inviting you to walk in and for God’s love, nothing is impossible. Alleluia and Amen!