Vulnerability

I think one of the staples of American society today is independence and self-reliance. We teach that to our children. We want them to be strong independent people so that they can succeed in life. Part of the “success” of that has been the age of technology. Part of the fall of that is the age of technology and the differentiating between independence and seclusion.

All too easily today we can be a part of society without leaving the comfort of our own home. I can sit down and grab my iPad or laptop and watch a movie, play a video game, or load up Facebook and see what my friends are up to without talking to them or getting up off my couch. I can have a job that lets me work from home. I can order food or groceries and have it delivered. I can buy things on Amazon or Wayfair and have pretty much everything I need all from a Buy Now with 1-click. Now I am just as guilty as anyone in this room with doing this. It’s convenient and easy and sometimes in small cities it’s necessary to buy things online that you might not be able to get in town.

So when I look at this young man in our story today and I find out that he is rich I wonder if he had a similar lifestyle or situation. Maybe he didn’t have to go to the market to buy food because he had servants to do it for him. Maybe he was able to enjoy life right at his home because he had everything he needed. Maybe he was able to be at home and feel like he was a part of society without actually being a part of society. And maybe this is a little judgmental on my part, but I wonder if, because of all that it was easier for him to be able to keep all those commandments that Jesus tells him is what will help him obtain eternal life. Or maybe by simply having more than enough in life he didn’t have to worry about stealing food to have a next meal and he appreciated the lifestyle that his parents were able to afford him so he honored them.

What Jesus asks of this rich young man is to move from a place of privilege to a place of vulnerability. He asks him to step away from his status and his wealth to a place where he has to rely on other people. Jesus wants him to step away from everything he has known so that he may engage with others and know what it is like to be a part of the ‘least of these’. Jesus invites him to be in relationship with other people in a way that causes him to interact and engage with them on a whole new level. In other words, Jesus is inviting this man to enter into true koinonia with the rest of the world. He will have the treasures that are focused on the life to come that he says he wants instead of the treasures of the life he now lives.

Our possessions give us a sense of security in life and doing without them is something that scares us all. We want to be able to provide for ourselves and for our families. But there is also a barrier to that security as I mentioned at the beginning of my message. Another part of that barrier is that sense that “I” can do it. Which is exactly what the young man begins his conversation with Jesus. Jesus tells us that these possessions can become a barrier to that relationship that we seek. When we have a false sense that we can earn something so profound as eternal life. That we can live a life pure enough that God grants us eternal life because of it is that false sense of security.

Jesus sees that everyone around him is having a hard time understanding that concept and so he tries to help them understand by stating an impossible fact and claiming it to be true. And I love how the Common English Bible words it. “It’s easier for a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter God’s kingdom.” A camel will have an easier time squeezing through the eye of a needle than it will be for someone who has this false sense of security enter God’s Kingdom that all their possessions give them.

In essence God says that we need to move from our own claim that we can do this on our own. That we can live in our own world and follow what God wants us to follow because we don’t actually live in the world that God has also called us to do. We need to instead give up those things that distance us from one another. We need to accept the call to be in relationship with one another. We need to be willing to wander through the wilderness.

25 It’s easier for a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter God’s kingdom.”

On Ash Wednesday we made these wilderness vases acknowledging that we all go through times of wilderness in our lives. Entering a place of giving things up like people do for Lent. Entering a place where we let God know that we can’t do it on our own. Letting go of the notion that self-reliance and self-accomplishment will help us to obtain eternal life and instead entering a place of vulnerability and reliance on God. That is a wilderness journey we must take, but it is a journey we don’t have to take alone. We can enter it together this Lent. We can journey together we can journey through the wilderness as a community, through koinonia.

Common English Bible. (2011). (). Nashville, TN: Common English Bible.

We can also journey with the faith that God is with us. We can also journey with God knowing that, if we can let go, that even though there is nothing “I” can do, God can. That eternal life is something that God lovingly and graciously gives to us. At the end of our Lenten journey we see that God not only can do it, but that God does do it for us. God also gives up something. While we give up our self-reliance and our dependence on our possessions, God gives up God’s son so that eternal life is possible. God gives us eternal life. God gives it to us because we cannot earn it on our own. God loves us so much that we are given something we cannot earn or build or create on our own.

This Lent give up and enter the wilderness so that you can let God step in and squeeze through the impossible to make the impossible achievement of eternal life, possible. It is possible for you and for me, and not only possible but true, because of God’s great and unfathomable love for you and me and all who walk upon this wilderness creation that God has blessed us with. May you embrace the impossible and give thanks to God who loves us more than we can ever know or understand. Amen.