Wealth

 

 Reflections for the Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost, the 13^th of October 2024, in the pew notes at St Peter’s, Eastern Hill, Melbourne.  Written by Philip Harvey.

 Wealth gets in the way. More and more gets even more in the way. Wealth often stops the wealthy from seeing anything other than through their wealth. Often there’s no way forward, no way at all. 

‘How hard will it be for those who love wealth to enter the Kingdom of God!” Jesus exclaims, editorialising with one of his quirkier expressions: “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.” Like the disciples, we are perplexed and astounded at this saying. What’s he mean?     

Literally read, entry for the rich is impossible: a dromedary cannot pass through a thread-hole. One legend says that the saying refers to a side gate into Jerusalem called The Eye of the Needle, used at night when the main gates were closed. Wealthy people had to unpack all the baggage on their camels to get through the narrow aperture into the city, the wealthy having a lot of baggage. Scholars question if such a gate existed, that this reading is a piece of later medieval embroidery, useful to our understanding of the passage but not historically verifiable. We get the point! 

St Cyril of Alexandria (5^th c.) thought it a typo, that a scribe had copied the Greek kamelos (camel) instead of kamilos (rope or cable). This actually makes sense when we consider how Jesus’ gifts of generosity are expressed frequently, e.g. worrying about the speck in our neighbour’s eye when we have a plank in our own eye. This exaggerated surprise humour is picked up by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (19^th c.) in his version of this verse: “It is easier for an anchor cable to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to come to God’s Kingdom.” It’s a big ask. Again, we get the drift. 

The young man of prosperity in Mark’s story keeps all the commandments, but Jesus confronts him on the one thing he takes for granted. He cannot give away his worldly goods; he cannot follow. Like many Gospel stories, we don’t know what happens next, whether the young man will give away his attachments, or not. He is, for now, placed in a state of grief, which we may read as the beginning of wisdom about his lot. Just as we as readers are made to consider wealth, our relationship to it, and how we use our wealth. Jesus takes this much further. If we give away everything for the good news, we will inherit more than we can ever imagine, eternal life which is beyond the powers of simple exaggeration.      

 

Image: Camel (Albino) Contemplating Needle (Large). Installation by John Baldessari (1931-2020), executed in 2013, fiberglass, aluminium, stainless steel, acrylic and paint © Photo Courtesy of Beyer Projects, New York.