Patrick Comerford
We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and this week began with the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XII). The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today (20 August) remembers Saint Bernard (1153), Abbot of Clairvaux, Teacher of the Faith, and William Booth (1912) and Catherine Booth (1890), founders of the Salvation Army.
Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Matthew 19: 23-30 (NRSVA):
23 Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I tell you, 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.’ 25 When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astounded and said, ‘Then who can be saved?’ 26 But Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.’
27 Then Peter said in reply, ‘Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?’ 28 Jesus said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. 29 And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will inherit eternal life. 30 But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.’
Today’s Reflection:
A rich young man has come to Jesus seeking advice. He has many possessions, but he knows this is not enough. He wants to possess eternal life, and comes to Jesus for advice. When Jesus suggests he should go, sell his possessions, and give the money to the poor and then return and follow him, the young man ‘went away grieving, for he had many possessions.’
Then Jesus tells the disciples ‘it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven … 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.’
During her sermon preparation some years ago, a priest colleague asked on Facebook: ‘If a fire broke out in your house, what three possessions would you grab?’
The answers she got were interesting. People included their laptop (with their photographs), their phone, their keys, their wallet or purse with their plastic cards, and their passport.
What would you take with you?
What do we cling to?
I once had a large collection of old banknotes. There was enough there to make me a millionaire or even a multimillionaire … in Weimar Germany, war-time Greece or Ceausescu’s Romania. But in reality they are worth nothing today and would earn no interest apart from the interest they might have for collectors.
They were in circulation at times when inflation became rampant in those countries and at times of crisis in Europe. Had they been spent at the time they were issued they might have bought something of value; had they been given away in their day, they might have helped the poor and the hungry. But circumstances saw to it that those who became attached to their wealth on paper would lose all they had.
Our readings this morning challenge us to think again what we cling to and what are our true values.
Does the faith of the man who falls down before Christ in the Gospel reading depend on his own wealth and money? When our prosperity and wealth disappear, like the fast-fading value of those banknotes, are we in danger of feeling abandoned by God?
How would we grab our faith and take it with us if we rushed to escape a crisis?
In the Gospel reading yesterday, the man runs up to Jesus, and falls on his kneels as if in adoration, or like a servant before a master, and asks what he should do to inherit eternal life.
Christ’s response is cautious. Is he challenging the man to see whether he really knows the Ten Commandments? Or is he testing the man to see how he has acquired his riches and wealth?
The man slinks away because he has much property.
What acts as a ball and chain that holds us back in our lives today, leaving us not fully free to follow Jesus? I may not have much property. But is there something else that I need to shed, in my attitudes, values, habits, behaviour, priorities, use of time, commitment or lack of commitment?
In his compassion, Christ sees this man’s weakness. He has emphasised his relationship with others. But is this founded on his desire for personal salvation, some sort of personal version of the concept of ‘karma’?
What about his relationship with God?
Does he trust in God because God is God, rather than because of what God can do for him?
The man asks how he may inherit eternal life. Is eternal life something to be inherited, like wealth and social status or place in society? In that society, religion was inherited rather than a matter of personal choice – one was born a Jew, but few people ever became Jews. Is eternal life to be inherited, like religious identity and social class?
Are we in danger at times of thinking that we are entitled to our place in the Kingdom of God?
And in our behaviour, as well as our prayers, do we let God know, and others know, this?
Christ comes to the quick when he points out that this young man puts his trust in his own piety and wealth, in his achievements, in his inherited status. But wealth stands in the way of his relationship with God.
So, Christ tests the man. If he truly loves the poor, he will make a connection between loving God and loving others. The man is shocked and makes quick his departure.
This rich young man may lack nothing, but he wants eternal life. Yet he fails to realise he has met the living God face-to-face, and he turns away.
But Christ does not say the rich and the wealthy cannot find salvation. He says money and riches can hold us back and make it difficult to be true disciples, to enter the kingdom of God. It can be so difficult that, ‘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’ (verse 24). The Talmud sggests thought it would be even more difficult, perhaps even impossible, where it speaks of ‘an elephant passing through a needle’s eye’ (b. Ber. 55b; b. B. Metz. 38b).
We cannot save ourselves, but God can save us. However, Peter’s implied question (verse 27) points out again how easy it is to think that being a disciple or follower of Christ should be linked with the hope of rewards in the here and now.
I find I have to ask myself again after reading this Gospel passage: What do I cling onto most now that I can shed – not in terms of property and possessions, but prejudices and values – that get between me and Christ, and between the way I live my life and eternal life.
Then will I be happy to get down on my knees, like a camel, and squeeze into the City of God through the smallest and most narrow of the city gates, and find in the most humbling of ways how to squeeze into the Kingdom of God?
Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 20 August 2024):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘What price is the Gospel?’ This theme was introduced on Sunday with a programme update from Dr Jo Sadgrove, Research and Learning Advisor, USPG.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Tuesday 20 August 2024) invites us to pray:
Lord, we pray for the healing of the deep wounds – spiritual, psychological, economic, environmental and social – inflicted by the SPG and the Anglican Church in the name of the Gospel.
The Collect:
Merciful redeemer,
who, by the life and preaching of your servant Bernard,
rekindled the radiant light of your Church:
grant us, in our generation,
to be inflamed with the same spirit of discipline and love
and ever to walk before you as children of light;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post Communion Prayer:
God of truth,
whose Wisdom set her table
and invited us to eat the bread and drink the wine
of the kingdom:
help us to lay aside all foolishness
and to live and walk in the way of insight,
that we may come with Bernard to the eternal feast of heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s reflection
Continued tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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