Christ Lutheran Church
Cleveland, Ohio
October 20, 2024
by: Rev. Dean Kavouras
Pentecost 22B
The Eye Of The Needle
Then looking about Jesus said to his disciples, "How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the Kingdom of God.” The disciples were awe-struck by his words, so Jesus responded to them thusly: “Children! How difficult it is to enter the Kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. Now they were even more astonished and said to one another, "Who then can be saved?" Jesus gazed upon them and said, "With men it is impossible. But not with God! For all things are possible with God.”
--
The 12 disciples continue to misunderstand their Lord.
We learned in past weeks that they were astonished when Jesus walked on water and calmed the storm before their very eyes. And the reason the Evangelist gives for their astonishment is this: “They did not understand the about the loaves.” (Mark 6:51-52) His reference being the Lord’s feeding of the 5,000 with 5 loaves of bread the 2 pieces of fish, which He took, blessed and broke and gave.
Later, preceding His Beautiful Transfiguration, the Lord speaks to the disciples about his impending suffering, death and resurrection. He says that: “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again.” They did not know what to make of this either.
And now once again their heads were filled with cotton when Jesus says, “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.”
Now astonishment at Jesus should not surprise us. It is the default condition of all who do not place their full faith and confidence in the cross of the Lord of Glory (1 Cor. 2:9). Or the “loaves,” which is to say, the Supper He instituted by which we obtain the boundless benefits of the Perfect Liturgy, that he offered to the Father, on the cross. For that is what his death was! And in which we participate in every Sunday. His liturgy.
But WE should not be astonished because we know “the rest of the story.” But still our theological prowess is like a bucket with a hole because of the devil, culture and our ever-needy and demanding Flesh; whose only mission in life is to eat, drink and be merry until we no longer can; to shop till we drop.
Now there are some problems with today’s gospel. Not gospel itself, but with what men have done with it. Unfortunately the word “saved,” as in “who, then, can be saved” has been tortured and disfigured by the followers of the Radical Reformation so that it is like nails on a chalkboard to our ears. Evangelicals have removed the word “saved” from the church, and taken it to the streets; which is like taking a beautiful tropical fish out of its tank, and putting it in your shirt pocket, to show it to other people.
And yet the church must not give up on the loveliest word ever spoken: Saved. Or its noun form: salvation! That is what we need! “Salvation Oh Salvation!”
The jailer in the City of Philippi, after abusing the gospel and its preachers, after beating them with whips and locking them up with chains in the darkest dankest corner of the prison, becomes witness to a Class A miracle! An angel comes down from heaven and breaks open the prison and all the prisoners evacuate, but don’t run away. Seeing this the jailer is poised to fall on his sword because there would be no forgiveness granted him by his bosses. But Paul stops him. And at this the Jailer asks him, “What must I do to be saved?” To which Paul answers, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved. You and your house.”
At that Paul catechizes them, baptizes them, and feeds them with the Holy Supper of the Lord. And he and his household rejoiced because they now believed in the One True God. They were saved. But what were they saved from? The same thing we are saved from today.
Notice that inquiring adults are first catechized, then baptized, then brought into the intimacy of the altar. For infants and young children, first they are baptized, and then catechized and made communicant members of Christ’s glorified Body, the church.
In this churchly progression of things we are salvaged from Satanic slavery. We are given a New Adam – Christ in us the hope of glory. We are resuscitated from death, darkness, blindness, confusion, deception, general dumb-foundedness, and the punishment that our very-wrong-doings merit. We are, further, rescued from the grave just as we sing:
Jesus lives! The victory's won!
Death no longer can appall me;
Jesus lives! Death's reign is done!
From the grave Christ will recall me.
Brighter scenes will then commence;
This shall be my confidence.
But there is still more we should learn from this gospel reading. More than we can cover today, but let’s start.
Let’s talk about the camel and the needle. It should not be hard to picture. We’ve all seen sewing needles. Their form has not changed from then till now. It is still a tiny hole on one end, and a sharp point on the other. But did Jesus really mean what he said?
Some people-pleasing theologians teach that it is not a sewing needle that the Lord refers to here, but a small hole in the city wall called a “needle” that a camel could not pass through, unless he relieved himself of his burden, and bends low down.
There is no evidence of that whatsoever, but it was repeated so often that it took on a life of its own.” But if you think about it even if a camel were to have his load removed, his hump would still prevent entrance.
We, too, have a hump. A heart corrupted by sin, and therefore a mind and a mouth and hands and feet and imagination that occupy themselves with dark deeds. You cannot get rid of your hump, except when you breathe your last. As one of our liturgies states, “We are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.”
But glory be to Jesus Christ that, “If the Son set you free, you will be free indeed!” And so we are! And so we don’t need to soften scripture to make it more palatable. Instead we need “the goodness of God” to lead us to repentance (Rom. 2:4) – which we have. And absolution (Jn 20:23)– which we have.
There is much more we could say about today’s gospel, but let us end with the Lords’ answer to the disciples question, “who then can be saved.” The Lord says: "With men it is impossible, but not with God! For all things are possible with God.”
Meditate on those words when you suffer a guilty conscience. When you are questioning yourself. When you’ve been so flattened, it would take a paint scraper to pick you up from the ground.
Your Heavenly Father can and will restore you. Because there is nothing that is impossible for him! And you are his dear children!