A stitch in time

A homily for the Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 10, 2021

Wis 7:7-11, Heb 4:12-13, Mk 10:17-30

It’s still possible to buy a needle threader, an incredibly brilliant yet simple tool that helps people with unsteady hands or so-so eyesight — or without the patience and tolerance for frustration — to pass a thread through the eye of a needle.

The fine wire goes through the eye first, and then the thread gets slipped through the lasso-like diamond on the other side.

A quick tug on the handle — or whatever it’s called — and the fine wire lasso hauls the thread through the eye.

Of course, you have to get the needle threader’s wire lasso through the eye first, but pound for pound that’s a far smaller challenge than jabbing a limp, frayed string through a tiny metal oval.

And, no, using a tool is not cheating.

Jesus doesn’t leave any wiggle room for cheating, either, in his oft-quoted “camel through the eye of a needle” discourse.

But, really?

Stuff 1,000 pounds of Bactrian or Dromedary through an opening too small to be measured by a typical ruler?

No little needle-threading tool is going to help, that’s for sure.

Over the centuries, scholars have debated how literal Jesus was being with this image. Was this a gross over-exaggeration to make a dramatic point? Was this a familiar notion in the First Century that we can no longer relate to? Were needles and/or camels different two millennia ago? Were these real camels he was talking about, or some sort of symbol? Likewise the needles?

Was Jesus joking, using humor to make a point?

Or, maybe…

Was Jesus laying down something inscrutable that he knew would tie deep thinkers in knots for centuries, just to make the point that people had — and still have — a propensity to waaaay over-think The Law of Love?

Dunno.

Even right this minute, we’ve gotten caught up (a little) in the specifics of the imagery and missed the bigger point. Because, of course, Scriptures are about Wisdom and Truth, whether they slowly dawn on us or whack us upside the head.

And the Wisdom and Truth in today’s Scripture readings have far more to do with justice and with the spirit of the law than they do with material wealth or physics, metallurgy and biology.

Let’s try to get to know the unnamed rich man who seeks guidance from The Good Teacher.

He asserts that he has followed the Mosaic commandments all his life, and he probably was convinced that he had. But as we know from many other Gospel passages, the Israelites of Jesus’s day often obeyed the rules in a choreographed manner. They followed the commandments in a superficial, almost mindless manner, dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s precisely, repetitiously. They got it right, but only out of muscle memory, not from a heartfelt relationship with God.

So did the rich man truly obey all the commandments, or did he merely follow them?

Specifically, did he truly obey three of the commands that Jesus cites:

you shall not steal;
you shall not bear false witness;
you shall not defraud;

These laws are at the core of each person’s respect for all of humankind, at the core of our relationship with every other child of God and with our Creator.

Because these underlie the big question about the rich man and, in the aggregate, about us:

How did he get rich?

If the rich man had land, how did he get it? Did he steal it from the loser in some battle or even some duel he waged? Was there livestock on the land, and did he take that too?

Did he have workers in his fields, his orchards, his groves? Did he pay them fairly and ensure their working conditions were safe and tolerable? Did he give them some share of the harvest?

Or were they enslaved or indentured? Did the rich man benefit from their work while they did not?

Did the rich man work in banking and finance? Was he fair in lending and caring for investments?

How did he get rich?

It wasn’t the rich man’s material wealth Jesus wanted him to sell off, cast off, abandon. Jesus in all likelihood saw into this man’s heart and asked him to exit whatever it was he did to become rich at other’s people’s expense. And when the man could not, it became clear that he had justified in his own mind that everything he had done was by the book. Letter of the law. Do this, get that. 

Watch out for No. 1.

Our relationship with God and with each other cannot be transactional. Sin — transgression against God and injury to our fellow travelers on Earth — cannot be tallied in a giant otherworldly ledger that credits random acts of kindness and debits mortals and venials so that if we’re in the black when we die, we can buy admission to some great Amusement Park in the Sky.

Our relationship with God and with each other must be a continuum, a way of life. The way of life. The Way of Jesus.

We must live justly, live charitably, live humbly, live lovingly, always, and always from the heart. We must be fair in every interaction.

We must recognize that what passes through the eye of a needle is not a camel or a penguin or even an artichoke but the threads that bind us all as sisters and brothers, and then bind us to our loving Creator. The threads that weave us into the multicolored embroidered tapestry in the image and likeness of God.