Tuesday in the Twentieth Week of ordinary Time, August 18, 2020

Matthew 19:23-30

Jesus said to his disciples: “Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the Kingdom of heaven. Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and said, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “For men this is impossible, but for God all things are possible.” Then Peter said to him in reply, “We have given up everything and followed you. What will there be for us?” Jesus said to them, “Amen, I say to you that you who have followed me, in the new age, when the Son of Man is seated on his throne of glory, will yourselves sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for the sake of my name will receive a hundred times more, and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”

One of the most charming aspects of the Gospels is the use the Lord Jesus makes of ordinary things to teach about holy things.  We hear him speaking about merchants searching through baskets of oysters (Matthew 13, 45-46), of a woman sweeping her house (Luke 15, 8-10), of men working in a field together (Matthew 24, 40), of two women grinding grain together (Matthew 24, 41), and of a net full of fish (Matthew 13, 47).  Here, Jesus uses a needle’s eye to talk about whether the rich can be saved.

“Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the Kingdom of heaven.”  Why the rich, particularly?  The Lord’s words come on the heels of St. Matthew’s account of the rich young man whom Jesus called to sell all he had in order to follow him.  The young man had gone away sad, “for he had many possessions.”  Or, to look at it another way, his many possessions owned him.  It is as though he were their slave and not he their owner.  But he traded life with Jesus for a few pieces of property.  Jesus probably gazed after him as he walked away, as though waiting for him to come to his senses, to see if he would look back.  And then the Lord turned to his disciples and said these words.  And, to emphasize what he said, he spoke them again in a different way: “Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God.”  Jesus does not merely say, It will be hard for that rich young man who has walked away to be saved.  He speaks of the “rich” in general: it will be hard for any of them to be saved.  

We might pause here to see how Jesus defines “rich”.  Right away, we think of the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, who “was clothed in purple and fine linen and feasted sumptuously every day”, while Lazarus starved (Luke 16, 19).  Here, the “rich” are those who have much more than they need and are in fact so “owned” by their possessions that they cannot part with the least of them even to save another person’s life.  The rich are not merely those who do no work, own huge homes, employ a host of servants to keep those homes, and whose wealth comes to more than the GDP of small nations.  Much has to do with one’s attitude towards one’s wealth and how that wealth is used, for “the love of money is the root of all evils” (1 Timothy 6, 10).

The Apostles are alarmed: “When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and said, ‘Who then can be saved?’ ”  The translation here is deficient.  The Greek word translated as “astonished” actually means, “flew into a panic”, and combined with the adverb that actually means “extremely” or “vehemently”, Matthew is telling us that the Apostles went completely out of their minds.  The intensity of their reaction cannot be overstated.  Looking at the Greek, it seems that at first they could not speak at all, and then could only manage a whispered, “What?”  And in the next few moments when they realized that they had heard the Lord aright, they went berserk.  They experienced the greatest shock of their lives.  

We who are conditioned by twenty-first century norms cannot imagine what this meant for the Apostles.  Their models for righteousness were the extremely prosperous Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  And while David and Solomon had their flaws, they — and particularly Solomon — were revered for their power and wealth.  For the Jews, no holy men and women lived in poverty.  Even Job started and ended with great wealth.  Honestly accumulated wealth was seen as the sign par excellence of God’s favor: “Walk in obedience to all that the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live and prosper and prolong your days in the land that you will possess” (Deuteronomy 5, 33).  “Who then can be saved?”  If those favored by God, as seen in their property and possessions, cannot be saved, than who can be?  Certainly not the poor, who do not have God’s favor, as seen by their blindness or lameness, or who are being punished by him for their laziness and wickedness.

“Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For men this is impossible, but for God all things are possible.’ ”  Here, Jesus addresses the greater question of whether anyone can be saved.  The answer is, Yes, but only by the grace of God.

“Then Peter said to him in reply, ‘We have given up everything and followed you. What will there be for us?’ ”  Deep emotion makes his voice tremble.  He is shattered.  Most of the Apostles, save, I think, for a couple, gave up what they possessed at the time they were called with an eye to gaining greater earthly wealth in the future.  Even after his Resurrection some held onto the notion that Jesus would restore the kingdom of Israel and that, as a consequence of their following him, they would be given high positions in the new government (cf. Acts 1, 6).  Probably the answer Jesus gave only partially reassured him: “Amen, I say to you that you who have followed me, in the new age, when the Son of Man is seated on his throne of glory, will yourselves sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”  Yes, Jesus would reward his followers, but the Apostles’ worldview has been blasted away. 

We see here how closely the Apostles listened to the Lord and how seriously they took his words.  They did not attempt to brush aside his hard teaching here, or deny what he had plainly said, or reinterpret his words to a meaning more comfortable to them.  For each of us who truly seek to live as his followers, there is some hard teaching we must accept because it is his.  It may seem to fly in the face of everything we have believed up to that point.   But it is Jesus who is The Truth, not our own own experience and understanding.  Let us pray for the strength to accept what he tells us what we must believe and what we must do.