One way to catch a thieving monkey, so they say, is to put a tempting tit-bit like a bit of fruit inside a narrow-necked jar that’s just wide enough for the monkey to get his hand inside. You need to firmly secure the jar itself, maybe tie it to a tree. And what happens is the monkey puts his hand inside the jar to grab the goodies inside, but of course he can’t get his hand out unless he lets go of it. And he won’t let go, so you can sneak up on him and catch him, caught by his own greed.
Jesus said to his disciples, "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." Like the monkey, we find it very hard to let go of the goodies; we become trapped by our possessions. Things we possess begin instead to possess us, and things we think of as helping us control our own lives start instead to bring us under their control.
And yet what Jesus said would have seemed quite shocking to his disciples. It ran counter to what they'd probably heard before. Many Jews would have reckoned a man who was well off and doing all right to be finding favour with God; his wealth and success were proof that they way he lived must be pleasing to God. That, I think, is why the disciples said in amazement, 'Then who can be saved?'
Though there were some religious teachers among the Jews who encouraged their followers to renounce worldly wealth. John the Baptist for example, or the community that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Essenes, who lived an austere monastic life in caves. Through the years of Christian history there’ve been teachers and preachers who’ve encouraged poverty, such as Francis of Assisi, whose feast day was a week or so ago. He recalled how Jesus had sent out his own disciples, telling them to take no possessions, no food, nothing for the road, and he set himself to do the same.
Francis of Assisi had in fact been born into serious wealth. He’d have expected to inherit all his father’s possessions, and his father was been a very wealthy merchant. But Francis took a dramatically different course in life. He took very seriously the words Jesus spoke to the rich young man about selling possessions, and giving to the poor; he threw away his affluent possessions, even the clothes he stood up in, and set himself to serve, as he said ‘Sister Poverty’, taking the open road to be a little brother to anyone in need. We call followers of Francis ‘Friars Minor’, which just means ‘Little Brothers’. In old age Francis received the stigmata, the marks of crucifixion in his hands and feet, as a tangible symbol of his deep devotion to his Lord. And yet he knew that none of it was ever enough; he was still a sinner in need of grace; in his poverty still at risk of being distracted by lesser loves from the one great love, the love of Christ.
If someone as saintly as Francis knew himself to be fatally flawed, what chance is there for the rest of us? Well, that was the point of what Jesus said to his disciples that day. The rich young man who’d come to him still thought he had to earn his own way into heaven. So Jesus told it to him straight - the only way to do that is to remove from your life anything that can possibly distract from complete and wholehearted service of God, to give away all the stuff that gets in the way.
One of the lessons I’ve had to learn as a minister is how to cope with the burden and pressure of failure. At the end of every week there’s still a load of stuff not finished, some of it not even started, lots of stuff I wanted to do, needed to do, but never quite found the energy or the time. There’s a temptation just to give up, and there’s a temptation to work myself into the ground. I need to know how to deal with that, and where to look for resourcing and support.
I know I’m not the only person to have an impossible job. I’ve known plenty of teachers and head-teachers at risk of going under. Farmers, too; even when you’re absolutely on top of all the routine tasks that have to be done, there’s probably some repair you never quite get round to, or some new development that never quite gets off the ground. And in fact just being a Christian discipleship is also impossible I find, if I’m taking discipleship as seriously as I should. I’m supposed to be Christ-like - so how am I really matching up?
Jesus said, “For mortals it is impossible, but all things are possible for God.” What makes the impossible possible is the thing Christians call grace, which is the forgiving, saving, healing and undeserved love of God. That’s the message Jesus wanted to get across to his disciples, and indeed to that rich young man. We don’t have to worry, or to be weighed down by a sense of our own failure. “All things are possible for God.” God in his love meets our weakness and makes it strong; he accepts our faltering attempts at service and makes out of them a worthy offering.
God forgives us when we fail, but he loves the fact that we try. For me it’s like when I try to speak the language when I’m on holiday abroad. I don't speak any other languages, but I’ll have a go at using the bits I can of French or German or Spanish; and I might make a mess of it, but people are often delighted that I’ve tried and not just stuck to English. They have respected my attempts at speaking their language and have met me in my incompleteness.
That’s what God does too, I think. When we’re doing our best to serve him he delights in that, even when we don’t always get it right. He’s glad to see us having a go. And when we do go wrong and mess up, when we turn to him and say sorry he is always gracious and forgiving. We may sometimes forget to love him, but he never stops loving us.
The rich young man was limited in his vision, and people still are today, and some of them are religious people. There’s the kind of religious zealot who is so sure of himself, so sure of his own perfection, keeping all the commandments and rituals and rules, that they can’t help but look down on the rest of us who don’t match up to that. There’s not much room for love and sharing in that sort of religion, and one of the great curses of our modern world is the sort of harsh, unloving and fundamentalist faith that divides and oppresses and does damage, when faith should surely be including and welcoming and healing.
And others who also lack vision give up on faith to put their trust in a different sort of success and status - in worldly wealth and power and status, maybe also in technology and science. Conspicuous over-consumption is another curse of our modern world, as the divide grows ever wider between rich and poor. Those who put their faith in worldly goods are as trapped and tied to the earth as that monkey who wouldn't let go of the titbit in the bottle, and with just such fatal results.
To all whose vision is limited we preach the God who loves failures, the God who loves us when we try even though we often fall short. Our own efforts can never win us a place in heaven, and we know it; and knowing that opens the way to a tolerant, welcoming and loving faith whose members will always want to include and encourage one another. It frees us also to take a healthy and wholesome attitude to the wealth we have. Riches and possessions can be a danger if we get fixated on them, hanging on like that monkey with its hand in the jar. But the things we own are ours to offer to God, and to use in his service. When we do as he desires with what he gives us, it’s then that his heart is pleased.
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