Bigger Needles-Smaller Camels

by Mick Stevens for the New Yorker

The scene is a simple one: two men are sitting in comfortable club chairs.  Both men are be-spectacled.  They are seated in the corner of the gracious room, chairs at 90-degree angles to allow for easy conversation, a small round table between them.  Both have drinks: I am assuming Scotch.  Behind one is a tall built-in bookcase.  Behind the other is a large, plate-glass window through which can be seen the skyscrapers beyond. It appears to be raining, but it hardly matters.  They could be in any big city, but I am quite sure they are in New York.  Both wear suits and ties.  They are pleased with themselves, although they would never wish to suggest that they are.  One of them is speaking, but from the image you cannot tell who is speaking to whom.  It doesn’t matter, for in reality, what they have to say, they both have to say to one another.  They do not wish for us to overhear them, but the artist, Mick Stevens, has ensured that what they have to say to one another is clearly the most important thing about this image.

One well-dressed, be-spectacled, Scotch-sipping man commenting to another, as they relax in their comfort, well above the worries of the world; they say to each other, “We need either bigger needles or smaller camels.”  The cartoon appeared in the New Yorker about four years ago, but it is timeless.

It feels like a fool’s errand to preach on Mark 10:25, “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.”  Most people have already decided which side of that bargain they are comfortable with, and most of us are on the same (that is, the wrong) side.  And if this is the way Jesus is going to talk to us, then, well, we are either going to need bigger needles or smaller camels.  We are not going to sell what we own and give the money to the poor.  Period.  Find me a bigger needle or a smaller camel.  Otherwise we can move on to the next chapter, please.

I strongly suspect that the two men in the cartoon are Episcopalians.  They are well dressed, and they are enjoying a drink before sundown.  They also appear to take the Scriptures seriously, in their own way.  And they are employing the traditional approach to this unpleasant teaching of Jesus: they are trying to find their way around it, without seeming as though they don’t care about what Jesus said.  It’s as if they want to be able to go to church in good conscience.  Having heard about how hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God, they know they must now apply themselves to this challenge, so they do!

I am sure there exist parishes in which these two men could be co-chairs of the Stewardship Committee.  They would run terrific stewardship campaigns, in two consecutive years (trading leadership so each one had a year at the helm).  One year the theme of the campaign would be, “Bigger Needles!”  The next, the theme would be, “Smaller Camels!”

During the “Bigger Needles” year, they would have charts and graphs that show how you can maximize your tax benefits by giving more to the church.  During the “Smaller Camels” year they would teach, among other things, about the value of down-sizing for empty-nesters, and they would show that once you have finished paying your kids’ tuition, you can increase your pledge to the church without ever noticing, and still maximize your contributions to your 401(k)!

A seminary somewhere would pick up on the success of this stewardship outlook, and start to run a two-part seminar called Stewardship in a New Golden Age - Part I: Bigger Needles; Part II: Smaller Camels.  And a small religious publishing house would produce a little manual about stewardship for the well-to-do, written by our co-chairs, entitled, predictably enough, “Bigger Needles, Smaller Camels.”  For a few years, parishes all over the country would adopt this model.  The proceeds from the sale of the book would go to the diocesan offices; such is the generosity of the two authors.

Part of the beauty of the approach is how biblical it is!  It is based directly our Lord’s own teaching!  It’s not like this is some sort of “prosperity Gospel” which enriches the church and her clergy at the expense of the people of God.  No, our two stewardship chairmen made their money the old-fashioned way (whatever that is).  And they think you should be able to do the same, and still find a way to give something to the church.  And all you need are bigger needles and smaller camels if you want to do so with a clear conscience!

Two thoughts interrupt my reverie about the gentleman co-chairs of the Bigger Needles-Smaller Camels stewardship campaign.

The first is to notice that the only reason to be concerned with bigger needles and smaller camels is because somehow our two friends have decided that they are still interested in the kingdom of God.  Otherwise, why worry?

In this regard, our friends are notable, because it seems to me that many of us often lose sight of the kingdom of God - even those of us in the church, (maybe especially those of us in the church).  We get so caught up in the cares and occupations of the church and the world, that we forget that we are meant to be headed somewhere, toward a better country, a newer life, and a restoration of all that has been broken, warped, lost, or forgotten.  Call it redemption - this is the purpose of our fellowship with Christ - or more precisely, it is the purpose of Christ’s fellowship with us.  And the fulfillment of redemption leads us, we are promised, toward the kingdom of God.

The Christian life is always a pilgrimage.  Jesus is nearly always telling us to “go” and do something.  Salvation is always a process.  And no, we are not there yet.  Merely being interested in the journey to the kingdom of God is a distinction worthy of attention these days, I’d say.  And our two friends in the club chairs, comfortable though they may be, have not lost sight, it would seem, of the kingdom of God.  Good for them.

The second thing is the standard reminder, when approaching this little episode, that St. Mark provides an invaluable piece of information in relating this story to us, about why Jesus tells the rich man to sell what he has, give the money to the poor, and follow him.  We are told that “Jesus, looking at him, loved him.”  It’s important to remember that the impossible advice that Jesus gives to the rich man is given to him in love.  The implication of this piece of information is that Jesus’ advice to the rich man is both good advice and profoundly true, since it is offered out of love.  Perhaps Jesus made a mistake when he gave such bold and clear direction to the man.  Unable to keep his love in check, did Jesus simply blurt out the truth, which would end up being advice that he should have known the man would never be able to accept?

The other followers who left everything behind to follow Jesus, appear not to have had much to leave anyway.  It was easier for them to drop their nets, I guess, because they didn’t have much to lose in the first place.  And the nets probably belonged to their fathers, anyway, not to them.

St. Mark tells us that the rich man “went away grieving.”  I assume that this emotional detail is an indication that the man understood that he was making a choice that might very well be the wrong one, but that it was a chance he simply could not allow himself to take - that following Jesus might be better than keeping all his possessions.  I guess I know how he feels; maybe you do too.

St. Mark does not tell us how Jesus felt when the rich man went away grieving.  But we can imagine that Jesus was hurt, and felt at least a little rejected, having spoken, as he did, out of love, without reservation or caution.  Maybe he felt foolish himself, for having reached out in love, only to see the man turn away in sadness and disappointment.  It would not be the last time Jesus found his love un-welcomed.

It is of course part and parcel of the message of this passage that for God all things are possible.  And so it would not be in the spirit of the text to suggest that bigger needles and smaller camels might not be the answer for some who are called to make their way to the kingdom of God.  It is possible that our two gentlemen are onto something.  But the clear implication of the passage is that most of us will be stuck with standard-sized needles, and inconveniently large camels, and that the progress of the rich toward the kingdom of God can be reasonably said to be impeded by all that we have in our possession.

There are parts of this city in which such an injunction about the rich would be silly in the extreme.  But we do not inhabit such a district.  And many of us, myself included, must be counted among the rich, even if we’re only moderately well to do.  If you doubt me on this, you need to get out more.

Reviewing the image of the two men in their comfy chairs, with their Scotch, I sense that Jesus sees them there.  And I believe, on the basis of the Scriptures, that looking at them, Jesus loves them (as he loves us too).  And although I had imagined that they would be the villains of this sermon, in the end, it turns out that our two friends are not villains; not least because of Jesus’ love for them.  But also because by the very nature of their conversation it is clear that they have not forgotten about the kingdom of God, have not given up on it, and have not finished scheming about ways to get there.  That’s a far cry from going away grieving.  And I imagine that looking at them, and loving them as he does, Jesus might well say something, like, “Keep trying, boys, keep trying.”

It’s what I hope he’s saying to me when I find it hard to do what I know he wants me to do; and when I find it hard to give what I know I want to give, but I want even more to keep for myself: “Keep trying, Sean, keep trying.”  

It’s what I hope is the message for all of us when we are tempted to think that what we really need is bigger needles or smaller camels, in order to work around the clear message of our Lord that what we really need to do is give more away.

Help us keep trying, Lord; help us keep trying.  Help us not to turn away grieving.  Help us not to try so hard to be first, if that means that we will be last in your kingdom.  And help us to give what we think we cannot give.  For us it mostly seems impossible, and maybe it is.  But not for you Lord; for God all things are possible.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
14 October 2018
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

What is Man that Thou Art Mindful of Him?

An adventuresome friend of mine recently crossed the Atlantic on a 50-foot sailboat as a member of a four-person crew, sailing from the Caribbean to the Azores.  When I asked him what was the best moment of the journey, he told me that it was when he was half-way across the Atlantic, on a calm-ish day, and he summoned his courage and jumped overboard into the sea.  He wanted, he told me, to know what it would feel like to be a puny speck on the globe, floating there with the vastness of the ocean beneath him, and the wide expanse of sky above him.  He said that it was terrifying in a way, but also an unmatched opportunity to come to terms with fear, and to face his own insignificance (in planetary terms), and to be vulnerable to the universe.

My friend is not religious, and expressed nothing about the experience in religious terms, but he might have borrowed the thought from the theologian Soren Kierkegaard, who wondered, figuratively speaking, what was necessary in order to be “out upon the deep, in over seventy thousand fathoms of water, still preserving my faith.”

And the Psalmist, whose perspective is fundamentally religious, seems to have wondered about this feeling too.  “What is man,” he asks of God, “that thou art mindful of him; the son of man, that thou visitest him?”  Or to put it in more modern language, “What are human beings that you are mindful of them, or mortals, that you care for them?”  More poignantly, the Psalmist marvels at the favor that God shows to us humans, “the works of his fingers,” speaking with a notable but, I feel certain, unintentional lack of inclusivity: “You have made him but little lower than the angels; you adorn him with glory and honor;... you put all things under his feet.”

I wonder if my friend might have felt only but a little lower than the angels as he floated in the deep dark sea, beneath the never-ending sky.

The world seems to have more ways than ever of making us feel as though we are out in the deep.  And you can measure seventy thousand fathoms in more than just water.  There is a catalog of potential deeps in the news every day.  From wars that we have nearly forgotten, to political conflicts we can’t escape even if we want to.  There are the thousand dramas of each of our own inner fears, insecurities, and bitternesses.  There is the fact that the ocean depths are becoming still deeper, and the blithe way we willfully contribute to the literally deepening fathoms beneath us.  There are more ways than ever, it seems, to feel like a puny speck on the planet, and to be vulnerable to the universe.  What are human beings, O God, that you are mindful of them, or mortals, that you care for them?

The question is not a rhetorical one.  So many of us live our lives so far removed from God that we have forgotten that God made us “in his image, in his own image he created [us]; male and female he created [us].”  And so many of us haven’t the foggiest idea why it might be important that God made us according to his own likeness.  We forget that our creation in God’s own image is an expression of God’s love for us, an embodiment of the goodness of creation, and an assurance of our own special place in terms of proximity to God’s heart, and not on the food chain, that the story of creation is meant to tell.  Like all children, we have been free to take our parent’s love for granted.  And like all children, our propensity to do so has rendered us no less needful of that love.

What are human beings, O God, that you are mindful of them, or mortals, that you care for them. What is man that thou art mindful of him; the son of man, that thou visitest him?

When God created the heavens and the earth, he already knew, of course, what we would look like.  For there has never been a time when God was without his only-begotten Son, who “is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and [who] sustains all things by his powerful word.”  And there never has been a time when God did not know that he would send his Son to be born of Mary.  There never was a time that God did not know that his Son would suffer and die.  There never was a time when God did not know that he would raise Christ up from the dead.  There never was a time when our redemption - both the need for it and the circumstances of it - was unknown to God.

The Scriptures testify to a divine symmetry in the likeness that we bear to to God’s image and the exact imprint of that image that is the incarnate Son of God, who came to be God-with-us.  Christ is the exact imprint; and we were made in God’s image and likeness.  God has always known this.  How could God fail to be mindful of us?

In the modern era, we have generally adopted an attitude of suspicion toward God.  We suspect that God is possessed of a certain hardness of heart that causes him and his church to treat the world and its people with a certain cruelty.  And those of us who want to think better of God find ourselves constantly trying to make excuses for him.  But Jesus knows that the hardness of heart is all ours.  The passage we heard from Mark’s Gospel this morning is typically referred to as Jesus’ teaching on divorce, and I suppose you can read it that way.  But a better way to read this passage, I think, is as part of Jesus’ extended teaching on our hardness of heart, in which he shows that when you have no other organizing principle - like a covenant of love - then hardness of heart results always, only, and ever in hurt, sadness, and sin.  Divorce is only an example of that.

But when we consider the heavens, and the work of God’s fingers, and we ask ourselves who are we that God should be mindful of us, we remember that God has made us but little lower than the angels, and adorned us with honor and glory.  We see that God has given us mastery over the works of his almighty hands, and put all things under our feet, even the seventy thousand fathoms of the deep, that ought to frighten us into oblivion, and make us see just how puny we are.  But the longer and the deeper we look, the more assuredly we see that God still made us in his image and likeness, just a little lower than the angels…

And so to the Lord our Governor, whose Name shall be exalted in all the world be honor, power, dominion, glory, and praise from this time forth and for ever more.  Amen.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
7 October 2018
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

A Low Place

Valley of Gehenna

The woman says she is haunted above all by the callous laughter of the boys whom she alleges assaulted her when she was young.  She is haunted by their laughter and by the ease with which she could have been killed, her breath stopped as a mere by-product of a drunken, fumbled, offense.

Gehenna is haunted by child sacrifice.  It’s near Jerusalem, a valley in which, in the days of the kingdom of Judah, some of the kings had sacrificed their children to the god Moloch.  By the time of Jesus the name of this valley, Gehenna, conjured up a kind of hell.

The committee’s hearing was said to be hell by one distinguished senator.

The next morning, when the elevator doors opened, another senator was haunted by the voices of two women who charged him with sacrificing them.  “You’re telling me right now that what happened to me doesn’t matter.  Look at me when I’m talking to you.  You’re telling me I don’t matter.”

Apparently if we cause one of the little ones to stumble, we will be better off drowning with a millstone around our necks, sinking down to the bottom of the sea.

Apparently, in this matter of harming the little ones, if our hand is what makes us offend, we would be better off amputating that hand.

Apparently, if our eye is what makes us do harm to the vulnerable, we would be better off poking out that eye.

The alternative is Gehenna.  Hell.   Keep what belongs to you, what’s rightly yours—the hand, the eye—but live in an unrelenting hell.

Apparently, if we gave even a glass of water to a little one in the name of Christ, we would be richly rewarded.

Grown women are not little children. 

Grown women may consider themselves to be authoritative professionals who do not cry in front of powerful committees.  Grown women do not implore senators to listen to the story about the hand over the mouth, the fear of accidental death.  Grown women do not point to the slander in the yearbook after so many years have passed.

Last week, in the gospel, Jesus picked up a little child, and he told his disciples to become like that child.  Vulnerable.  Susceptible to the callous indifference of others. 

Grown women should be able to understand that without corroborating evidence our system of justice cannot render a verdict about the story of the hand over the mouth, the fumbling with the bathing suit.

Grown women should understand that it is not a priority to find evidence, corroborating or otherwise, at this late date.

Gehenna is a valley near the capitol, Jerusalem, in which the vulnerable have been sacrificed to a worldly god.  

This week, in the gospel, Jesus is still holding that child.  It’s still that same conversation about becoming one of the little ones who believe.

How can, how should, a grown woman become like a child?  Under what circumstances?  To justify her speech?

Was she ever like a child, if innocence was denied her as a child?  If the hand had always been waiting to cover her mouth? 

Or if innocence itself is what made her a target?  How then?  If her whole body offends, what can she amputate to avoid that hell?

What part of such a body would be hers to give away?  The hand?  A gift from her father to her groom.  In marriage.

How shall she become a true disciple?  In what sense shall she now put herself last?

Is discipleship for the invulnerable?

Do the powerful disavow their power to become followers of Jesus? 

What should she then disavow?

Near the capitol there is a valley, Gehenna, a depression in the earth.  It is indistinguishable from hell.  It is where the most vulnerable have been sacrificed.  It would be better to do without almost anything in life rather than to find oneself in that depression.   

There is a kingdom in which the falsely accused and the naively trusting and the indifferent and the cynical, the powerless and the guilty, are all invited to live again, dine from the same table, eat the bread and drink the wine.

In that kingdom there is no fake spectacle of justice staged by the desperate at the expense of the weak.

That kingdom is to be sharply distinguished from the party at which drunkenness allows for impunity. 

That party, the drunken one with the loud music in the room upstairs, is apparently a safe space for the already protected, those who have the money and the connections to allow them a moment’s pleasing oblivion, without consequence.

What happens there stays there.

The powerless cannot attend that party, even when they are already in the room.  The powerless will never be present at that gathering.  Oblivion is simply not granted to the weak without severe consequences. 

But then there never really was a safe space in all of that drunken kingdom, not even for the king.  Divine oblivion was always secretly a cheap consolation prize.  In the end it was only beer, and the heir to the throne was only a boy who fumbled in a back room to gratify a desire he could never clearly name.  Eventually the fumbling itself may have been forgotten. 

He may not even have been the one.

That hand that covered the mouth.  It may never have been his to begin with.

So many afternoons and evenings sacrificed to an earthly god whose promises were so vague.  No calendar can tell them all.

There is a valley outside the capitol haunted by the ghostly souls of little ones who were never considered worth protecting in the first place.  It would be better to go without almost anything in this life than to find oneself in that low place.