Kenosis

Seeing that he became sad, Jesus said, "How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God. For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God." — Luke 18:24-25

A rich man's wealth is his fortified city — Proverbs 10:15a

My favorite really rich person is probably Scrooge McDuck. Scrooge enjoys his vast reservoir of gold coins by diving into the pile and burrowing through it. He seems to love the money for itself, but he also is in competition with others. As someone said, "Money is just the way to keep score." That attitude seems pretty common in the world as people seek status and worth by having more than their neighbors. Aside from a miserly or competitive accumulation of it, there's nothing wrong with having money. It solves a lot of problems.

I paid cash for the first new vehicle that I bought myself. It was a small, 2-wheel drive pickup with no frills. Eventually my wife, who actually had a credit score, bought a car on which we had to make payments. Once that cycle starts, it can be hard to break, but we managed to eventually catch up so we could pay cash again for the last three or four. Writing a substantial check for a large purchase like a car or a grand piano can give a person a sense of power and exhilaration, of security — like the "fortified city" of the proverb. In my case, the exhilaration evaporates rapidly when I look at what's left in the account. I'm certainly not in Uncle Scrooge's class. If I turned all my assets into gold coins, I would not require the McDuck Money Bin or even a small safe to contain them. In fact, I'm pretty sure I have a coffee cup that would hold them all.

Wealth does not make people evil nor does poverty make us good. The story goes that the day Bat Masterson died, he had written these words: There are those who argue that everything breaks even in this old dump of a world of ours. I suppose these ginks who argue that way hold that because the rich man gets ice in the summer and the poor man gets it in the winter things are breaking even for both. Maybe so, but I'll swear I can't see it that way. Wealth makes life a little easier for us. It helps keep us cool in the summer and warm in the winter. It fills in the potholes and gives us a smoother ride. It is to be expected that when a difficulty is encountered in life, we address it with the resources at hand. As the saying goes, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If you have money, the temptation may be to buy your way out of a tough situation. Occasionally that is fine, but there are times when God is calling on us, when intrusions into our lives are covered with His fingerprints, when He means for us to be altered, purged, or strengthened by the trial we face.

The point Jesus makes is that money has a tendency to keep us from developing - or perhaps undeveloping, becoming again as a little child in order to enter the kingdom. God doesn't do means testing; He does test us by our means. If we trust in possessions or power rather than the Person of Christ, our door to the kingdom is shut and locked — by us. If we are not careful, we will, like the rich, young ruler, fail to open the door when we hear One knocking.

The young man's problem was not that he was a bad person. He was doing many of the right things. Jesus asked him to distribute all of his wealth, but there can be little doubt that this man, in pursuing righteousness, was already giving alms and paying his tithe at the temple. There is no indication that he was greedy. His only disqualification was that he was "very sorrowful for he was very rich". It was not that he did not have faith in God or that he did not desire to please God. If he had no inclination toward God, he would never have approached Jesus at all. His obstacle was that he trusted money more than God. He believed that it was his wealth which gave him comfort and peace of mind. Yes, he wanted to be right with God for he knew that his life was not forever. He wanted to see the kingdom. He would have done almost anything Jesus asked of him — anything except put his faith in his Father first.

The Lord challenged the rich man to embrace a voluntary self-emptying, not unlike the one the Son Himself embraced by His Incarnation. He calls on all of us to follow Him in not clinging to our worldly wealth (Philippians 2:6). He does not ask all of us to sell all we have and give it away, but He does tell us not to hang on to it for dear life. Contrast Christ's plea to the rich, young ruler with this dramatic scene from the opening verses of Mark 14: While He was at Bethany ... reclining at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of pure and expensive fragrant oil of nard. She broke the jar and poured it on His head. But some were expressing indignation to one another: "Why has this fragrant oil been wasted? For this oil might have been sold for more than 300 denarii and given to the poor." And they began to scold her.

Jesus, however, does not seem so concerned about the poor here. He silences the protesters and commends the woman's extravagant action as being noble and as her best effort to do what she could for Christ while He was with them. This oil was a great treasure to her, worth a year's wages — possibly it was her own "pearl of great price". Yet she breaks the container — no holding back — and lavishes it upon the Lord with joy, not sorrow.