Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

Today’s lesson from the Gospel according to St. Matthew contains Jesus’ familiar invective against wealth, including the phrase: “I tell you 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 heaven.”

Jesus’ teaching helps us make sense of the Church’s emphasis on the “Kingdom of God” as an interior reality reflecting a heavenly economy. Wealth, in Jesus’ framework, prevents us from obtaining the interior disposition needed to become a citizen of God’s heavenly kingdom. Earlier in the Gospel, Jesus further elucidates the dynamic that “serving mammon” is incompatible with serving God because one cannot do both. We humans have a tendency to serve one master—an idol, if not God.

Given this situation, it’s worth asking: can Jesus really be a mainstream character? His teaching here stands in startling contrast to our broader societal priorities—many of which exult the dogma of wealth-building and upward mobility along with all of the prerequisites to those conditions.

The answer to this question, I am coming to see, is that Jesus might not be the comforting, “meek and mild” character we sometimes make him out to be. The riposte he gives to the disciples when they demure sounds ominous yet bracing. The things that are “impossible” for us mortals is possible for God. In other words, Jesus means what he says about wealth, but we also know that salvation is still possible, because of God’s power and goodness. This is a difficult saying, but good for us all to consider thoughtfully, in our individual circumstances.

Of course, something similar could be said of the many other idols we are tempted to worship. Thank God that his mercy is available to us where we need it most!

Yours in Christ,

—Justin