Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again 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 God.” When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:23-26 NIV)
Everyone has an opinion about professional athletes’ salaries. Mine arises from two thoughts. First, it’s not Gerrit Cole’s fault that the New York Yankees want to pay him $36M/year to throw a baseball. It’s simply what the market will bear.
My second thought is that a society that rewards athletes so generously but in which schoolteachers typically have to have a side hustle to make ends meet has its priorities seriously disordered. Rant over!
This naturally leads to the question, what does the typical PGA Tour pro make? As recently as 2021, the average annual income for PGA pros was $1,485,055.
This figure is skewed upward by the high earnings of the top ten or twenty. But those pro golfers at the back of the pack aren’t living on beans and rice, either. In short, pro golfers are rich.
Jesus’ “camel vs. the eye of a needle” analogy raises issues. He suggests that monetary wealth impedes citizenship in the kingdom of heaven. This prompts his disciples to ask, “Who then can be saved?” Which is another way of asking, “How rich is too rich?”
Jesus answered the disciples: “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” In other words, nobody has access to God’s kingdom. You’ve seen camels and needles. Impossible! Everyone misses the cut. Nobody is poor enough.
It turns out that we sinners are bankrupt in terms of the currency required for entry into God’s kingdom. That currency is not the earthly wealth that the rich young ruler had. Rather, it is a rare commodity known as righteousness. We have none. Jesus has an infinite supply.
A good picture of this is the Old Testament patriarch Joseph who had anticipated seven years of famine in Egypt and had stored quantities of grain described as being “…so much that he stopped keeping records because it was beyond measure.” Infinite.
And then gave it to his starving (poor) family. The same family that had previously treated him miserably. Joseph prefigures Jesus in this. Grain is a prerequisite for life. Righteousness is a prerequisite for eternal life in God’s kingdom.
And while Jesus is asking the rich young ruler to give his earthly wealth to the poor, he is simultaneously in the process (incarnation, life, death, resurrection) of offering his vast storehouse of righteousness to all us paupers. Including this rich young man. Remarkable.
I wonder if Jesus – true God and true man according to scripture and the venerable creeds of the Church – had a twinkle in his eye as he told the disciples that with God, the camel/needle thing was possible—just one more claim of divinity by Jesus. I picture a camel whipping through the eye of that needle quicker than a Gerrit Cole fastball.
Prayer: Thank you, Lord, for your abundant mercy. We bring our empty hands to be filled by your grace.