Journal of Sacred Work

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.  – Mark 10:25

   The middle and upper economic classes hate this statement from Jesus. I got to feeling so guilty about my own wealth a few years ago that I considered giving most of what I have away. For awhile, the idea seemed enchanting (my wife, understandably, was less enthusiastic.)
    Of course, I didn’t do anything – except to increase my contributions to charity and to become more active in working to help the poor & vulnerable.  I suppose this is the best most of us do. We’ve worked so hard for our money and the stuff it buys that the idea of parting with it seems not only hard but foolish. Yet, all the way back to the prophet Amos (see image, left) we have been admonished to help the poor…

   So what is Jesus asking of us? The literal part is clear enough. We are asked to get rid of, or give away, our money & our stuff. At another level, the call is to free ourselves from attachment to material things. Most Buddhists do a better job at this than most Christians. They understand what Jesus understood. Acquiring things can bring out some pretty unChristian behavior: Possessiveness, lawsuits, wars to protect our turf and our possessions.
   There’s a myth out there that new things bring happiness. Sometimes they do for a few hours or a few days, but then what? Does the new car have a little dent? Is there a tear in that new shirt? Is the new boat already seeming less fun?
   The most reliable studies show that there is no meaningful difference in happiness levels between a person making $50,000 per year and people making $1,000,000 per year. However, there is a difference between people making $50,000 per year and people living below the poverty line.
  This is the challenge of true charity. The poor walk the earth today. In some parts of the world, sub-Saharan Africa for example, eight and ten year olds are sent to work pounding rocks into fine dust for concrete. It takes two weeks work to get enough dust to fill a bag sold for $3 – barely enough for subsistence. (click on image from the New York Times, 8/24/06)
   By Jesus’ guideline (if it were the only one) the eye of the needle will grow as large as a palace door for these poor children all of whom will pass through easy as kings. The arms of heaven will welcome them.
   And the arms of heaven would welcome, as well, so many others that suffered in various kinds of poverty accross their life journey. These include the vulnerable served by loving charities.
   On an September day, in a room at Alive Hospice, I watched eight-year-old twins embrace. One healthy, the other living in a body flooded with cancer. As Brannon lay dying, he listened to the voices of those around him talk about this and that until someone said the word "home." Suddenly, his heart broke open. He burst into tears, sobbing for home as if the walls had fallen in on him. His mother climbed over the end of the bed, lay next to him, offered the comfort only a mother can give.
   When the nurse entered the room, she wisely retreated. "He needs his mother, not me," she said. This is the art of giving God’s love – knowing when to yield to a mother’s love rather then to intervene.
   Whether the door to heaven is wide as an elephant or tiny as a needle, the question being asked on the other side of the door is, what is our intention underneath each action we take? Do we act from love or fear?
   If we give away everything for the sole purpose of widening the door for ourselves, we may discover that it is closed to us. God is love. The question is not how much we have, but how much of ourselves we will give to meet the needs of others – and with what intention – to help another or ourselves?
   How much are we willing to put aside our personal comfort to fill the God’shaped hole in another’s heart? Do we come to the table of communion with love of God or of fear for ourselves?
   A week after I saw Brannon, he left this earth. My guess is that the doors of heaven were wide open. He was welcomed to the the home for which he sobbed.   
  Jesus said we need to become like children, to rediscover trust and innocence. We need to shed as much as we can of the world’s stuff and find a way to be as loving and as true as children. As caregivers, we need to find a way to move through this world as lovers – not worried about whether we can get into heaven, but whether we can live our lives helping those in need.

-Erie Chapman