Through the Needle's Eye
Through the Needle's Eye
by Donald Hoffman

Mark 10:17-31

When we still had children at home, we used to watch TV cartoons all the time. Tom and Jerry, a cat and a mouse. Wiley Coyote and the Roadrunner. There was even a full-length feature movie that mixed real humans and cartoon characters, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. Now there was one thing all these cartoon characters had in common: they seemed to be made of rubber. Tom the Cat gets run over by a steam roller and flattened like a sheet of paper. Wiley Coyote falls into a freezing lake and comes out as a perfect cube of ice. Roger Rabbit stretches his neck out to five times its usual length, and bugs his eyes four inches out of their sockets. And they all snap back to normal. Cartoon characters can't be killed, they don't even break bones. Anvils drop on their heads--no problem. They get shattered into a thousand pieces--no problem. They always snap back to normal. They seem to be made of rubber.

Real people aren't like that. Drop us off Wiley Coyote's cliff and we're dead. If we light the fuse on a big, round, black bomb, and it blows up too soon, we're dead. Stretch us way out of shape, and we can't snap back. Real people aren't made of rubber!

So then Jesus tells us we are supposed to turn into rubber people ourselves, so we can be squeezed through a knothole, or even something smaller--like the eye of a needle. Jesus says we are all camels who need to be pulled through the needle's eye!

Well, actually he says getting rich people into heaven is like pulling camels through the needle's eye. Maybe you don't think you're rich, so you're not in danger. But this time Jesus's disciples understand him perfectly. If it is harder for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to go through a needle's eye, why, even poor people are in trouble. Maybe it's like pushing a kitten through a soda straw. The animal's smaller, the hole's bigger, but it's still impossible. Who can be saved? No one! We're not made of rubber. It can't be done for any of us, no matter how rich, no matter how poor. It's impossible for mortals to get into heaven.

But not impossible for God. I'm not flexible enough to crawl down a drain pipe, but God can pull me through the tiniest of holes. We call this grace, the divine ability to do for us what we can't do for ourselves. All through the Hebrew Scriptures God has been blaming the square-peg Israelites for not fitting into God's round-hole plans. But in the New Testament God changes the plan. We are going to fit in spite of ourselves!

Melody and I used to live in Williamsport, PA, where Bethlehem Steel had a wire rope factory. They pulled steel bars through smaller and smaller holes--with lots of friction, heat, and noise--until each bar had been stretched and narrowed into a thin wire.

Maybe a wire rope plant is a symbol of what God is doing to us. With mortals such thinning and stretching is impossible. We're not made of steel. We're not even made of rubber. But it's not impossible for God. Maybe the only way God can get me into heaven is to pull me through, kicking and screaming, with lots of friction and lots of heat.

Funny how many people think getting to heaven is going to be quick and painless. And yet Jesus says that "the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it." (Matthew 7:14) Maybe that gate is even narrower than we think! Narrower than a turnstile. Narrower than a drainpipe. Narrower than a soda straw. ... Narrow as a needle's eye!

It hurts just to think about it. I'm really going to have to lose weight! I'm really going to have to shrink my baggage. No wonder they say you can't take it with you! How do you get even a toothbrush through that small a gap? Remember a few months ago when we said that faith means being able to leave home without taking the furniture? Now we know why!

But what if we could do some yoga exercises, stretching exercises, to loosen ourselves up and become more flexible, so God's reshaping wouldn't be quite so painful? What if we could join a divine health club to bulk up our spiritual biceps and shrink our spiritual tummies and unkink our spiritual spines?

Well, surprise! Here's God's health club! You're sitting in it! And there are some exercises we can do to make ourselves more flexible. Actually these exercises are a simple variation on what Jesus offered the rich man. Where Jesus prescribed a sort of crash diet for that fellow, we get to do it slow and steady.

It's called proportionate giving or percentage giving. Every week take a percentage of that week's income and give it back to God. Give the same percentage each week. Consistency is more important than size, just as walking a mile every day is better than ten miles once a week. Set a percentage, start small, and stick to it.

Then check in with the Trainer, from time to time, and consider adding one more percent. Very few people seem to have the spiritual flexibility to start out at a tithe, ten percent, just as very few can dance the limbo during the first week of yoga lessons.

The secret is consistency and slow growth. Pick a number, stick with it for a while, raise it yearly, or even more often, as your spiritual muscles toughen up. Slow and steady wins the day. Slow and steady makes good wire rope. Slow and steady makes good flexible Christians.

And remember the basic point: It's not how badly the church needs your money, it's how badly you need to kick the ownership habit. The surgeon general of Heaven has determined that possessions are hazardous to your spiritual health. Too much money hardens the spiritual arteries. Too many possessions calcify the spiritual spine. It's going to be hard enough for even the most limber and healthy Christians to get pulled through that hole. Lots of friction. Lots of heat. Lots of noise. But it will be easier without all those possessions.

Well, I'll let you finish that one. The point is that our possessions are bloating us up. We all need to kick the ownership habit. We all need a spiritual diet plan.

I guess I'm fortunate, in a way. There was a time, back in the dark ages, when my parents decided to give me a weekly allowance because of all the wonderful chores I did around the house. A whole dollar every Sunday. Now it never came as a dollar bill. Instead my dad very thoughtfully divided my dollar into two piles: ninety cents in one pile and ten cents in the other. The idea was that I could keep or spend the ninety cents, but the dime was my Sunday offering. I now know they were much less interested in giving me an allowance than in teaching me good stewardship. The result is that during my whole life I've mentally divided my income into two piles, one for giving, one for spending. It's called tithing. It's called percentage giving. And maybe it will make it just a tiny bit easier to get pulled through that knothole.

God is turning us into rubber people, wire rope people, incredibly flexible people. The secret, I think, is to make this process slow and steady, instead of one enormous yank. God wants us to learn good stewardship. Prepare to be stretched.

(Comments to Don at crestnch@televar.com.)

Creston Christian Church, Creston, Washington, USA