Matthew 19:23-30
“Truly I tell you, it
will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven.”
How tempting it is to
deflect this challenging reading to others wealthier than I am. After all, I am
clearly not a rich person in comparison to (fill in the blank.) But, of course,
the logic works both ways. I am clearly rich in comparison with someone with
fewer resources than I have.
Instead of shunting the passage to someone else, what if we let it squarely hit
us in the heart? What if we meditate on this passage, allowing Christ’s message
to expose the ways affluence keeps each of us from the kingdom of heaven, the
network of right relationships that make up God’s dream of creation?
In their book Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy,
environmental activists, Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone discuss the importance
of building community resilience in the face of climate change. Affluence
interferes with community they write: “The danger of being too comfortable, too
self-sufficient, is that we lose any sense of needing one another. If each
family has its own washing machine, electronic entertainment, and adequate
supplies of food, what reason do we have to know on our neighbors’ doors?
Experiencing need prompts people to reach out and make contact.”
How can each of us come out from behind the doors of our affluence and build
the community that Christ envisioned? Challenging? Yes, but after all, with
God, all things are possible.
David Shumaker
David Shumaker
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