It's not for sale.

Yes, it was this time again.  The time for the camel, and the eye of the needle.  It's a good passage, mainly because it's from the Bible, and everything's good, because it's the good book.  But it does give us pause for thought, as to who the rich people in the world actually are.  To help you out with this, here are some percentages of people who live on less than $1.25 a day.  That's one dollar and twenty-five cents per day.  I'll let that sink in....... ready?  Let's begin.

Only one of these animals is not in poverty.
My vote is for the Hippo.

Bangladesh:  43%
Burkina Faso: 44.6%
Central African Republic: 68.2%
China:  13.1%
India:  32.7%
Indonesia: 18.1%
Madagascar: 81.3%
Pakistan: 21%
Swaziland: 40.6%
Uganda: 38%




Those are not small numbers.  And numbers don't lie.  Now here's an even more interesting activity that you can try in the comfort of your very own home.  If you're reading this on a library computer, or on your smartphone while riding the bus, don't do this activity yet, you'll probably get thrown out.  Grab your shirt, pull it up and over your head, and check out where your shirt was made.  Mine today was made in Cambodia.  Cambodia which has a ratio of 22% of people living on less than $1.25 per day.  Go ahead, check your clothes and see where they were made.  And then cross reference that nation with this data.  I'll wait.

Odds are, like myself, the nation that produced your textiles has some grindingly poor people in it.  And that seems like an awful lot of folks who have to live in poverty just so I can wear my fashionable polar fleece.  So, if you break it down, that means that 397, 277, 427 people live on under $1.25 a day in India alone.  In China, the numbers are 174,736, 900.  Combined, between the two countries, you have  572, 014, 327 folks in grinding terrible poverty.  These are the countries that make your shirts, your pants, your plastic toys, and your smartphones.  You know what that is?  That's sixteen times the population of Canada.

Wow.  You rich yet?  Rather, do you feel rich yet?  You should, because it's appalling, really, how rich we all are, and yet don't even think about it.  But like many other things in the Bible, you and I read it, and we read it to seek ammunition against other people.  Who's the guy that we're likely to be targeting as a rich man who probably won't get into heaven?

Hi guys!  Miss me?

Hey it's this guy.  He's rich.  And he's someone we can comfortably point to from our massive houses, with central heat and central air, and water that won't give us cholera if we drink it, and hot and cold running water, and hi-def tvs, and we can say "Look at that rich git.  How dare he claim to understand the plight of the common man? How dare he say he understands for a moment that he cares for the poor!"

But you're distractingly rich. And I mean that very sincerely.  You are distracted by your wealth, which, because you don't think about it too often, becomes a problem for you, and your camel, and the eye of the needle.

Why is it so difficult for the rich (including us), to enter into the kingdom of heaven?  Well, what do we do with our time, and how much time do we spend acknowledging our blessings?  The more you have, the more difficult it is to remain humble, and the more difficult it is to realize your place in God's universe.  I know I made this point on Sunday, but it's still a good one, so I'm gonna use it again.  If we have a life filled with distractions, if we have an experience in which we're constantly being pushed and pulled in a variety of directions, how easy is it to even see or hear God at all?

The psalms tell us how to recognize God.  Psalm 46:10 says "be still and know that I am God."  And that's so much harder to do if you've got a million and one things pushing you here and there and everywhere.  It used to be that the wireless radio was going to intrude into homes and debauch them.  And then it was tv, and then the internet, and then smartphones.  And with all these intrusions, it gets harder and harder to be still, to know that God is God.  We welcome distractions into our lives like crazy, we live our lives in a constant state of distraction, being pulled here and there, and even for some of us, when we sleep, we're still moving and grooving.  Ever used a sleep timer on a radio or TV to fall asleep?  Even in those moments leading up to losing consciousness, we're still busy.  Is it any wonder then that God, when he sent angels to people to communicate things, did so in dreams?  Those who are rich and powerful, who can afford a world of distractions, who feel as though they've earned everything, the only time they're still is when they're asleep.

That's when God talked to Joseph.
That's when God talked to Pharaoh.
That's when God talked to the king of Babylon.

For us, we who are wealthy, we spend a lot of time doing a lot of stuff, we're busy busy busy all the time, too busy to even listen to what God says to us.  If you're poor, as a lot of folks were in the time of Christ, it's a whole lot easier to listen.  Also, you recognize everything you have as a gift of grace.  You don't take much of anything for granted.  You can't afford to.  We rich, that's exactly what we do.

So what to do now?  Moving forward, how best to deal with your outrageous wealth that you have, but that you don't remember that you have?  Well, John the Baptist has some advice for all of us, or rather, he is telling us what will be happening.

"Prepare the way of the Lord,

Make his paths straight.

Every valley shall be filled,

and every mountain and hill shall be made low,

and the crooked shall become straight.

And the rough places shall become level ways,

and all shall see the glory of God."               

                                                                                          -Luke 3:4-6

Aha.  Another reason that the rich don't much care for the Gospel of God is that it has in it a promise to level things off.  It promises full and complete equality before God (In Christ there is no slave nor free, no male nor female, no Jew nor Greek.  All are one in Christ Jesus).  This is great news if you're desperately, grindingly poor, if you're living on less than a dollar a day, if you're suffering day in and day out with poverty.  This is bad news if you're wealthy.  Then the smelly, dirty people of Bangladesh, the textile workers of India, the malnourished of the Central African Republic, and the toy assemblers of China, you're equal to all of them in God's eyes.  all those fancy things you earned, all those toys you bought from them, all the houses and cars and wealth, all of it means nothing.  Because you are exactly equal in God's eyes.  He sees a sinner in need of salvation.  

Now to go off on a Lutheran tangent for a second, this is pretty much straight up Law/Gospel stuff.  Law and Gospel tell us something - namely that God seeks to redeem sinners.  When he looks at you, he sees a sinner in need of salvation.  That's good news if you have already seen your sin, then you see the salvation offered.  If you don't know that you have any sin, then it's terrible news, because it dares to mention that you're not perfect.  And that's a problem for you.  If you've been gliding along up until now with nary a thought to your sin, then it's a problem, because it tells you that you've got a problem, you've got a flaw that needs to be fixed.  You have to be humble, you have to be forgiven, beginning and end.  It's easy to do if you know that you're sinful, then the word of God is a joy.  If you think you're essentially okay, then the words of God are offensive and raw, even though they could be the very same words.  It's the same deal with wealth.  If you think you've earned everything, and it's yours by divine fiat, then you'll be disappointed when you depart this earth with nothing, just as you arrived with nothing.  If, however, you realize that everything you own is a gift, and every opportunity you have is a gift, then you're a whole lot more grateful for everything.  Lest we think that it only applies to material goods, the biggest blessing, life everlasting, is as much a gift as anything else.  Once you've worked out that what you have is a gift from God, then it becomes much easier to be thankful for everything.  House, home, family, and faith.  

PJ.