St. Matthew 19:16–26
You have made the most important decision of your life.
You have seen something of the wickedness of the world. Perhaps you have also seen something of the darkness that resides in your own heart. And you have rejected it. You have done the most important thing a human being can do: you have rejected the fallen way of the world and its diabolical ruler, and you have united yourself to Christ.
You have chosen the better way.
Glory to God.
It is a wonderful thing to become part of the Gospel—not simply to choose a life that eventually leads to salvation, as though Christianity were some kind of transaction, but to choose the Way itself: the way that leads not only to eternal life, but to everything good, everything holy, everything joyful, everything true.
But one of the things we hear in today’s Gospel is that even after we have dedicated ourselves to holiness, to being with God, to being in God and having Him in us, the struggle continues.
Our life in Christ is a process. We can call it theosis, deification, transformation—perhaps “two steps forward and one step back”; I like to call it the long slow slog of salvation. But however we describe it, part of that process is learning to see with new eyes the things in our lives that are still holding us back: things we have carried with us from the old life, perhaps giving them new names or dressing them up with theological language or perhaps just hiding them in some compartmentalized closet of our minds and lives.
As we grow in Christ, and as we receive the wisdom of the Church—through our conscience, through the Scriptures, through spiritual fathers and mothers, and through friends who genuinely love us—we begin to recognize that we are in need of continual change.
Continual repentance.
Saint John Chrysostom offers a wonderful image in his homily on this passage. He asks us to imagine someone who develops an absurd desire to fly through the air by his own power. How do you cure him? Do you start fashioning wings and inventing contraptions to accommodate the desire? Or do you persuade his mind that the desire itself is unreasonable and that he needs to let it go?
Now, if you are like me, your first thought is, “Well, Saint John, eventually we did figure out how to fly.”
That’s not the point.
The point is: let it go.
No, the way to freedom and salvation does not involve breaking into song and building your own private ice castle. That’s not the Gospel, that’s Disney.
But seriously: Let. It. Go.
Do not spend your life constructing elaborate machinery and justifications to preserve something that Christ is asking you to surrender. That is a misuse of your intellect, no matter what the algorithm of the world might say. Jesus Christ, the eternal Logos, says something different.
And as we come to today’s Gospel, there is something important to remember. When Jesus has these difficult conversations—with the rich young man, with the Pharisees, with the scribes—we should not stand at a distance congratulating ourselves for not being like them.
Exegetically speaking, we are them.
Their questions are our questions. Their temptations are our temptations. Their evasions are our evasions.
And yet God loved them.
Christ did not rebuke them out of irritation or self-righteousness. He loved them and wanted them to be saved. He loved this rich young man.
And He loves each of you.
So put yourself in this man’s place and hear what He has to say.
Saint John Chrysostom insists that we should not dismiss this young man as insincere. He really does desire eternal life.
Imagine asking Christ the same question.
“Lord, what must I do?”
Perhaps He begins with the things you already know.
Go to church on Sunday prepared to receive Holy Communion. Go to confession regularly and whenever needed. Fast according to the Church’s calendar. Pray every day. Celebrate the feasts. Give alms. Support the Church. Love your neighbor. Forgive.
There is a list. Much of it is already in your prayer book.
And perhaps many of us could say, with the young man, “Lord, I have been doing these things.”
Not perfectly, certainly, but sincerely.
And yet we know that we have not been completely transformed. We are not yet holy as He is holy.
So we ask again:
“What do I still lack?”
And He may answer us in essentially the same way He answered that young man:
Give it up.
Give up the thing you are holding onto.
Give up the thing you have allowed to define you.
Give it up, and follow Me.
It is tempting, especially for us as Americans, to reduce this passage to money. “Give until it hurts.” And certainly the man’s wealth matters. Christ explicitly tells him to sell what he possesses and give it to the poor. But this is not finally a lesson about financial management. It is about the man’s salvation. The poor do not need this man’s money in order to save him. Christ is not proposing a transaction in which the rich man purchases eternal life by transferring assets to the poor.
Something much deeper is going on.
His sorrow reveals that his possessions have a hold on him stronger than he realized. And Christ says: Let them go.
The same principle applies to us.
Yes, Christians should give generously. We should work toward tithing. We should support the life of the Church and care for the poor. But even there, the deeper issue is not that God needs our money. God does not need our money. The success of the Church does not depend upon our bank accounts.
This is about what possesses us. It is about removing whatever separates us from perfection.
And then Christ gives us this unforgettable image:
“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.”
We have heard attempts to make that saying easier—to turn the eye of the needle into some narrow gate through which a camel might just barely squeeze. But don’t tame the image. Christ is describing something impossible. The disciples understand Him perfectly. That is why they immediately ask, “Who then can be saved?”
Exactly. Who can get a camel through the eye of a needle? Nobody. It can’t be done by ingenuity. It can’t be done by discipline. It can’t be done by constructing better wings. It can’t be done by becoming clever enough to preserve everything we refuse to surrender while squeezing it through somehow.
We cannot take everything with us. And the things we refuse to surrender may finally be the very things that keep us from passing through.
There comes a point at which Christ says:
Let it go.
Trust Me.
Pass through.
And this is where another saying of Christ becomes important:
“Every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for My name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.”
That can sound frightening. Immediately we wonder: What will be on the other side? What happens to the people and the things I love? Will my family be there? People even ask, “Will my dog be in heaven?”
I don’t know. I haven’t been there. But I know this: if our dogs are not there, whatever God gives us will do more than suffice.
And that is the kind of trust Christ is asking of us.
When Christ asks us to surrender something, He does not promise that He will simply hand the same thing back to us, only better. He promises something greater: Himself and His Kingdom. Whatever is truly good in what we surrender cannot finally be lost in Him.
Again, the promise of the hundredfold is not some prosperity-gospel investment strategy—“Give God ten dollars and He’ll send you a hundred.” Or whatever the math works out to.
No. It is a description of the way reality has been structured from the foundation of the world. The way to life passes through surrender. There is an intersection between this age and the age to come, and at that intersection stands the Cross. The Cross is the narrow passage.
Christ says:
“If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.”
So how are we saved? How do we enter into life in abundance? Again, the money is not finally the point.
Tithing really does involve our money. Prayer really does require our time. Worship really does require us to reorder our lives. But none of these is ultimately about the thing being surrendered. Through them, we are learning to offer ourselves.
Offering our marriages, our children, our friendships, our careers, our ambitions, our identities, our fears, and our desires to God is not primarily about creating better circumstances.
Those benefits may follow. But they are not the thing itself. The blessing is the thing—not what comes back to us, but communion with God.
This is the way of salvation. This is the way of eternal life. This is the way of abundant life here and now.
We surrender what we have because we trust the One to whom we surrender it.
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
God does not ask us to walk a road He Himself has refused to walk. Christ, “being in the form of God,” nevertheless “emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant.” He humbles Himself. He gives Himself. He becomes “obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross.”
And He tells us: Follow Me.
You have already done the most important thing you can ever do. You have rejected the way of the world and united yourself to Christ.
Now comes the walking.
And that means sacrifice. It means bearing the Cross. It means continual repentance.
It means allowing God, little by little, to show us what we are still clutching and then learning to open our hands.
We have all sacrificed for love. I know enough of many of your stories to know that. We all know that sacrificial love can hurt.
We also know that sacrifice is essential to our salvation.
But here is the great mercy of God.
He knows that we do not always have the strength to make the perfect sacrifice of ourselves. He knows that the way of humility and continual self-offering can sometimes seem beyond our strength.
So He gives us His own sacrifice.
What is the greatest sacrifice we offer to God? Is it our time? Our treasure? Those make a nice alliteration, but no.
The great sacrifice of the Church, the people of God, is what we are doing here.
At the Eucharist, Christ gives Himself to us, and we offer back to God what God Himself has first given us. “Thine own of Thine own.” Even our sacrifice begins with His gift. Christ gives Himself to us so that we may learn, in Him and by His grace, to give ourselves to God.
And the life waiting on the other side of that impossibly narrow passage is His own life.
That is why the disciples’ question—”Who then can be saved?”—receives the answer that completes the whole Gospel:
“With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.”
We cannot squeeze ourselves through the eye of the needle. We cannot save ourselves. We cannot perfect ourselves. We cannot construct enough wings to fly into the Kingdom.
But Christ can bring us through.
And because He gives us His grace, we can let go. We can trust Him. We can take up the Cross. We can follow.
What is impossible with us becomes possible in Him. That is Christ’s final answer to the rich young man’s question. It is His final answer to our question.
So let it go. Trust Him. Take up your Cross. And follow Him through.
Glory to Him Who has given us this way.