Sunday’s reading is about money and the prestige and privilege it brings. Many people dream about wealth, even though it brings danger. The history of Alcoholics Anonymous may help us understand what the Bible says on wealth. Its two founders, Bill W. and Dr. Bob, attained sobriety for themselves and planned an organization to help other alcoholics. So, they went to the richest man in America in the 1930s, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and asked for $50,000 (equivalent to $1,100,000 today). Though impressed by their plans, Rockefeller gave them only $5,000 for the men’s family needs. Familiar himself with the perils of sudden cash infusions, Rockefeller foresaw that money would stall the momentum and obscure the sense of community that already animated the movement.

This story offers a glimpse of wealth’s limits, indeed of its dangers, in the quest for security. The anecdote gives us a perspective to view Jesus’s encounter with the rich man, and the discussion that follows. A man runs up to Jesus with a question, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life”? Jesus takes issue with his adjective “good,” probably because the man regarded Jesus as just another teacher who could teach him how to gain eternal life, whereas for Jesus eternal life is wholly God’s gift. Jesus gives him the traditional answer – keep the commandments to which the man replies he has kept them from his youth. Any Jew of that time would give his right arm to say that, but he wants something more, which is probably why “Jesus, looking at him, loved him.” Jesus tells him, “You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell all that you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, then come, follow me.” As the commentator Brendan Byrne observes at this point, “the invitation he receives clearly involves crossing the threshold: from a way of life centered on the Torah and the commandments to one centered totally on the person of Jesus.” The man went away sad, “for he had many possessions.” His wealth blinded him to a golden opportunity. Rockefeller would have understood.

Jesus meant for his disciples to observe and learn: “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” Peter then speaks up, “If wealth is such a stumbling block to entering the kingdom, what about us who have left everything to follow you?” Jesus answers that the quality of life in the kingdom will more than make up for any losses incurred in following Jesus and living according to the ethics of the kingdom. All things are possible with God whose help is necessary given the difficulties posed by wealth: “it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” This is hyperbole, of course, deliberate exaggeration in order to communicate a hard truth. But the important thing is that “all things are possible for God.”