NOTES for Mar 10:17-31
Today's passage is devoted to the theme of wealth and how hard it is for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God. However, it would be more accurate to say that the episode given by the evangelist is connected not so much with the question of wealth as with the question of poverty. It is especially remarkable that even His own disciples are horrified by Jesus' words about the difficulty for a rich person to enter the Kingdom, although it would seem that they had nothing left to fear: they had left everything they had and followed Jesus, just as Peter says (vv. 23-28). Apparently, when Jesus speaks of poverty, He has in mind not only material wealth, and His disciples understand this well. The conversation with the rich young man does not begin at all with a question about property, but with a question about keeping the commandments already known from the Old Testament books (vv. 19-20). Only after the young man wanted something more, something that would let him reach perfection sooner, did the conversation turn to his property (vv. 21-22). In general, in Gospel times there were religious communities whose members, upon entering the community, donated all their property to it and afterward relied only on the support of the community they had joined. The apostolic community was the same: its members also evidently had no property of their own, receiving support from the common treasury. And yet the apostles, who had resolved to do what the rich young man did not resolve to do, feel that Jesus' words about wealth apply to them as well. Perhaps they understood what Jesus said about those who trust in wealth (vv. 24-25): it became clear to them that they had to give up every hope in anything whatsoever in this world. Otherwise one would have to squeeze into the Kingdom of God like a loaded camel through the "Needle's Eye" (this was the name in Jerusalem for a special narrow and winding passage in the city gates, through which an animal as comparatively large as a camel could pass only with great difficulty, squeezing between the walls). And they also understood that a person has no strength to live this way (v. 26). Jesus did not try to persuade them otherwise; He only observed that what a person cannot do himself, God can do for him, if only the person wants it (v. 27).