Dave Brisbin 3.7.21
Third Sunday of Lent. Tyranny of the Finite…love that term. Means that as finite creatures, we can’t be everywhere at once, and don’t have enough time to be everywhere eventually. Means we have to choose—and choice means stress, anxiety…after all, saying yes to one thing is saying no to something else, and we could make the wrong choice. In fact, stress and anxiety are how we know we have a choice to make. Make the choice, commit to the choice, stress relieved. This fact of life has taught us to view life as binary, dualistic, sets of opposing elements about which we must choose, if only to relieve the stress. But even as we do, if we want the deeper truth life is meant to teach, then working through the continual paradoxes life presents becomes much more important than the choices themselves. The process is the goal, not the outcome, and we can meet God equally on any chosen path. If we so choose.
How do we work through the paradoxes life presents? Fortunately, Jesus tells us. When a young man comes to him, suspended between the horns of the dilemma that his wealth, power, and piety have not relieved the anxiety of his sense of meaninglessness, Jesus tells him, there’s one thing you lack: sell all you have and follow me. When the man realizes he’s not ready for that, Jesus remarks it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle than a rich person enter the kingdom. This wonderful image can mean many things, but what it ultimately means is that if we’re willing to let go of all we think we possess, the freedom of truth will not be denied. But only if. The eye of the needle is too small to let anyone with baggage pass through. When we become continually ready to shed our skins, living in a constant state of childlike, beginner’s mind, we are then ready to follow Jesus through the eye of the needle to the radical freedom that only those who are unencumbered and unattached to their worldview will be able to embrace.
