hyperbole

Mark 10:17-30

Hyperbole is an exaggeration that is meant to have an impact on the hearer.  It is spoken in order to allow the meaning to penetrate deep into the mind and the heart.

It asserts the incredible in order to arrive at the credible.  The focus is on reality.

There are many examples of hyperbole in our life.

The children use them all the time at school: when they come in the morning to school dragging their backpack or when they are leaving from school to go home dragging their back pack I often hear them say that my back pack weighs a ton.



If you go there around lunch time, one of the kids will say: I'm so hungry I could eat a horse. N fact just the other day a three old came in with a pig 'n blanket in his mouth and looked at me and said, "I could eat a horse."

When I was at my first assignment we had junior high dances.  It was always interesting to relive those years.  I remember one hearing one of the young men speaking to his friend about a certain girl in their class and the conversation went as follows: 'Oh my G..d, here she comes.  If she asks me to dance I'm going to die."  Hyperbole, i think.  Though he looked nervous enough, he may have actually passed out if the said proposal took place.


When I was growing up my parents would always implore hyperbole: I told you a million times to make your bed or do your homework or pick up your room.

When I spent the summer in Spain last year I had the great joy of rooming with two other priest who happen to snore like freight trains.


We get it.  They are funny yet they drive home the point quick and effortless.

And yet when JEsus uses it  we get a little bothered.

"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle then for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."

Okay.  Let's let that penetrate for a moment. This hyperbole pressed upon the lips of our savior has a tendency to grate at us, as it should.

Jesus takes the largest animal known to his people at the time and suggest putting it  through the smallest hole known to them at the time and a strange phenomenon occurs: we get nervous and our palms begin to sweat and we begin to wonder is Jesus serious.

We have to remember the hyperbole is brought forth as a response to the man who walks away sad after he is told to sell everything, give to the poor and come and follow after JEsus.

What must i do to gain eternal life?
Who can be saved?

These are the questions that book end the hyperbole of the camel and the eye of the needle.

IT sets us up for the realization that on our own it is impossible.  Eternal life is a gift and it is received only when we decide to follow Jesus' lead.

We enter into the realm of possibilities the moment we follow and allow Jesus to lead us.

We let him have his way with us.

Is JEsus making a statement about being rich?  Sure.  Someone who is rich is use to doing things his or her own way.  Someone who has the world at his or her fingers struggles to let another dictate how they live.

The hyperbole of the camel and the eye of the needle again reminds us that we can not get there from here without Jesus.

Notice the invitation to the man in the gospel isn't to "do as I say" but rather "come, follow me."  This is at the heart of the christian experience.  We are no longer at the center.

Helen Keller once stated that "when the door of our happiness closes, another opens.  But the problem is we stare at the closed door so long we don't see the other that opens in its place."

This is true for many of us.  This is certainly true for the young man in the gospel.  He is too busy looking at the door being closed ('go sell all you have') that he can't see the path way of possibilities that opens before him ('come, follow me').

When focus on what we are losing then we lose sight of what God wants to give.  How often in our lives we choose the path of negativity.  Even Jesus reminds us unless you lose yourself you will not find yourself.

In every decision we make, a lose is inevitable, a door must be closed,  but it is the opening of the other that should grab our attention and hold it firm.


Jesus will remove something from us in order to give us something more.  Go sell what you have....Let g o of what you have done, your accomplishments, your self-centered universe.  Come, follow me....let JEsus lead, let him be at the center.

If our hands are closed and filled with things then we cannot truly receive what God desires to give.  The path way of possibilities opens before us when our hands are held out ward and upward ready to receive.

"Come, follow me..."  THis is the focus, here is the center.