Matthew puts these two scenes back to back on purpose. Children are brought to Jesus for a blessing, and the disciples try to send them away, apparently assuming Jesus has more important business than laying hands on people who have nothing to offer him. Jesus corrects them sharply. 14"To such belongs the kingdom of heaven." The children bring no achievement, no credentials, and nothing to negotiate with, only open hands. That emptiness is exactly what the kingdom looks for.
Then a man walks up with the opposite of empty hands. 16"What good deed must I do to have eternal life?" is already the wrong question, treating eternal life as a transaction he can complete with enough of the right performance. Jesus lists commandments, and the man answers with what sounds like confidence. 20"All these I have kept. What do I still lack?" That last question is the crack in his own certainty. Some part of him already knows something is missing.
Jesus tells him to go, sell what he owns, give to the poor, and come follow him. Jesus asks for the one thing standing exactly where trust in God should stand. 22"He went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions." He understood the assignment perfectly and chose to keep what he had.
Jesus turns to the disciples and makes the point unmistakable. It is 24"easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle" than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. The image is meant to be absurd, the largest animal anyone in that culture knew forced through the smallest possible opening, precisely because wealth was widely taken as a sign of God's favor. If the visibly blessed cannot get in, the disciples ask the only reasonable question left. 25"Who then can be saved?"
Then comes the hinge the whole passage turns on: 26"With God all things are possible." The rich young man's failure was self-sufficiency, a life so resourced that it never had to reach for anything beyond itself. Self-sufficiency cannot walk through the door a child walks through with empty hands. What no rich man, no moral achiever, and no confident law-keeper can accomplish by his own effort, God does. The child received the kingdom as a gift because a child has nothing else available. The rich young man walked away because he had an alternative, and he chose it.
Peter, to his credit, asks the honest question underneath everyone's mind. 27"We have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?" Jesus answers plainly, promising thrones, a hundredfold return, and eternal life, and then closes with the reversal that has been running under the whole passage. 30"Many who are first will be last, and the last first." The man who walked in with everything walked out with nothing. The disciples who walked away from everything are promised more than they gave up.
Ask what you are quietly relying on instead of needing him. Open your hands like the children, and ask him to do the thing you cannot.
Prayer
Father, we have come to you more often like the rich young man than like the child, presenting our own record and not simply opening our hands. Show us whatever we rely on instead of you, whatever has become our alternative to needing you. What is impossible for us by our own effort, you have never asked us to accomplish alone. Do in us what only you can do. In Jesus' name, amen.