Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 16:19-31
My household is afflicted with an obnoxious condition. My children are the particular victims but occasionally the contagion spreads to their father and even at times the dog. I have dubbed the condition "Mommy deafness." The affliction is characterized by the disability of the brain to process the particular decibels and half tones of my voice. My voice box produces sound waves. The sound waves go out from my mouth but when they enter the ear canals of the recipient they seem not to be able to be processed. I know that they have not reached the brain because I see no awareness and certainly no muscle action as a result of my words.
On occasion this affliction has been known to travel from the ears to the eyes. "Didn't you see the orange juice spilled all over the counter?" But then of course, they don't hear my voice asking if their eyes have seen so they go blithely along unaware that they can not hear or see. Mommy deafness becomes mommy blindness. Seeing but not seeing. Hearing but not hearing.
Seeing but not seeing, hearing but not hearing. That's what our lesson is really about today. Often called the parable of the rich man and Lazarus it is really more of a morality tale. The form is almost like the joke, "You know the one, "A priest, a rabbi and a minister go to heaven and as they're standing at the pearly gates St. Peter says to them....da, da, dat. It's important that we understand the form because this story is not intended to be giving us insights about the afterlife or who's going to be meeting us there. This is a story in the genre of a cartoon or a caricature, which is portraying an important truth about life right now...
Jesus paints a picture of two one dimensional characters. One is rich, one is poor. How rich is the rich man. He's so rich he dresses only in Laurent or Gucci. He lives in the penthouse of a North Michigan condo and eats only specially prepared, nutritionally balanced meals by his personal Chef.
The poor man is so poor he lives on lower Wacker drive in a cardboard box. He has scabies and lice and when he sleeps the rats come to bite him. He watches as the catering trucks pull up to the loading dock dreaming of the delicacies on the rich man's table.
It is apparent that between the two men there is a great chasm. So they both die and go to heaven only this time the poor man, Lazarus, whose name by the way, means "God has helped" is comfortable by Abraham's side and the rich man is in agony. So the rich man, who still doesn't get it, calls upon Abraham to send the poor man to get him a drink. He's so stuck in his worldly power plays that he thinks even now he can order the poor man around. Clarence Jordan in the Cotton Patch Gospel, got the beggars reply just right; "Lazarus ain't gonna run no mo errans, rich man."
Abraham smirks as he says to him, "Remember that chasm you experienced in life--well it's still a chasm now.
Lazarus sat outside your door and I don't know how but you didn't see him. Was it selective sight that allowed you to walk passed him every day and not see him? Was it selective hearing that allowed the statistics about homelessness and hunger that were clearly presented to you from the food pantries, social service agencies and news to not register in your brain?
Much as it may seem that way, this parable is not an indictment of the wealthy. The great evangelical social activist Jim Wallis noted that there are about 908 verses in the Bible on the evils of rich people. He said that one time he went through his Bible and decided to cut out all of those verses that had to do with the problems of riches and poverty. He ended up with a Bible completely in shreds! While it is true that the gospels warn over and over about how wealth and love of possessions can be a problem the problem in this story is not the wealth but how the wealth has blinded the rich man to the plight of Lazarus. Being comfortable, having it made can create a kind of community blindness. The kind of blindness that is the cause of a deep chasm.
I still remember taking a group of Jr. High kids into the city, to a program at the seminary and driving through some rough neighborhoods. Their eyes were like saucers as we passed boarded up buildings and burned out structures. Do people live here they asked. Yes of course, I answered. Isn't it awful around here? They queried. Pretty bad, I replied Well why don't they just move? That's a credible question from a child that deserves and requires an appropriate explanation of economic realities. In an adult it's just blindness.
Would tossing a nugget of gold out his window now and then have saved the rich man? What if he had made a little "to go" plate for this pitiful beggar? Would God have said "well done, good and faithful servant?" Hardly, for as the contemporary theologian Jurgen Moltman has said, "The opposite of poverty is not property. Rather the opposite of both is community." The problem is dividing up the world into rich and poor, urban or suburban, developing and developed countries, minority and majority rather than seeing the world as sisters and brothers. When it's "us and them" it's easy to step over the needs of others. When it is your sister or brother in need it's a lot harder to be blind to their plight. When we recognize the picture of the woman on the cover of the Lutheran, the refugee in the Sudan as a mother who has a child she loves as you love yours we begin to close that chasm that is created when we do not see.
Community is not about doing for it is about doing with. Community is not about pity but about compassion. Community is not about charity but partnership.
Six or seven congregations of Lake County have committed themselves to partner with our Lutheran Congregation Sagrada Corozon in Waukegan. Sagrada Corazon is a new congregation addressing the Spanish speaking population. As we have met together the Bishop's assistant Jose Rodriquez would continually push us on the theme of partnership. He would thank us for giving monetary assistance but then he would ask "What can the people of Sagrado Corozon do for you? That was always kind of tough because we're caught in that goods and services kind of mentality. One member of our congregation gave me an answer shortly after the COOL choir of angel's concert. At that concert about 6 or 7 members of Sagrada Corozon sang. Our member said, "It was inspiring to see those folks enthusiastically joining to praise God. What price tag can you put on inspiration? Another member of St. James heard the presentation by Pastor Huberto about the churches stewardship program. Their stewardship program is to encourage each member to give one hour's salary a week to the work of the church. For many members that is probably minimum wage. The member came home so moved by that kind of commitment he set up a matching fund challenge for the members of his church to support the work of Sagreda Corozon. One hour of salary to Sagrada Corozon. What price commitment?
In order to live differently, we must see clearly. In the words of Teilhard De Chardin "All of life is in that verb to see."
And to hear. When the rich man finally realizes that there is no bridging the chasm that he has created between himself and Lazarus he begs Abraham to send Lazarus back to warn his brothers, for someone risen from the dead will surely have an impact upon them. Spiritual blindness, spiritual deafness can be a hard malady to overcome. But Father Abraham was wrong. It is possible to see and hear those unpleasant facts of life that we would like to deny. It is possible to look down and see the suffering Lazarus as we go through the gate to our well kept, well ordered world. Father Abraham was wrong.
Someone has risen from the dead for us and despite all our defenses and rationalizations, we see.
A poor man, afflicted, wounded raised in whose face we see reflected the face of all our brothers and sisters. One whose life was given to bridge the chasm between us all.
Amen