When I was confirmed in
Evanston Illinois, I was given a “red letter bible”. For those of you who don’t know what that is,
it’s a bible where all of Jesus’ words are written in red print. I must admit that I was originally perplexed
why there were no red letters in the first half of the bible, and little in the
end. It all seemed to be concentrated in
what I now know to be the Gospels.
Funny, huh?
In any case, if you look at a red letter bible, and look
particularly at the Gospel of Luke, it’s hard to find any red letters that
don’t talk about wealth, power, privilege, and the dangers of these. Or something singing the praises of the weak,
poor and sick. Today’s Gospel reading
continues, following on the prodigal son, and Jesus lambasting the Pharisees
for the hoity toity dinner party and power-grabbing seating chart, and it being
easier for a camel to go through a needle than for a rich man to enter
heaven. Today, we hear about the rich
man who walks past Lazarus, not the same Lazarus we hear about around
Easter. To be sure, these are difficult
words to hear, particularly as Americans, as Episcopalians, as St. Thomas.
Compared to the other Episcopal Churches in the area, we are one of the most
wealthy. As a denomination, Episcopalians,
are one of the most wealthy, and as a nation, the United States is the most
wealthy. I would love to say something
pastoral that would make this lesson easier to take, easier to preach, easier
to hear. Easier to think it’s not
talking about us. But that’s not my job.
And in fact, it is precisely aimed at us.
Lest you feel too depressed before I even begin, or tune me
out at this point, the end of the story gets better. There is hope. But not before there’s a call
to change, and some serious self-examination to be done.
Every day, when the man came and went, he’d see Lazarus, who
was so hungry that he’d have been happy with the crumbs falling from the rich
man’s table. He was so sickly that dogs
licked his wounds. In your mind you
might envision Fluffy, the neighbors Pekinese, licking his nose. But that’s not what this was. This was much
more likely a pack of wild, mangy street dogs, trolling the streets for trouble
– or food. To say the dogs were licking
his sores tells you something about how sick and defeated Lazarus was, how
unable he was to fend off the dogs. And
the rich man walked by this scene, every time he left his home, in his
expensive clothing.
Both men die, and Lazarus goes to Abraham’s bosom, while the
rich man goes to Hell. The rich man asks
Abraham to “send Lazarus to dip his finger in the cool water”.
Abraham responds that when the rich man was on earth, he had
nice things, and Lazarus was in agony. Now the tables are turned. He further
says that a great chasm has been fixed so no one can go between where Lazarus
ends up and Hell.
The rich man doesn’t give up. He begs Abraham to send
Lazarus to earth to warn his brothers.
Abraham responds that if the rich man didn’t listen to Moses and the other prophets, neither will they
listen to someone who rises from the dead.
Why did the reach man end up in hell? It wasn’t his wealth per say. But the wealth certainly contributed. I’ll agree with Martin Luther King, who wrote
about this very passage, and concluded that it wasn’t the wealth, but the rich
man’s actions that landed him in hell.
He didn’t see Lazarus.
MLK wrote that the first sin of the rich man was that he
passed by Lazarus and never saw him. He went to hell because to the rich man,
Lazarus was invisible. And worse, by not intervening, he allowed Lazarus to
become invisible to everyone. Anecdotally, I can tell you that one of the
greatest challenges and most disheartening truths for the poor of today is that
they’re seen as invisible. Few people
make eye contact on the streets, and they begin to feel like they are, in fact,
invisible.
Acted superior in life, as in death.
The second grave error the rich man made was that he acted
superior to Lazarus both alive and after they’d died. Alive, he walked past as if Lazarus wasn’t
there, wasn’t suffering. Once they’d
died, he repeatedly asked Abraham to have Lazarus do things for him. Never
asking Lazarus, but ordering. Dip his
finger in cool water. Go warn my
brothers. Even in death, Lazarus is seen
as a lesser man.
Set rules about chasm on earth.
Finally, it was the wealthy man’s refusal to acknowledge the
chasm between he and Lazarus on earth that fixed the chasm forever. Being a pretty visual and literal person, I
thing of this as two men and a big pit.
On earth, Lazarus was in the big pit. Lazarus definitely knew there was
a gap between he and the rich man who stood on the edge But while coming and going, the rich man
never noticed the pit or Lazarus, or maybe he noticed but couldn’t be
bothered. Now in death, the rich man is
in the pit, and he now clearly sees the chasm between the bottom of the pit and
the top. But he set the rules while on
earth. Pit? Chasm? What pit? I see no
chasm that needs to be crossed. The rich
man set the rules on earth. He refused
to see the distance, the need between himself and Lazarus, thereby cementing
the chasm as uncrossable in death.
Hearing this Gospel is pretty condemning. Comparatively speaking, we all have nice
things. All of us in this room have riches that far exceed many others in this
world. To tell you just how wealthy we
are as a country, there’s a website, globalrichlist.com, where you can enter
your income, and it calculates your relative wealth compared to everyone in the
world. For me, in a middle management government job, I am in the top 1%
worldwide. Sobering.
Paul talks more about wealth in this letter to Timothy, and
his letter provides some context and instruction on what to do with that
wealth. He does this after some pretty
stern warnings too.
Paul warns that you can’t take it with you. He tells the people that they came into the
world with nothing, and will leave with nothing, so why be trapped by senseless
and harmful desires that happen when they want to be rich. He tells them that the love of money is the
root of all evil. Note that he says it’s
the love of money, not the money itself.
It’s not about the money. It never really was. It’s about what the money does to a person,
if they’re not careful.
That’s the real danger of money. If we’re not always watchful, wealth can
distort our interactions and perceptions of God, of our neighbor, and even of
ourselves. Regarding God, wealth makes
man lose sight of our need of God. We think money can solve our problems, or we
can buy our way into heaven, or we forget that God does not really keep track
of our earthly wealth. With our
neighbor, the Gospel illustrates the problems that come with wealth. Wealth
creates a sense that one is superior to another, makes us invisible or immune
to the needs and plight of others, and it creates an uncrossable chasm between
us and them.
Finally, within
ourselves, wealth creates a great sense of discontent. We begin to desire
wealth, and more things that wealth can provide, rather than being content with
food, clothing and shelter we need today – with “our DAILY bread”. As Paul reminds, there is great gain in
godliness combined with contentment.
I can’t overemphasize the importance of contentment. It
comes from a place of deep gratitude for what you have, rather than what you
don’t. Socrates said it well. “He who is not contented with what he has,
would not be contented with what he would like to have”.
Again, it’s not about the money itself. It’s about what the
money does to a person. Paul concedes
this by offering consoling words to people with wealth, which again would be
all of us. He commands them not to be
haughty, or to set their hopes on uncertain riches. Today, the same is true. For those who find themselves with riches,
focus on God and our deep and always need of God, on helping your neighbor, on
being content with what you have.
We are called to do good, be rich in good works, generous,
and ready to share. Talking about
Lazarus and the rich man, Martin Luther King said that the greatest challenge
of the church is that we need to be as concerned as Christ is for the least of
these – for our vulnerable brothers and sisters in Christ – for the Lazaruses
of our time. He wrote, “And we must do
it because in the final analysis we are all to live together, rich and poor,
lettered and unlettered, tutored and untutored.
Somehow we are tied in a single garment of destiny, caught in an
inescapable network of mutuality.” We
need to see the chasm now, and cross it now.
