Proper 21 - Lazarus and the Rich Man

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. 

Proper 17C August 28, 2016 - The Dinner Party

250 words  That’s it. That’s all today’s Gospel reading contains. But it’s amazingly filled with several life lessons, all wrapped up in a narrative story.  You have to marvel at the succinctness and precision of Jesus’ parables. 

Parables give us a human-now glimpse of what eternity is like. They provide us with present examples of what we should do now, and use very mundane and real events as teachable moments.  Jesus uses settings such as the vineyard workers, the dinner party, the mustard seed. These were all things very familiar and common. The people hearing the stories, and subsequently reading the stories could immediately relate.  He was able to use common language, paint a common picture and use it tell a universal truth.  When Jesus told the story, there was something magnificent in the midst of the mundane.

And this was important because he was pointing to a truth about an unknowable and unfathomable kingdom yet to come.  People couldn’t understand what he was talking about  - resurrection life, kingdom of heaven. But they could understand a story about a vineyard, or seeds planted in fertile ground, or a dinner party.

Even though there were commonplace events, people and things, there was always something new in the story. Something jarringly unexpected.  Perhaps this is because the settings were so familiar, the context was so mundane,  the outcome so anticipated.  Listeners and now readers are lulled into a sense that they know this story, and know how it’s going to end.  But when Jesus told the story.. whammo… he’d turn the story on its head.  And what people expected, was absolutely not what they got.  It’s not that Jesus’ teachings were new.  It’s that through these everyday things, Jesus deconstructed what had developed into a wrong-headed teaching or acting. Jesus was able to correct the common-place thinking and acting, with unexpected outcomes to common-place stories.   

Today’s Gospel story and parable is about a dinner party.  Jesus is invited to dinner with the upper crust of his time, at the home of a leader of the Pharisees. As he comes in, the other guests are watching him. Jesus already had a reputation as a rabble rouser, so the establishment was watching.  Closely. 

Jesus notices their glances, but he notices something more.  He notices how people are jockeying for their place at the table. And true to his reputation, he had some rabble to rouse. He chides the other guests for their jockeying.  Instead, he suggests that guests should be humble. Don’t presume to sit in the place of honor.  If you do, you might be asked to leave, and how embarrassing would that be!  What he suggests to the guests is that instead of trying to take the place of honor, they sit in a lowly space.  That way, you might be asked to move up.  And how cool would that be!

To be clear, this isn’t about getting a seat so the guests could see or hear better.  Jesus isn’t critical of the seating chart, but rather the hidden values surrounding the seating.  It has more to do with our presumption that our position in a room, in a meeting, at the dinner table inherently gives us more cred. The seating makes the man, or woman. Think about a long corporate boardroom table.  The chairman of the board often sits at the head of the table.  But if someone else came in before the meeting, and sat in that seat, that wouldn’t make them the chair.  The same goes with other positions or seats.  And why do we care about the best seat, the most prestigious meetings or clubs? 

In our society, no, in our humanity, we have an addiction to externally validated honor. We see it in self-aggrandizing Facebook posts, with name droppers, and social climbers.  This isn’t a new problem. Jesus had this issue with his disciples.  Who among us is the greatest, the disciples asked.  Let my sons sit at your right and left, a meddling mother suggested.    

And here’s an example that’s very close to home for me.  In a previous job, there was a group of managers that routinely meet with my boss.  Mostly, I was not in the room invited.  And for the first few years, I felt like Linus, tagging along with the big kids, “Hey, wait for me. What about me?” Sometimes I’d go in the room, figuring it was ok because it was my boss’ meeting. Clearly they’d need me.  Clearly I mattered.  I’d sit in that meeting room feeling important.  Until one day I was asked to leave.  Ouch.  After that, they’d file in for their weekly meeting, and I sit in my office and wait. If they wanted me to move up to the table, they let me know.  And honestly, being in that meeting or not didn’t change my job or my real worth at all. 

It could have changed my sense of worth, IF I worried about what others thought. If I bought into the social norm and expectation that power and prestige matter, and that where you sit, what meetings you’re in matter.   And of course I do sometimes.  We all do, sometimes. 

But why?  We are loved and known by God as perfect just as we are.  If that’s the case, why should you let someone else decide what you’re worth? You already know. Why would I give the power to anyone else to assess my worthiness?  Don’t give them that power!

Through this story of being invited to dinner, Jesus taught a great lesson about humility, based on the behavior of the guests.  But he didn’t stop there.  The story continues as he tells the hosts of the dinner that they shouldn’t just invite the rich and powerful.  Jesus is warning them not to invite important people just to receive credit because they’re honored, or because they might reciprocate.  Again, it’s not all about honor.  Jesus suggests that they should be finding and inviting the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. These people wouldn’t normally be running in the same circles. They’d need to be sought out and found.   And they wouldn’t be able to repay the honor of being invited. Invite them.  Be hospitable to them.

Paul adds to this theme of hospitality.  Be hospitable to all.  You may entertain angels unaware.  This sense that that we might not recognize the Holy in our midst is pretty compelling for me.  This, plus our commitment to seek and serve Christ in all people is what drives me to be personally involved with the community breakfast, with Rahab’s Sisters dinners, in having been a foster parent. It’s why Fr. Doug enjoys the interactions at the Food Pantry on Campus. It’s more than giving them a bag of food, or breakfast. It’s interacting with the people.  Those broken people, those people in need are children of God.  Christ is in them.  And maybe one of them really is an angel.  More than charity or writing a check, this is why service, personally connecting with other people is so critical.  

In this story, Jesus is providing some great human, present-time examples of how we should be treating each other.  He’s also hinting at the way things will be in the eternity of the resurrection. Maybe you won’t be honored now by your lowly seat at the table, or by the guests you invite who are poor or crippled. But these are exactly the traits that are honored and valued in eternity – humility, graciousness, kindness to all, welcoming to all.  Through this parable, Jesus is showing us what “thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” really looks like.

This is what we are expected to do, how we are to behave. Not because we “have to”, but because this is what our forever looks like. We have the opportunity to practice it here.  At the heavenly banquet, everyone is invited, and there is no prized seating arrangement.   The Pharisees, the blind, the crippled, the homeless, the bankers.  It’s a big messy, socially mixed up party.  Start practicing now, so it’s not so awkward then.  The rules will change. The humble, hospitable, poor, lame, outcasts will be present, honored and loved, just as we will be.  Let’s start practicing for that party now.