September 30, 2007 – 17th Sunday after Pentecost
Amos 6:1, 4-7, Psalm 146, 1 Timothy 6:6-19, Luke 16:19-31
Grace and Peace to you from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
“You better watch out, what goes around comes around” my mother used to say when my older sister and I were teasing and taunting my younger sister. “She will get bigger and one day the tables will be turned on you”.
My Mom was into fairness and was always trying to impart the virtue of mercy and compassion. She wanted to raise up kind, generous children – good Christian ones.
Our lesson from Luke this morning talks about keeping an eye on the future and being generous. Jesus tells a parable about how easy it is to ignore the poor yet these poor people are our brothers and sisters.
The parable begins with a setting. The two people, the rich man and poor Lazarus represent the extreme ends of the social spectrum – yet these two folks are in close contact. The rich man wears purple and linen. Purple cloth was the most expensive cloth you could buy. The dye for purple came from crushed seashells. To make this guy modern you would have to say he sported Armani suits drove a Hummer or a Jaguar (depending on where he wanted to go) and lived in a house worth 5 million on a point on Kent Island. He was loaded. He ate steak and lobster tail for breakfasts and stayed at the Waldorf Astoria when he was in NYC. Everyone wanted to know him and come to his parties.
Lazarus, which ironically means “God has helped” in Hebrew, lies around half naked, his rag clad body covered in sores which the dogs licked. It is kind of gross. The Bible says “He would gladly have eaten from what fell off the table”. But the rich man ignored him and saw him as a nuisance – an eyesore – someone whose very presence reduced property values.
Usually we are pretty good at ignoring the poor. They are fixtures, pan-handling the streets of downtown. We see them beside the road with a sign made form a cardboard box “will work for food”. We drive through sections of West Baltimore or the poorer parts pf Edgewood and are silently glad they are not us. Compared to them though, we are rich. Most of us in here are in the 90th percentile or above by world standards.
This summer we took a family vacation to the Dominican Republic. The poor are harder to ignore, there because there are millions and millions. Debbie and I took an excursion to a local tourist trap and stopped at a fruit plantation. The worker’s children surrounded us. Dozens of them. Beautiful children almost all without shoes, holes in their tee shirts – clean but very thin. They obviously had not had a feast in along time. Dominicans are a very mixed race people – African, Latin and Native American. They are very beautiful. The children’s eyes spoke of want, of hunger, of not having had a peace of chocolate since Christmas.
I became aware instantly of the great chasm that existed between us. These were the 3rd world’s poor. They were as aware of my wealth as I was of their poverty. They were selling jewelry made form seashells and we bought some. But in my heart, I wanted to adopt all 12 of them and take them with me to raise in a place where they would have opportunities. And then an alarm went off – “Are you crazy? You just got the last of your own 3 graduated from high school. Haven’t you forgotten what teenagers can be like? Do you seriously want a dozen?” Reality smacked me in the face. The chasm between us got deeper and wider.
The same thing happens in our parable. Both Lazarus and the Rich Man die. Remember this is a parable – a story – like a fable. It is laden with meaning but it is not literal truth. There is no literal rich man or a literal Lazarus. The Lord Jesus just wants us to think about our relationship with the Lazarus’ of this world.
I love the details. The rich man is in torment. Certainly the setting is hell. He calls out to father Abraham and asks that Lazarus dip his finger in water and come over. If I’d have been the rich man, I’d have asked for a refrigerator with an automatic ice maker and a 5,000 BTU air conditioner. The rich mans still sees Lazarus as a mere underling who exists just to serve him, as easy to ignore as the millions of 3rd world people who work for $2 a day so that we can buy cheap blue jeans. But father Abraham says “What goes around comes around, dear rich guy. The tables have been turned. “You are asking for a crumb of water but you had your chance to feed Lazarus from the crumbs of your table. Why should he have mercy on you when all his life you ignored his suffering”?
Why indeed?
Parables you see are like wedges. A wedge’s function is to open, to split. A wedge applies selective pressure and goes deeper and deeper until the hard chunk of wood splits. That is what Jesus want of us. Acknowledge your wealth. Be aware of the poor. For the first time in history, the rich nations the world have the resources to feed and clothe all the world’s poor. We can re-structure the economic system so that it sustains everyone. The one thing we lack is the will.
The rich man begs father Abraham to warn his brothers of his fate in the parable. But father Abraham says “God speaks through the prophets”. God truly does. This parable is a prophetic word given to us. How will you treat Lazarus knowing that one day you will have to face God and give an accounting for our indifference? I do not think we rich people are going to end up in a fiery furnace – God is not about punishing. God is about driving a wedge in our hard hearts so that we can use the resources he gives and that we mistakenly claim as our own because we have temporary control over them to relieve the suffering of the poor.
The question is will we?
In Jesus Name, Amen.
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