Homily for Sunday, September 25, 2016 Graves Chapel
Lessons:
1 Timothy 6:6-19
Luke 16: 19-31
The collect appointed for today:
O God, you declare your almighty power chiefly in
showing mercy and pity: Grant us the fullness of your grace, that we, running
to obtain your promises, may become partakers of your heavenly treasure;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy
Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Today we revisit
Paul’s first letter to Timothy, and we find here some of scripture’s most famous
words about the desire for wealth and its perils: “For we brought nothing into
the world, and we can take nothing out of it…For the love of money is the root
of all kinds of evil.” In his parable, our Savior Jesus, who died as poor as he
was born, tells the story of a poor beggar who has come to be known as “Lazarus
at the Gate.” The parables and
lessons Jesus teaches sometimes have enough ambiguity, enough nuance, so that
they can be interpreted in various ways.
Jesus doesn’t often speak in black and white terms on moral
issues, primarily because the focus of his lessons is more likely to be mercy
than condemnation. Think of the incident of the woman caught in adultery and
brought to Jesus by the Pharisees who expect Jesus to agree with them in their
harsh judgment of her. Instead, Jesus challenges them, “You who are without
sin, cast the first stone at her.”
The Pharisees slink away, and Jesus says to the woman, “Neither will I
condemn you.” In the story of
Lazarus at the gate, however, Jesus is very clear about who will be
condemned—and why. In this story,
the rich man doesn’t have a chance.
In my last sermon,
I shared Richard Rohr’s explanation of the ways in which scripture suggests
over and over again that we human followers of Christ share moral
equivalency with God. By using the
term “moral,” Rohr makes clear that we are, of course, in no way equal to God
on our own terms; instead, it is God’s expectation of our behavior towards
others that places us on a plain of moral equivalency with God. When I treat others
as I would have them treat me, I show them God’s love. In becoming God’s face,
feet, and hands in the world, we are called to that moral equivalency and asked
no less than to seek and serve Christ in all persons—as Christ himself would
serve them.
So how would a
world governed by humans living out God’s call to moral equivalency
appear? Wouldn’t such a world
truly be God’s Kingdom? Here is the way the prophet Isaiah described it:
“The wolf shall
live with the lamb.
The leopard shall lie down with the
kid,
the calf and the lion cub together,
and a little child shall lead them.”
Who are the wolves, leopards, and
bears in our society, in our world? Are they those who are rich and powerful?
Then, who are the lambs, kids, and calves? If Jesus himself, according to this
prophecy, is the little child who leads them, how is Jesus childlike?
Certainly,
in the power of his wisdom, in the unyielding courage we see him display over
and over again in his defiance of the authorities, Jesus is not a child. Or, at least, he doesn’t appear to be
very child-like. Still, children seem to come into the world with a powerful
sense of what is fair or unfair, what is true or false. Think of the tale of The Emperor’s New Clothes and the little
boy who speaks the truth about what the emperor is really wearing (or not
wearing, in this case.) Any adult who has ever interacted with a child has
surely heard the impassioned words, “That is not fair!” Children possess a
certain fearlessness on behalf of justice.
I
am reminded of a scene in the beloved novel (and movie), To Kill a Mockingbird. Brave and righteous attorney Atticus Finch
takes his pipe, a book, and a lamp to the courthouse in the small town of Maycomb,
Alabama. He intends to spend the night outside the jail cell of his client, Tom
Robinson, a black man who has been wrongly accused and found guilty of raping a
white woman. The scene is set in the 1930s, and Atticus believes some of the
white men of that community may come to the jail that night and try to lynch
Tom.
As it turns out,
Atticus anticipated correctly. A mob of men arrives in the middle of the night,
doing that thing that mobs do best: turning ordinary decent people into
ravening beasts. All it takes is one or two forceful leaders to spew hatred
and to challenge the manhood of their followers, and a mob is born.
But
what Atticus did not anticipate, and certainly did not want, was to have his
young children appear on the scene. Jem, his son, and Scout, his daughter,
along with their friend Dill, decide it is their job to help their father. They
have no idea what is about to happen; they simply know, in that instinctive way
of children, that Atticus may need them.
When
Scout and Jem and Dill arrive on the square, they find Atticus holding firm
outside the jailhouse door, trying to reason with the menacing leaders of the
mob. Scout, without considering the risks, weaves herself through the crowd and
stands next to her father. Having lived all of her young life in this little
town, she is puzzled to see men she knows behaving in such a mean way.
And Scout does that thing that Jesus does best when he wants to get our
attention: she calls the men by name. With the innocent honesty of a little
girl, she asks them what they are doing. She speaks directly to the father of
one of her classmates, asking him to say “hey” to his little boy for her. In
this way, the men of that mob become individuals again. Each one becomes
himself again, aware of his responsibilities, and the mob silently
disperses.
Scout
has become the little lamb who leads them, with innocent courage and a
childlike desire for fairness—for what is right. Like all children, Scout possesses no power. She certainly is
no king or potentate or warrior—or, for that matter, wolf, leopard, bear, or
lion. Like Jesus, and like her
father, Scout is on the side of the poor, the defenseless, the downtrodden.
The
poor man in today’s parable spends most of his time begging next to the gate of
a rich man’s property. Like the courthouse doorway being guarded by Atticus
Finch, the gate in this parable represents the barrier between two arenas: unjust
power on one side and deserving poverty on the other. We are told several
things about the rich man: that he dresses in purple and fine linen, that he
feasts sumptuously every day, that he has five equally wealthy and corrupt
brothers. But we are never told his name. In this story, only the poor beggar covered in sores is
given a name: Lazarus. Consider! In
the telling of this parable, Jesus refuses to dignify the rich man with a name,
but he gives the name Lazarus, a name we know in another context as being the
name of one of his best friends, to a beggar whose sores are licked by dogs. In
the world we live in today (and, to be fair, in past generations), rich and powerful
people are known and revered by name.
Even in Jesus’s time, people like the beggar Lazarus were considered
members of a nameless throng, the countless, wretched, and powerless poor. I
guess when we see them in that way, they are easier for us to ignore. But in
this parable, Jesus clearly illustrates who is more important in God’s kingdom.
When he dies, Lazarus is carried to heaven by angels and is comforted. The rich
man, who never helped Lazarus while he had the opportunity, dies and goes
straight to hell.
With the kind of audacity possessed by people who have always
had things their way, the nameless rich man asks Father Abraham to send Lazarus
to him with some water. Abraham
refuses, explaining that in the Kingdom things just don’t work that way. Then
the rich man wants Abraham to send Lazarus to his father’s house to warn his
family members about what is in store for them if they keep hording their
wealth, arguing when Abraham objects that his brothers will surely believe a
risen dead man—the beggar Lazarus, in this case. In telling this parable, Jesus
clearly reminds us, as he reminds the deceased rich man, “If they do not listen
to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced, even if someone
rises from the dead.”
Could
there be a double meaning for us in those last words of the parable? Have we really been convinced by our
risen Lord that serving Him is more important than serving our own
self-interest? Or have we forsaken our Christian moral responsibility to seek
and serve the Lord in ALL persons?
If we need a reminder of how our responsibility plays itself out in the
real world, we need look no further than Paul’s letter to Timothy: “As
for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or
to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly
provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich
in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the
treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the
life that really is life.”
The collect for
today states, “O God, you declare your almighty power chiefly in showing mercy
and pity.” Poor Lazarus found the
mercy and pity he had always deserved when he arrived in heaven. May we discover such abundant mercy on
this side of the heavenly gate as we love all others just as Christ has loved
us and take hold of the life that really is LIFE.
AMEN.
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