Scripture: Luke 16:19-31
I had a little bit of a break in my preaching routine last week because of the program on hunger. Since I didn’t have to prepare a sermon, I used part of the time I would ordinarily spend in sermon preparation to think ahead a little about the coming weeks—meaning today and next week and then the weeks of Advent in December. And I was somewhat productive. I came up with some ideas, including an idea I was beginning to think about already for today. And then came Sunday and the program on hunger, and by the time the morning was over, I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t be following through with my original plan, and by Tuesday I was very sure, which caused me to say to myself: See, this is why planning ahead is a bad idea. Every time I do it, something happens to make me want to change my plans anyway. Some people may think that my tendency not to plan ahead is because I am just a last-minute sort of person, and since I don’t want to just outright lie to you, I won’t say there is no truth to that thought, but I do want to say that quite often my experiences encourage this tendency in me. In any case, this sermon grows out of last week’s program on hunger and in fact that experience made this sermon, for me, necessary.
I know that some who are here this morning weren’t here last Sunday and some who were here last Sunday aren’t here today, so it’s not an ideal way to follow up—a week later and with a somewhat different group of people. But follow –up of some kind is necessary, I think, and this is about the best we can do. I’ll say some more about why I think follow-up is necessary, but first, for those who weren’t here…
The sanctuary last Sunday was filled with tables with chairs around them where we were going to have something to eat. Each table had a colored covering and we were given tickets as we came in that told us what color table to sit at. Those who were seated at the red tables, which were all up on the raised area, it turns out represented the more well off segment of the population, people whose family income is 75,000 and up. Those people received an abundant breakfast. Another group of people were the middle income group with an average household income of 38,000 and they received some food, but not nearly as much as the people living in luxury. The next group were the people living at what someone determines is the poverty level, and the final group which represented people trying to survive on 5,000 a year, received almost nothing to eat. My point is not to go over the statistics which Peg presented to us, or get the income figures right, but just to describe that there were four groups in the room, representing substantially different levels of income or wealth, and accordingly there were dramatic differences in what different groups of people actually were served. The idea was of course to give meaning to the statistics by actually experiencing them, even if in an artificial and very temporary way.
It turns out though that the experiencing part, for some of us, had to do with a lot more than just statistics, had to do with more than just having the reality of hunger impressed upon us, more than just being encouraged to remember to bring things for the food baskets or to step up our giving a little bit. I shouldn’t say “just having the reality of hunger impressed on us” or “just being encouraged to remember to bring food donations”, because I don’t want to treat those things as unimportant. In one sense all of that is simply and precisely the point, and one very good reason not to have a program on hunger and then just move on to something else is that the need remains and needs to be addressed and not forgotten about. And Peg has seen to it that we don’t just move on to something else by having us make the hunger chain which will be up as a reminder until all the links are gone, insuring that this was something more than a one-Sunday program on hunger. And that’s important, and the 1200 dollars that we will eventually raise will be put to good use, so I didn’t mean at all to devalue that aspect of what happened last week.
But there was another aspect as well. Some people, I’m not quite sure how many, but I know for sure some people found themselves dealing with emotions that were more complicated than a bit of factual learning or a nudge of conscience or an encouragement to be generous. For instance one thing I heard was that as some people began to bring food from the tables that had plenty to the tables that didn’t, some people basically told them that they didn’t want their charity, that they didn’t want other people’s leftovers or their excess, that they didn’t want to depend on someone else’s generosity. Now this may be me putting my own spin on this, because I heard about some of this second and third hand, but what I got from what I was told was that some people were not very grateful to have somebody bringing food to their table, feeling maybe that still there would be those red tables up there and that you can’t make that all right by giving away some of your food, that what really needed to happen was for the tablecloths to be changed so that they were all the same color or maybe shades of the same color so that everyone would receive enough to begin with. What I heard was that you can’t pretend that sharing makes it all all right and should make everyone feel good. If that’s not what someone said or meant by what they said, it’s certainly something someone could have said.
And then there were some people who felt uncomfortable with being divided in the way we were, uncomfortable maybe at being at a table of privilege so to speak, while most of our sister and brother Sojourners were not, even though we all knew it was just an artificial division that wasn’t going to last and that it was being done just to illustrate a point. For some people, dividing ourselves up in this way was difficult, maybe because it brought back memories of painful experiences, maybe because even though it was artificial, it was also all too true, maybe because it separated us on a Sunday morning in a way that we hope will not happen at Sojourners, put up some barriers between us that were difficult, maybe painful. Again, I realize I may be putting my own spin on things, and certainly words I use would not be the words other people might use, and all of this is not to say that there was some right way to feel, or that if you weren’t all that bothered by the arrangement that there’s something wrong with you. Nevertheless, there were enough feelings created, thoughts provoked, and maybe even raw nerves touched that for that reason too, for that reason mainly I felt like there needed to be some follow up this week—not just say “that was interesting” and move on to something else.
And once I decided to extend last week’s program to this week’s sermon, a scripture came to mind quite easily, the scripture you heard earlier. It’s one of Jesus’ better known parables, and it’s open, I suppose, like most of Jesus’ parables, to being interpreted in a variety of ways. Some people have focused on the second half of the parable, where the rich man dies and is buried ( a decent burial being one of the privileges of the rich) and ends up in a place where he is surrounded by flames and begging for just a drop of water on his tongue, pretty much your stereotypical vision of hell—or maybe this is one of the places that stereotype came from. Lazarus on the other hand, a poor man who in his earthly life had nothing, was covered with sores, and was so hungry he hoped that he hoped to find some table scraps in the garbage so he would have something to eat, this Lazarus also died, wasn’t buried, but was carried directly to the bosom of Abraham where he lived not only in the comfort that was denied him on earth, but the love that was denied him on earth. So maybe that means that the rich are doomed and the poor are blessed. Maybe it means something less specific like “you may be surprised who ends up in heaven and who doesn’t, because success in this world is not a good indicator.” It may mean that we don’t have to worry about injustice in this world because if you’re patient and good it will be rewarded in the next world and the blessings of eternity make the sufferings of this world insignificant. People have said all of those things…and I don’t believe any of them is what the parable is about.
Jesus is not telling this story in order to threaten people with the torments of hell or to promise anyone the blessings of heaven. I am convinced in my heart it is a story that has very little to do with the afterlife and everything to do with this life. I don’t see how one can read this parable and not be struck with the central image of the different worlds these two people live in, the rich man and Lazarus. I believe Jesus is asking us in this parable to see poverty in a bit of a larger context, not only as an opportunity for charity and a challenge to those who are able to help those who are in need. Jesus is not against that. He makes clear in other places that when a person is thirsty we should bring a cup of water, that when a person is hungry, we should see that she gets something to eat. All that is absolutely true. No conditions. No qualifications. But that’s not all.
The rich man and Lazarus live in entirely separate worlds. So long as there are extremes of wealth and poverty, they will continue to live in separate worlds. They live in worlds that have been shaped not by God but by their social class and standing. They are separated not only by differences of income or wealth, but by the different worlds they live in. Wealth and poverty have destroyed their ability to share their common humanity. Indeed even the phrase “common humanity” has little meaning in the light of the different worlds the two people live in. In this situation, there are no winners. In this situation, there is no such thing as a happy ending—not in this life, not in an after life, not in any life. That’s what I believe Jesus was meaning to get across by the part of the story that was set in the afterlife. It wasn’t a happy ending with Lazarus getting his reward. It was a sad ending with people still being separated, and the rich man still treating Lazarus like a servant, telling Abraham to tell Lazarus to go tell his brothers what’s up. When we erect barriers that prevent us from recognizing our common humanity it is always a sad situation, and there are never any winners in that game, and there are no happy endings.
Those of course are my words, not Jesus’ but I believe Jesus meant to say something like that to us. And the task for the followers of Jesus is not to be content until those barriers are removed, until our common humanity can be affirmed in the way we live our lives, until we live in a world illuminated by the light of God, not in different worlds shaped and defined and circumscribed by social class and economic circumstance. In the meantime, while we continue to live in our different worlds, we are called to be generous in our dealings with each other. But we are also called not to be content with that, so long as poverty inflicts hardship on people and so long as the different worlds we live in prevent us from affirming our common humanity and keep us from embracing one another as children of God.
It is our task, when we come together here especially, yes to encourage one another in our giving natures but also to work at breaking down whatever barriers there may be between the different worlds we live in and to remind ourselves of a vision of a world where the different colors of tablecloths may remind us of the beautiful diversity of God’s people, not of the different worlds our social arrangements have emprisoned us in. I believe the parable Jesus told quite clearly speaks of those different worlds we have created for ourselves to our sorrow and our detriment, the sorrow and detriment of all of us. And implicitly he tells us that our journey is not over, our spiritual journey is not over, we can never be satisfied in our spiritual yearnings until we have broken free of our isolation from one another and are able to embrace one another truly as children of God. Amen.
Jim Bundy
November 19, 2006