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Sunday, August 19, 2007
The Dangers of Success
By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz
Luke 16:19-31
19 "There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. 20 And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, 21 who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man's table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. 22 The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. 24 He called out, "Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.' 25 But Abraham said, "Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. 26 Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.' 27 He said, "Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father's house? 28 for I have five brothers-that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.' 29 Abraham replied, "They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.' 30 He said, "No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' 31 He said to him, "If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’ ”
What do you notice?
What do you pay the most attention to? What do you tend not to notice-not to be aware of; perhaps a friend or family member points something out to you and you say, “I didn’t notice that-or I never notice things like that.”
I notice some little things, some silly things around this building. When I drive in to come to the office I tend to notice how the landscaping looks and whether the weeds need to be cut around the building. When I come in I notice and try to pick up any bits of paper on the carpet-or I take my pocket knife out to cut any occasional loose threads on the carpet from all the wear and tear in this busy building.
I tend not to notice the clutter I leave in some areas of our house until my wife points it out to me-or the socks and shoes under the coffee table where I left them after watching the 10 PM news.
I think some of us guys notice and do not notice things differently from women. We notice other cars like ours when we are driving-particularly if we just traded cars. And we fail to notice some things. Let me try something with you. If you are male and you came to church with a woman today-spouse, friend, daughter-will you close your eyes for a moment? With your eyes tightly closed, can you tell me what color your female friend/spouse is wearing?
I thought about that when a friend of mine told me an incident that I really identified with because it has happened to me. He was shopping with his wife and their two sons. He was talking with a salesperson while his wife was somewhere else in the store and the salesperson asked what color his wife was wearing-and he said—(Duh.) I can’t remember! And neither could either of their sons remember.
And I smiled because that has happened to me-Judy and I might be a store and she is in a different place in the store and I begin to look for her and try to remember what she is wearing-and I have forgotten. I didn’t notice.
What do you notice? Whom do you notice? Do you see only people who are like yourself? Do you see people who are different? Do you see people who are poor or who have disabilities, or whose skin color is different? What are we blind to?
Today’s parable is partly about a man like us-an affluent man-who failed to notice, or if he did notice, he failed to act when he had the ability to act and to make a difference.
The story is from the gospel of Luke and that sets a strong stage for us. Luke always puts Jesus on the side of the underdog. Jesus says in Luke, Blessed are the poor-not the poor in spirit but THE POOR. Jesus in Luke cautions us about the seductive influence of affluence. It is not wrong to be affluent-we do have to be much more careful and aware because we can be blinded by our affluence and fail to notice the people God whom God notes and needs us to notice.
Jesus has already warned us about selfishness in another parable-Jerry Herships told us about it two weeks ago-he warned us about what happens when we are self absorbed and not God absorbed, warned us about what happens when our stuff begins to rule our lives. Jesus told about a man who had a very successful year and to celebrate, he just took care of himself. He forgot what the book of Genesis says about God blessing Abraham and us: God blesses us so we can be a blessing-not so we can think we the world revolves around us but so we can build a fairer and more compassionate and just world.
In the first two sentences in today’s parable Jesus sets up a story in which most of the listeners then and now identified with the same person. The person they identified with was the affluent man. We would want to be like him, having luxurious clothes and great food every day. He obviously practiced conspicuous consumption.
For the original hearers of the parable, they not only wanted to be like that, they believed that the man’s affluence meant that God favored him-that he was particularly blessed by God.
And they believed the reverse was true about the second character in this story. They believed that if anyone were sick or poor that it was their fault. That person obviously deserved to be sick or poor! It must have been their fault. We see this wrongheaded bias in a story in John’s gospel when Jesus is about to heal a blind man and his friends ask him whose fault it is the man was born blind-his fault or his parent’s fault! Jesus says NEITHER!
The second man in this story is a beggar who lay outside the gates of the wealthy man’s home and was so sick he was covered with sores and could barely move. While he lay there, the dogs would come and lick his draining, festering sores. These were not cuddly lhasa apso puppy dogs. These were the wild dogs who roamed the streets and were dangerous.
The beggar would have loved to be able to eat the scraps of bread from the rich man’s table-these were the pieces of bread that the diners used to wipe their hands like napkins and then threw under the table! He would have savored those scraps but he could not.
The poor man died and the rich man died, and they wound up in different places that became a reversal of their earthly life.
Incidentally the poor man has a name-Lazarus, and what is unique about this parable compared to all the 38 parables Jesus tells is that this is the only time in any of those stories that Jesus ever, ever tells us a name of one of the characters! Why do you suppose?
The wealthy man is in Hades or Sheol amidst tormenting fires and Lazarus is with Abraham in the highest level of paradise. Who is Abraham? He is the father of the Hebrew people-and the father of the Christian people and the father of the Muslim people as well. We have learned that in our Tuesday morning world religions class and will be looking more at that this Tuesday in our session on Judaism.
The affluent man asks Abraham to send that boy Lazarus to fetch him some water because he is thirsty-he still has a condescending attitude doesn’t he? Abraham says the chasm is too great between us, implying that the first man created a chasm in his earthly life also by just refusing to notice and to help the sick beggar a few steps away from him.
The first man asks Abraham to at least send Lazarus to warn his five brothers who must be just as self centered and self absorbed as he-warn them of the consequences of their greed and selfishness.
What does Abraham say? They have had enough instruction already. They have had enough warning. Where was that instruction and that warning? It is in the Hebrew Bible-it is in Moses and the prophets, he says.
What should they have learned? What do the Torah and the prophets tell us abut our responsibility to those who are vulnerable and poor and sick and different from us?
The second most frequent verse in the Old Testament-it shows up 43 times-is the instruction that Abraham means here: you are to take care of the orphan, the widow, and the alien/sojourner.
It is a command from God not only in the torah and the prophets (Isaiah says in chapter one, Israel has turned away from God because it has not done what God wants-Israel has forgotten to seek justice, to rescue the oppressed, to defend the orphan, to care for the widow. Israel has failed to NOTICE AND CARE FOR the weak and the sick and the poor and the vulnerable).
That is what God expects of us who are so blessed as we are. We are the affluent man in the story-compared to others in the world. If we forget that, if we fail to notice, if we just care about ourselves and no one else, this parable says there will be consequences.
It is easy not to notice. It is easy to become callous. It was not so for the eight year old girl who heard the Rev Jim Wallis speak a few weeks ago. She is quoted on the front of your bulletin. When she heard of children who are starving and are ill, she understood the expectation that if she is a Christian God expects her to do something about that! Kudos to her!
It is so easy to become callous. And we can even sound holy about it by quoting Jesus words that the poor will always be with us-not understanding that Jesus’ words may be more an indictment of our selfishness than a fatalistic prediction.
It is so easy to become callous and bored and resigned to statements about the number of poor children in our country or the ten million children who have no health care coverage-ten million of the 46 million uninsured persons in America are children.
Do you think the 8 year old girl is right-that if we are Christians we are called to do something about that? Or do you think it is not a concern?
We are going to hear several different proposals from political candidates in the next year. We already are hearing those-and some labels are going to be thrown around: SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE. In my reading those are not the same thing, and I encourage you to listen carefully and read widely and take the opportunity for Christians to raise the possibility that the values and morals in American culture are not just limited to sex and reproduction but that how we treat the people like Lazarus who are not able to care for themselves is a values and moral issue as well. Rev Wallis says in an article I reproduced for you that there is a turning tide in our country, and more people are seeing that the Bible is concerned about the environment and about compassion for the weak perhaps even more than some of the sexual issues that some leaders have been obsessed with.
I have placed a couple of articles from Rev Wallis on the sermon wall for you to look at all of the Bible’s values concerns and not just a couple of those.
The parable for today says that it is so easy when we have so much to be all wrapped up in ourselves and lose perspective. Rick Reilly is a regular columnist for Sports Illustrated. I have come to appreciate his writing a great deal especially after I read his book Hate Mail from Cheerleaders. The title came from a column he wrote where he claimed that cheerleading was not really a sport and began to receive-you guessed it-hate mail from cheerleaders.
He writes about some of the unsung heroes of sports like the father who has been pushing his son in a wheelchair in marathons-a powerfully inspiring story. And he writes about some of the scoundrels of sports as well and chastises their greed and selfishness.
He wrote a couple of years ago about the star of the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves who was disgusted with his $14.6 million salary and the fact that he only had a $21 million possible extension contract for the upcoming three years. As he was complaining about how little money that is, he said he felt at risk and he needed to feed his family.
Reilly quotes in the article a man he interviewed that month. The man was standing in line at an emergency food bank in Minneapolis. He was an injured house painter on social security who said that if the NBA player wasn’t able to feed his family on that sort of money he must not be budgeting properly. It was unlikely that the house painter and the ball player would ever meet of course or that if they were on the same street, the ball player might be like the first man in Jesus story and not even notice someone so different from him.
That is obviously an extreme example but we can do the same on a lesser scale. It is easy for us in suburbia to be that isolated, that callous, that self absorbed unless we take action to be with and to care for those who are like the second man in Jesus story. We have been blessed so we can be a blessing. And we know and are listening to Jesus’ words, OF THOSE TO WHOM MUCH IS GIVEN MUCH WILL ALSO BE EXPECTED.
It is a good thing to be in worship and to hear those words and to make new commitments to live by them. What we will hear next Sunday in the final parable in this series is that Jesus tells us, the words are good, they are important, but what really matters is what we do-whether we ACT to care for the hungry, the prisoner, the stranger, the ill, (the uninsured?). What really matters is what we do once we have noticed and really seen those who need our help-because Jesus says, when we are helping those persons, we are ministering to him. Amen.