LOOK BACK IN SORROW
A Sermon by Rosie Magee
Market Square Presbyterian Church
September 30th 2007
Scripture: Psalm 146 and Luke 16:19-31
‘If only I’d known’…..how many times have you thought or said words to that effect? ‘If only I’d known.’ I know there are countless occasions when I’ve thought it, in situations ranging from the mundane to the meaningful. If only I’d known there were road works on Route 322 I’d have gone home via Route 15….If only I’d known she was spending Thanksgiving alone I’d have invited her over…If only I’d known it would be my last chance to see him I’d have made more of an effort.
Of course hindsight is 20/20 and it is tempting to look back in sorrow, or regret. Sometimes we can live in the “if only I’d known” and pay scant attention to what we do know and what that means for how we live our lives, facing forwards rather than backwards. What we know can be a complicated issue, in itself. You may recall Donald Rumsfeld’s mangled sentiments about ‘knowing’ (words that are now included in a book entitled The Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld)….He said, “There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say that there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know…….” The issue of knowing and not knowing can get more than our syntax in a twist. We put great store on knowing……and rightly so, having accurate information is very important but it is not the full story. Knowing is not the last word.
I think that is at the core of our graphic Gospel reading today. Parts of the parable are truly shocking. It speaks to all our senses, there are vivid colors and smells and it fills our imagination. This story packs a punch. If it were made into a movie it would need to be a big budget production to do it justice. This is not to press the details of the graphic imagery; the story reflects a reality rather than being a literal description. As one commentator said, like stories about someone who dies and is met by St. Peter at the pearly gates, this one is not intended to give details about the furniture of Heaven or the temperature of Hell.
Jesus sets a scene of vivid contrasts. The rich man is dressed in purple garments of fine linen eating sumptuously while Lazarus is clothed in ulcerous sores; scavenging for food. To add insult to injury, Lazarus has to endure wild dog slicking his sores, which both infect him and leave him ceremoniously unclean. Such a pathetic scene. It is gut wrenching.
He is deprived of so much, yet he has a name, Lazarus, which means ‘helped by God.’ Naming is important. Who was Lazarus? Not just a poor beggar, but a human being, a child of God, someone made in God’s image. C. S. Lewis writes “It is a serious thing to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, There are no ‘ordinary’ people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. It is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit” (The Weight of Glory).
Because the rich man knows his name, we may assume that he had known something of Lazarus and his plight …by calling him by name he cannot claim he did not know of his existence. We don’t know whether the rich man was a cold man with habitually averted eyes or whether he did notice and maybe said a prayer for such a sorry case. We know only that he was rich, dressed well and ate sumptuously while others did not. And that, Luke seems to say, is all we need to know.
Now, the rich man is not condemned simply for being rich, but rather for his attitude towards Lazarus lying right outside his gate. After all, one doesn't have to be rich to be greedy and selfish and uncaring. We also don't want to conclude that the way to heaven is to be financially poor. Remember, Abraham, a major player in the story was quite a rich man himself. It is more to do with the effect that wealth has on us. The Bible often speaks of the corrosive effect of wealth, the way it can take over our lives that it makes us deaf to the sufferings of neighbors. Wealth can consume us, take over our heart.
This rich man was living out the life of his class, in the era of conspicuous consumption in Imperial Rome. Conspicuous consumption has not gone away. When I read this story, it is tempting to not initially locate myself in the role of the conspicuous consumer. In monetary terms, I think of the rich and I can compare myself to a billionaire like Bill Gates….or a bog standard millionaire of which there are thousands in the United States. Yet, when I compare myself to someone who dreams of having $1 a day to survive on I am rich beyond dreams, I am a conspicuous consumer. Relatively speaking we are wealthy and this passage calls us to face what it means to be affluent by the whole world’s standards.
Wealth divides into the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ There seems to have been no point of contact between the rich man and Lazarus. But however separate these two characters seemed in life….. their fates are in reality, intertwined. After their deaths: Lazarus is "carried away by the angels", the rich man is buried in the ground. Lazarus is brought to "the bosom of Abraham" and the rich man is in Hades….referring to a place that most certainly was not Heaven. The rich man is in torment, looks up, sees Lazarus with Abraham and begs, "send Lazarus to help me.” But, no, now there is a divide that is unbreachable. The rich man had eaten his fill of good things during his life, now he can't even get the water that would drip off a finger.
So, he asks that warnings are given to those who are still living so that they can be spared what he is going through. In effect the rich man is saying, ‘do not let them make the same mistake that I did…If only they knew.” Abraham points out that the teaching on how to deal with money and with the poor has been passed on from generation to generation - right back to Moses. The message was there - and the rich man had not heeded it - and neither would his brothers.
Then the punch line as far as Christians are concerned.
The rich man says that his brothers would listen if only Lazarus came back from the dead to tell them. He thinks a sound knock on the side of the head from someone reporting in from beyond death might bring them to their senses. He is mistaken…. Abraham is dismissive; "If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” In the rich man’s opinion the problem is a lack of knowledge. According to Abraham they have all the knowledge they need, but they lack the will to act.
As I began a new semester a couple of weeks back….one of our lecturers got to talking about how students gain more than knowledge during our three years of study…we tend to graduate weighing a little more that when we started….she’s not wrong. Late night study sessions are sweetened with cookies. So a group of us committed to being more aware of our eating practices…note, I’m not using the “D” word – diet. If I hear that word I’m prone to go on a crash diet and give up the idea after a short time ‘coz I feel light-headed it’s just too hard. I, literally, crash and burn. No, we students are trying to think of it in terms of a lifestyle change….making a long term commitment to be mindful of how we eat and exercise, in an endeavor to become healthier.
Now, I can read up on calories and points and read all the packaging but that knowledge in and of itself won’t make a button of difference if I don’t change my eating habits ….except I’ll just feel more guilty about eating a snickers bar knowing it has 280 calories and 14 grams of fat (which it does). Guilt in itself isn’t the point…knowledge in itself is not the point….it is how it translates into action. It’s about having a different mind-set, a change of perspective that will affect our choices…..it’s interesting how healthy food labeling appeals to our hearts…..heart-wise….heart simple……it’s about a change of heart, not just acquiring ever more information. What is needed is a soft heart.
So where are we in the story?….At the beginning maybe we are expected to identify with the rich man or with Lazarus but by the end I think we stand in the place of the brothers, the ones who already know all they need to know. The question is what will we do? Do we believe we have all the information we need to act?
Sometimes we busy ourselves looking for majestic signs of God’s will, when it’s all there in the Scriptures. We seek God in breathtaking bursts of divine glory rather then in listening to the still small voice that speaks through the law and the prophets. Perhaps the flip side of this is that sometimes it can take a time of extreme crisis for us to contribute in a meaningful way, to do our bit….Now, don’t get me wrong, I am all for disaster relief – for the outpouring of money and labor and resources when there has been a disaster of any type. But is that what it takes to soften our hearts? What about the daily grind of suffering that never even makes it onto the news?
This past summer when I was in Ireland there was a program about Hurricane Katrina and the devastation it caused. Now we don’t have a TV at home so this, 2 years after the event was the first time I had seen moving images of what happened during Katrina. I’d seen plenty of pictures in the press, listened to the radio, but nothing could have the same effect as seeing moving images of people being rescued from their homes, the body counts written on roofs, the conditions in the Superdome. It can take the awful images on our TV to prompt us into giving…into giving till it hurts….into giving in a way that affects our lifestyle.
When I worked in the nonprofit sector there was a lot of talk about ‘compassion fatigue,’ fear that if people see too many images of starving children year after year after year they will just stop giving. It’s true that there is so much suffering that it is so human to protect ourselves from it, to shut down a little. And relying on our own will power isn’t enough to stop that process. It is the still small voice of the Spirit moving that saves us from compassion fatigue, it is not an act of our self-will, it is an act of God (if I can reclaim that phrase from the insurance companies). It is the Spirit who helps us see people differently. Through the Spirit God softens our hearts and consistent, ongoing, compassion for those in need is the result. To help us feed the hungry not only because we think it’s the right thing to do, but because we see their hunger, see as if we were hungry, we see their hunger as God sees it. It’s is not about throwing a coin from time to time to ease our conscience, it is not about a flash in the pan of action like an occasional crash diet, prompted by a sight of particularly vivid suffering. It is about consistent caring, understanding that we are all in relationship – that there is no unbreachable divide.
By God’s grace we are given the healing power in spite of our brokenness to “love kindness, to do justice, and to walk humbly with our God.” (Micah 6:8). We rejoice to hear Jesus say to us in turn when we see and respond to the Lazarus’s of our day - "I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me." (Matthew 25:35, 36 NIV). A consistently soft heart has so many faces. It may be as simple as caring for your family year after year, teaching Sunday school season after season, long term planning for God’s work in this place. It may be as near as your neighbor who is in need or the plight of the homeless. It is about feeling involved and becoming involved. We are called to operate out of hearts that have been changed.
We live with more comfort and more prosperity than kings lived a few centuries ago. Yet, the more prosperous we are in this world, the harder it is for us to live as if this world is only a passing thing. The more we clutch it, the more we hold onto this world, the more it holds onto us. As Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Luke 12:34). Our actions will show where our treasure really is.
Where is our treasure? What is abundance for you and me as followers of Christ? Is it in Jesus who has fed all of us poor beggars at the gate with the Bread of Life? Is it in our response to Jesus in becoming more sensitive to others through the work of the Spirit? Is I tin asking for he gift of a soft heart?
I would like to end with a prayer. It is part of a prayer by Etty Hillesum, a Dutch Jewish woman who wrote it during the height of the Nazi persecution during WW2. This prayer shows where her treasure was, where her heart was.
“Dear God, these are anxious times. Tonight for the first time I lay in the dark with burning eyes as scene after scene of human suffering passed before me...I shall promise You one thing God, just one very small thing. I shall never burden my days with cares about my tomorrow, although that takes some practice. All that really matters is that we safeguard that little piece of You, God in ourselves, and in others as well. There are, it is true, some who even at this stage, are putting their vacuum cleaners and silver forks and spoons in safe keeping instead of guarding You, dear God. And there are those who want to put their bodies in safe keeping but who are nothing more than a shelter for a thousand fears and bitter feelings. And they say, “I shan’t let them get me into their clutches.” But they forget that no one is in their clutches who is in Your arms. I am beginning to feel a little more peaceful, God, thanks to this conversation with You….” (1)
AMEN
(1) From: An Interrupted Life, New York: Pantheon, 1984, p.151.