Pentecost XVII - C

September 30th₁ AD 2007

Meadowvale Lutheran Church, Mississauga

Pastor Peter Lisinski

“BEYOND THE GATE”

(St. Luke 16.19-31)

A few days ago Rosarie drew my attention to a poem by J. Taylor Ludwig, Folks In Heaven", from the Fall 2007 issue of Evan­gelical Lutheran Women's "Esprit" magazine.  It's printed on the back of today's bulletin.  Listen to how it begins:

"I was shocked, confused, bewildered as I entered Heaven's door, not by the beauty of it all, not by the lights or decor. But it was the folks in Heaven who made me sputter and gasp --the thieves, the liars, the sinners, the alcoholics, the trash...”

The shock, confusion, and bewilderment the poet expresses des­cribes precisely the reaction Jesus' audience would have had to hearing today's parable.  They would have been shocked, confused and bewildered, that a poor beggar like Lazarus -- the very em­bodiment of a sinner quite literally considered trash -- would find comfort in the bosom of Abraham, while the rich man -- the very embodiment of pious morality -- would find himself suffering in the flames of Hades!

The world in which Jesus lived believed that poverty is a sign of God's judgment on sinners, while wealth is a sign of God's bles­sing of the righteous.  Such thinking was so deeply ingrained in the people that when Jesus announced that the rich would have a hard time passing through heaven's security gate even his own disciples were left sputtering and gasping,  “Then who can be saved?"  (Matt. 19:25; Mk. 10:26; Lk. 10:26).  If great personal wealth is not the ultimate sign of divine grace, and abject poverty is not the ultimate sign of divine disgrace, how then are they to be explained?

The world in which Jesus lived is not much different from the world in which you and I live.  Oh, we modern people may not express it in the religious language of sin and salvation, judg­ment or blessing; we prefer to imagine wealth as the just reward for hard work, skill and intelligence, and poverty as the just reward for laziness, ineptitude and stupidity.  But whether we use religious or secular language, our dominant cultural myths tell us that healthy, employable deserve all they get, while unhealthy and unemployable people get all they deserve!

In our world the poor are seen as the problem of the rich to be solved through charity.  But the Bible sees it differently:  the rich are the problem of the poor to be solved through justice! Poverty is the result of greed and idolatry -- the selfish desire to accumulate personal wealth and to justify social and economic inequality as the will of God!   The rich man in Jesus' parable represents the lifestyle of the rich and famous, whose luxury is founded on the exploitation and oppression of the world's many poor and expendable Lazaruses!

Jesus describes the rich man as “dressed in purple" -- the most expensive of all fabrics which only the richest of the rich could afford.  Jesus further says that the rich man "feasted sumptuously”- not just on special occasions like Thanksgiving or Christ­mas, but “every day”.  But most significantly of all, the rich man tried to protect himself from having to face the riff-raff on his doorstep behind a lavish gate which only the most extravagant houses in the wealthiest neighborhoods could flaunt!

The great chasm between the rich man and Lazarus to which Abraham points is none other than the rich man's own failure to see that the poor, hungry and sick beggar Lazarus is also an heir of Sarah and Abraham, just as legitimate a child of God's covenant family as the rich man imagines himself to be -- indeed, his very own brother!

The global family envisioned in God’s blessing of Abraham and Sarah -- a family called to establish justice at the centre of life by Noses and the prophets, continues to be divided by a similarly great chasm.  The gap between the rich and the poor, the self-indulgent and those discarded to history’s trash heap, continues to grow because the divine word of Moses and the pro­phets spoken, embodied -- incarnated -- in the broken lives and dying bodies of the worlds countless Lazaruses continues to be denied, ignored, silenced, crucified:

“I know how many are your transgressions, and how great are your sins -- you who afflict the righteous, and push aside the needy at the gate. Seek good and not evil, that you may live; and establish justice at the gate, that the Lord may be gracious to the faithful among his people." (Amos 5:12, 14a, 15).

Today, in answer to the rich man's final plea to "father Abraham", the risen incarnation of God's crucified prophetic word, Jesus Christ, comes to us from the dead, inviting us to listen, calling us to repent of our self-interest, and sending us beyond the gate of our indifference to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.  After all, as Martin Luther observed with his dying breath, in God’s eyes "We are all beggars" in need of the divine mercy offered in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ!