Joel D. Kline
October 3, 2004
Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren
The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
The story is told of several tourists sitting lazily at one end of a whaling boat, taking in the scenery and enjoying life, while at the other end a number of fishermen are frantically bailing out water and attempting to patch a hole before the boat sinks. Says one of the tourists to the others, “Thank goodness the hole is not at our end of the boat.”
How frequently we attempt to live as if we have precious little need of one another, as if what happens at one end of the boat does not impact what happens at the other end. A few years back there was a reflection on contemporary life making its ways around the Internet, variously attributed to a number of community activists and also to a teenager from Columbine High School in the aftermath of the tragic events that occurred there. I never found clarity about the authorship, but the words speak of the troubled world in which we live. “The paradox of our time in history,” writes the author,
is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers. Wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less. We buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses, but smaller families. More conveniences, but less time. More knowledge, but less judgment. More experts, but more problems as well. More medicines, but less wellness. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom. We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life. We’ve added years to life, but not life to years. We’ve been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We’ve conquered outer space, but not inner space. We’ve cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We’ve split the atom, but not our prejudice. We have higher incomes, but lower morals. We’ve become long on quantity, but short on quality. These are times of tall men and short character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are times of [relative] peace, but domestic warfare. More leisure, but less fun. More kinds of food, but less nutrition. These are the days of two incomes, but more divorce. Fancier houses, but broken homes. It is the time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom…
A rather dismal picture, is it not?—a picture of life out of control. And the picture only becomes bleaker when we choose to act as if we are all alone in the boat. The parable Jesus tells of the rich man and Lazarus also portrays a stark image of life in which individuals become tragically disconnected from one another and from their deepest calling in life.
It’s intriguing that this is the only parable of Jesus that provides the name of one of its characters, with the root name for Lazarus, Eleazar, meaning “God helps.” Apparently no one else helps Lazarus, for he soon dies of starvation and disease at the rich man’s gate. Perhaps Jesus provides the name of Lazarus to remind us that knowing another’s name is a key way of recognizing and affirming that person’s worth, and isn’t it just like Jesus to highlight the name of one who has been marginalized, one who is not even noticed by others.
Truth be told, is this not the nature of sin depicted in the story, that the rich man simply does not see Lazarus, the poor beggar at his gate. And as with so many of the parables, Jesus uses one individual to point to a critical issue impacting us all. Ancient Israel, like the rich man in the parable, had reached a point where it was little able to see beyond itself; it was as if the poor and the broken in Israel’s midst were invisible. In our day as well, listening to the political debates, one wonders if we’ve made much progress. Even as representatives of both parties claim to care about the middle class, relatively little time and energy is spent speaking of the needs of the poor.
Centuries before Jesus, the prophet Isaiah indicts the people of Israel, asserting that a fundamental element of their lack of faithfulness to God is found in their indifference to the poor. Widows and orphans, because of positions of relative powerlessness in that society, were often victims of poverty and oppression, yet their plight was little noted by the rest of Israel. And so Isaiah cries out,
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes;
cease to do evil, learn to do good;
seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan,
plead for the widow (Isaiah 1:16-17).
A similar message stands behind the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. For the callousness that ignores the plight of the poor is but a symptom of a deeper issue—that being our difficulty in placing our trust fully in God. We hoard and stockpile and hold to ourselves, but in our abundance we still feel that we do have enough. Separated from meaningful relationship with God, we assume that our possessions will bring us comfort. But along the way we lose sight of what’s most important in life; our compassion is replaced with callousness.
Jesus’ parable apparently bears resemblance to a well-known folk tale of that day, with one exception. In the folk tale, when permission is requested to send a message back to the people who are still on earth, that permission is granted. But in Jesus’ parable, after both Lazarus and the rich man die, with the rich man in torment in Hades able to look up and see Lazarus by the side of Father Abraham, the rich man makes two requests, each denied. First, he asks that Lazarus come and dip water on his tongue to cool it, and then he asks that Lazarus be sent back to earth to warn the rich man’s family of the fate that awaits them if they do not mend their ways. This second request is denied because the law and the prophets already make crystal-clear the nature of a life faithful to God. Even more, to any who are paying attention, it should be obvious that Jesus is fulfilling the message of the law and prophets.
Just verses before this parable, Luke tells us that the Pharisees, the religious leaders of the day, were scoffing at Jesus. Their response to the uncertainty of their day was to isolate themselves more and more, to erect barriers that barred from the faith any whom they labeled as unclean or unfit or sinful. But Jesus tells the parable, hoping that the religious leaders will embrace a new perspective, one that reaches out to the broken and the poor, one that recognizes that the life of faith has less to do with making us comfortable than it does with calling us to change. Indeed, that’s what conversion is all about—experiencing life that is turned upside down from that to which we have grown accustomed. More accurately, faith turns life right side up.
At the heart of our journey of faith is the experience of prayer, being in communion with God. And as Henri Nouwen asserts in his book With Open Hands,
Prayer is a revolutionary matter because once you begin, you put your entire life in the balance…. If you are really praying, you can’t help but have critical questions about the great problems the world is grappling with…. Praying means being constantly ready to let go of your certainty and to move on further than where we are now. It demands that you take to the road again and again, leaving your house and looking forward to a new land for yourself and others…. Prayer leads you to see new paths and to hear new melodies in the air…. Praying is living.
Praying leads us to a sense of peace, but not the peace of problemless living. I have a mug on my desk that defines peace this way: “Peace does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.”
When we take to the road of Christian discipleship, we discover a peculiar paradox. Life becomes both uncertain and certain. It’s uncertain, in that we venture forth into new territory, we anticipate a new future unfolding before us—a future in which we affirm our common humanity with persons of varying life experiences, backgrounds and perspectives. It is the uncertainty of being in the same boat with persons we may not choose, headed in directions yet unclear. But in the midst of our uncertainty there is a new certainty, for the God who prods us to embrace uncertainty promises to be with us. God’s hand upholds us; God loves us with a love that will not let us go, a love that guides us into lives of service, compassion, and peace.
Are you ready to take to the road?