September 29, 2019
Luke 16.19-31
+ I know this might reveal my
bizarre side. (We all have a bizarre side, after all) But…I love the parable we
heard today. I think I might be one of the very few people who do actually love
it. For some, it’s just so weird and…well, bizarre. And it is. But…there’s just
so much good stuff, right under the surface of it.
In it, we find Lazarus. Now, if you notice, it’s the only time in Jesus’ parables that we
find someone given a name—and the name, nonetheless, of one of Jesus’ dearest
friends. In most of Jesus’ parables, the
main character is simply referred to as the Good Samaritan or the Prodigal Son.
But here we have Lazarus. And the name actually carries some meaning. It means “God has helped me.”
Now the “rich man” in this story is
not given a name by Jesus, but tradition has given him the name Dives, or “Rich
Man”
Between these two characters we see
such a juxtaposition. We have the
worldly man who loves his possessions and is defined by what we owns. And we have Lazarus, who seems to get sicker
and is hungry all the time.
In fact, his name almost seems like
a cruel joke. It doesn’t seem like God
has helped Lazarus at all.
The Rich Man sees Lazarus, is aware
of Lazarus, but despite his wealth, despite all he has, despite, even his apparent
happiness in his life, he can not even deign to give to poor Lazarus a scrap of
food from all that he has.
Traditionally of course, we have
seen them as a very fat Rich Man, in fine clothing and a haughty look and a
skinny, wasted Lazarus, covered in sores, which I think must be fairly accurate
to what Jesus hoped to convey. They are
opposite, mirror images of each other.
But there are some subtle
undercurrents to this story. Lazarus is
not without friends or mercy in his life. In fact, it seems that maybe God really
IS helping him. He is not quite the
destitute person we think he is.
First of all, we find him laid out
by the Rich Man’s gate. Someone must’ve
put him there, in hopes that Rich Man would help him. Someone cared for
Lazarus, and that’s important to remember.
Second of all, we find these dogs
who came to lick his sores. The presence
of dogs is an interesting one. Are they just wild dogs that roam the streets,
or are they the Rich Man’s watch dogs? New Testament theologian Kenneth Bailey
has mentioned that dog saliva was believed by people at this time to have
curative powers. (We now know that is definitely NOT the case) So,
even the dogs are not necessarily a curse upon Lazarus but a possible blessing
in disguise.
Finally, when Lazarus dies, God
receives him into paradise. In fact, as we hear, “angels carried him to be with
Abraham.”
The Rich Man dies and goes to
Hades—or the underworld. Lazarus goes
up, Dives goes down.
While in paradise, while the Rich
Man, in the throes of his torment, cries out to him, Lazarus, if you notice,
doesn’t ignore him or turn his back on him, despite the fact that the Rich Man
did just that to Lazarus.
Lazarus does not even scold him. It almost seems that Lazarus might almost be
willing to go back and tell the Rich Man’s friends if only the gulf between
them was not so wide.
There really is a beauty to this
story and a lesson for us that is more than just the bad man gets punished while
the good man gets rewarded.
But even more so, what we find is
that, by the world’s standards, by the standards of those who are defined by
the material aspects of this life, Lazarus was the loser before he died and the
Rich Man was the winner, even despite his callousness.
And the same could be said of us as
well. It might seem, at moments, as
though we are being punished by the things that happen to us. It is too easy to pound our chests and throw
dirt and ashes in the air and to cry out in despair and curse God when bad
things happen.
It is much harder to recognize that
while we are there, at the gate outside the Rich Man’s house, lying in the
dirt, covered in sores, that there are people who care, that there are gentle,
soothing signs of affection, even from dogs. And it is hard sometimes to see that God too
cares.
To return for a moment to the
beginning of our sermon and my bizarreness. Last Sunday our very own Jessica
and John Anderson went out to visit the newly dedicated Fargo National Cemetery
near Harwood. Well, right next door to the new VA Cemetery is Maple Sheyenne
Lutheran Cemetery. As many of you know, my family plot is in that cemetery, and
it is there that my parents’ ashes lie buried.
Jessica sent me a photo of my own
grave while she was there. Yes, as many of you
But what people who see my
gravestone take note of is the epitaph I chose for myself. It’s actually the final line of a poem I wrote
toward the end of my “cancer experience” which felt to me very much like a
Lazarus experience.
The poem was written as my father
and I were driving to Minot on a particularly cold night in October 2002 shortly
after the first snow fall of the year. We
were driving up there for my final interview with the Commission on Ministry
before I was ordained to the Diaconate. As
we neared the city and came up over a hill, I could see the city laid out below
us. Above us, the sky had cleared after
a particularly gray and gloomy day. When
the clouds had cleared, we could see the stars, which, on that cold night,
looked especially crisp and clear. And
in that moment, after all that I had went through with my cancer, I suddenly
knew for the first time, that, somehow, everything was going to be fine. At the end of that poem, I wrote what would
become the epitaph on my stone. I wrote in that poem, “Dusk” (I’m not going to
inflict the whole poem on you, but it’s in my book, Just Once, which I’m giving away for free):
“…I look up into the sky
and see it—a transformation
so subtle I almost didn’t notice it
as I sit there trembling
behind the tinted windshield.
I say to myself
‘Look! Just look!
Look how the dusk—
full of clouds and gloom—
has dissolved into
multitudes of stars!’”
My epitaph is just that:
Look how the dusk—
full of clouds and gloom—
has dissolved into
multitudes of stars!’”
To some extent, that’s what it’s
like to be a Christian. To some extent,
that’s what it’s like: when we think the darkness and the gloom has encroached
and has won out, we can look up and see those bright sparks of light and know,
somehow, that it’s all going to be all right.
Paradise awaits us.
It is there, just beyond those
stars.
That place to which Lazarus was
taken by angels awaits us and, for those of us striving and struggling through
this life, we can truly cling to that hope.
For those of us still struggling, we
can set our eyes on the prize, so to speak and move forward. We can work toward that place, rather than
“diving” like Dives himself, into the pit of destruction he essentially created
for himself.
In a real sense, the Rich Man was
weighed down by his wealth, especially when he refused to share it, and he
ended up wallowing in the mire of his own close-mindedness and
self-centeredness.
What happens to this Rich Man? Well,
the chickens came home to roost. The rich man, full of hubris and pride, full
of arrogance and selfishness and self-centeredness. The rich man, who did not care
for the poor, who ignored the needy, who cared only for himself, The rich man
who boasted and blew smoke and walked around with his puffed-out chest, The
rich man fell, as all such people we find will fall.
Scripture again and again tells us such
people will fall. History again and again tells us such people will fall.
The chickens ALWAYS come home to
roost.
Let us not be like the rich man. Let us not follow that slippery, dangerous
slope to destruction.
But for those of us who, in the
midst of our struggles, can still find those glimmers of light in the midst of
the gloom, we are not weighed down. We
are freed in ways we never knew we could be. We are lifted up and given true freedom.
We are Lazarus.
God truly has helped us.
And we see it most when we recognize
those multitudes of light shining brightly in the occasional gloom of our
lives.
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