|
|
17th Sunday After Pentecost, 26September 2004 |
You Only Go Round Once The old beer adage which I am sure you all remember and follow went like this: You only go around once, so grab as many bottles as you can. We do go around only once in this world, as you may have noticed, or perhaps not, and we should grab every opportunity to do good that we encounter. Why we should grab ever opportunity to do good, is pretty clear from this story about the rich man and Lazarus. Don't help in this world, and you know what is going to happen to you. The story of these two men could seem to have this meaning. Lazarus has it tough in this world, and the rich man rides the gravy train. In the next life, their positions are reversed. It that the message? If so, all of us with three squares a day and roof over our heads have hell to look forward to while heaven is guaranteed to the homeless. But then we would have to forget about all the rest of the New Testament, and we are not going to do that here today! So we had better take a second look at this story told by this persons Jesus. I think we should take a look at some of what Jesus said before he told this story. He speaks a lot about money and material possessions, about not being able to serve God and money, about being irresponsible for small about God gives us (as when we cheat on our income taxes) you will never be able to understand Jesus, if God can't trust us with that which you call your own (that's all you have including your life, and it is really all God's), will he reveal to us all the treasures of the Spirit? Then follows the story of the rich man and Lazarus. Two men whom we should assume were members of the synagogue, the church of their time. One was ruled by money, however, and the other remains totally silent throughout the story. Let's look how Jesus describes these two men. The rich man. Dresses in purple every day. Purple cloth was the most expensive of that day. The dye was scarce and therefore expensive. Every day he wore that and fine linen. Fine linen is the Hebrew word meaning high quality Egyptian cotton of the kind used for expensive underwear. I know right now you are thinking about what kind of underwear you have on, but this man has a problem. Every day he has to dress to the nines. He must impress himself and world every day. I have known women, not men, who wore new clothes every day. Never wore the same dress or whatever twice. Some of those women were ever Lutherans! He had a banquet every day. Not just on weekends, but every day. Now catch this: that meant that his servants had to work every day. They could not even observe the Sabbath day, and they had to break the commandment about now working on that day as well. This man has the best of all worlds. Now Lazarus, whose name means: God is my help. Lazarus is sick, and from what I am able to gather from that is he didn't have family, to care for him. If he had had family he would not have been begging. But someone cares enough to set him at the gate of the rich man. He longed to be fed from that which fell from the rich man's table. When rich men ate, they mostly ate with their hands and used bread to wipe the excess fat from their fingers and dropped that bread on the floor. The beggar Lazarus would have welcomed a piece of that. We're not sure from the story he got any. Certainly we know that the only creatures that cared for this wreck of a human creature were the guard dogs of the rich man. They licked his sores and provided a healing of some kind. But dogs, like pigs are unclean animals. They get to eat; Lazarus goes hungry. Then like a bolt of lightening, the drama moves swiftly to what we know will happen to those two men, and to all of us: death comes sooner of later. Lazarus dies and he is escorted by the angels to the place of honor at the table of Abraham, the patriarch of the entire people of God! Wow! The rich man dies and he is buried. He has a funeral. He could afford one. I suppose those of you with white heads of hair or less have made provisions so that the $6,000 + which your funeral will cost will not be an embarrassment to your kin. He finds himself in the place of the dead. Hades, {hell if you wish), the place which is a far distance from Abraham and Lazarus. Well, now he recognizes Lazarus, he even knows his name, he knows that Lazarus is in a position of power and must make an abject apology to Lazarus begging for forgiveness, right? Wrong! He ignores Lazarus and talks to Abraham, after all you go to the top for what you want, don't you? What he basically tells Abraham is this: Look, Father Abraham (remember when Jesus told this people; "Don't think you're going to please God because you can trace your ancestry to Abraham. If God wants, he can make these stones into Abraham's children"). Look Father Abraham. I am suffering. I'm not used to this. When beggars hurt, well, it doesn't matter. They usually end of begging or being homeless through their own fault. After all, like me he (they, all beggars) should have been able to pull himself up by this own bootstraps. He never contributed any good to this world when he was in it. So send him to help me, right now. He's on his feet now, put him to work, finally, doing something good. You might expect Lazarus to get as purple in the face as the rich man's robes and tell that wretch in hell to fry his ego there until he's as crisp as ans overcooked MacDonald french fry. But silence again. Now Father Abraham does see this rich man as his son, and calls him that. But the chasm between the rich man and himself cannot be crossed, cannot be violated. No help coming, and Abraham reminds him that he had all the good, while Lazarus had all the bad. Now glorious comfort for one; agony for the other. It would appear that the rich man keeps his pride, his total self-centered ego, his indifference to any suffering but his own. His desire to "save" his brothers rings with all the hollowness of those only interested in themselves. They have Moses and the prophets, they have God's Word as it is found in the Old Testament. In that Word is the presence of God with man in grace and forgiveness, in rescue from all evil, in the giving of faith in our gracious God who counts it all for righteousness. That's what Abraham did, that idolatrous moon worshipper from Iraq. He believed God, before resurrection was even a part of the whole story of mankind, and God counted his faith as that which glued them, together in an eternal embrace of love, mercy, kindness and empowerment to move and act in love to others. Even one raised from the dead would not cause these people to believe, if God's love for mankind shown in a long history of almost unbelievable loving kindness to his people is not believed and not acted upon. We do have someone risen from the dead, Jesus Christ. Does that mean that we don't listen to Moses and the prophets, that somehow the resurrection is going to make all things right? No, just the opposite. If we have not hearts that are open to see the needs of people, then even the resurrection of our Lord will be meaningless, as well. In our Apostles Creed, we confess that we believe that our Jesus descended into hell. Christ comes into the hell that is our lives today. The only way for us to escape the result of our indifference, our pride, our self-righteous attitudes toward God and others, is for him to come into this world, is for God to make the bridge over the chasm that separates us from being with God. That bridge is Jesus, God's one and only Son, who completed the bridge to heaven when he cried out, "It is finished!" When he gave his life so that we might have life now and a continuation of the good life in heaven. We are all Lazarus, beggars, poor, dependent on God. As we confess, we cannot, we cannot by our own reason and strength believes in Jesus Christ our Lord or come to him. We cannot please God by ourselves. Our culture, our society, ever aspect of life tells us that God doesn't matter. It tells us that enjoying life, having fun, partying, and filling our homes with goods until we need public storage facilities to take care of our excess. We are all the rich man. Content with our life style, indulgent, wanting to move up, the better job which really means more money, so that I can spend more on myself, as I believe is befitting. Our underwear, by God, may not be Egyptian cotton, but are closets are filled with clothes we hoard while others have little or none. Our dependence on God for life, for making some kind of sense out of he chaotic world that ours is or has become, for the blessed assurance that my follies, mistakes, errors, self-indulgence will not keep me from crossing he chasm and all this through Jesus Christ, should have a humbling effect on me, and move me to a lifestyle that sees all people as children of Abraham. So we only go around once, and we need to catch all the opportunities for serving others, before it is all fixed forever. Grabbing ever opportunity to serve will not save you, because we can become puffed up like a frog because of our service. But it can just perhaps give you a wonderful start on the day the chasm is fixed and we hear the words: come, you blessed of my Father, take the inheritance created for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, naked, sick, imprisoned by sin, and you gave me what I needed to live. Remember: you only go around once, and you are going now! Amen. Walter W. Harms, retired pastor |
|
(top) |