This sermon was given by The Rev. Luther Zeigler on Sunday 29 September at the Episcopal Chaplaincy at Harvard. The readings for the day are available here.
“And at his gate lay a poor
man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with
what fell from the rich man’s table . . . .” Luke 16:21
At the lunch hour, I often stroll
from my office at Two Garden
Street over to the Market in the Square, that deli
on the corner of Church Street
and Brattle, to get a sandwich. Most
days, as I’m leaving the Market, I’m encountered by someone on the corner who
is rattling a cup of coins asking for spare change. Because it is a spot on the Square with a
fair amount of foot traffic, it is a popular place for our homeless friends to
situate themselves.
Nearly every day, I confess that I
struggle with how best to respond to this recurring encounter. Some days, I drop some money into the poor
soul’s cup. Other days, I stop, and
rather giving spare change, I’ll offer the person half of my sandwich, thinking
to myself that food is better than money since it can’t be used to fuel an
alcohol or drug addiction. Still other
days, I’ll stop and try to explain where the nearest shelter or feeding program
is located, believing that pointing to our city’s social services might be a
better strategy for dealing with the situation than arguably furthering a
dependency on handouts.
But then, I’m ashamed to say, there
are those days when I’m too distracted with my own issues to bother to stop at
all; or in too much of a hurry to notice the person standing there; and there
are even those times when I’m just plain sick and tired of having to face this
depressing reality every day en route to lunch and secretly wish I worked
somewhere devoid of such people and problems.
I’m not proud to acknowledge these feelings, but I suspect many of you
struggle with this same mix of emotions and may be just as flummoxed as I am as
to how to respond to these daily encounters.
But then, one day something
different happened. As I was coming out
of the Market, with my sandwich and iced tea in hand, poised to drop my spare
change in the cup of some obviously struggling young man, he raised his hand
signaling that he didn’t want my money.
Instead, he gestured me to come near, saying, “Pastor, could you pray
with me?” It was midday, and the Square
was filled with folks each on his or her own mission, and I admit I felt
slightly self-conscious at this invitation to pray in public with a young
fellow whom I did not know.
But I somehow was given the grace
to overcome these fears, and so I approached him. And, as I did, he gently took my hands (and
I’ll change his name here to protect his privacy), and he said to me: “My name is Phillip and I’ve been out of work
for years. Would you please pray that I
might find some meaningful job? And I
have a mother, named Dolores, who is struggling with a heart condition. Could you pray for her too?”
And so, there we stood, in the
midst of the bustle of Harvard
Square, Phillip and me, praying together.
And that is when my eyes were opened
to something that I should have seen long before. Suddenly, this “homeless person,” this
“social issue,” this “problem to be solved,” or even worse, “this nuisance to
be avoided,” was a man named Phillip, with a mother named Dolores. A man with a story. Someone’s son. Someone with hopes and dreams, as well as
pains and disappointments.
The real question, I want to
suggest, that we should be asking ourselves as we encounter our homeless
brother and sisters on the streets of Harvard Square is not whether we should or shouldn’t give them our spare change, or
something to eat, or some helpful advice about the nearest social program. The question that we should first be asking
ourselves is whether we are prepared to see them, know them, encounter them, and
relate to them as human beings. It is
not an easy question, by any means, but it is the question Jesus poses to us in
today’s gospel.
The parable of the rich man and
Lazarus is too often reduced to a simple morality tale about the dangers of
wealth, the vice of self-indulgence, and the characteristic Lukan motif of an
eschatological reversal of fortune, with the last being first and the first
being last.
But this interpretation doesn’t do
full justice to the parable. While, to
be sure, there is a stinging critique here of the oppression of the poor by the
rich, there is a subtler and related message embedded in the parable as well –
a message about relationship.
One of the most striking things
about this parable is that it is the only one of Jesus’ parables in which he names one of the characters: Lazarus.
This is not just some anonymous, faceless, impoverished man. Indeed, in contrast to the “rich man” in the
parable, whom Jesus does not name,
and who is just one other rich man among many in Jesus’ parables, Lazarus is
here given an identity. Jesus knows him,
implicitly suggesting that we should know him too.
Moreover, Lazarus is the Greek form
of “Eliezer,” which in Hebrew means: “God helps.” And Eliezer, you may remember, is the name of
Abraham’s companion from Genesis 15, himself a model of faithful and hospitable
service to Abraham and Sarah.
Read this way, the text invites us
into a relationship with Lazarus, by naming him, by describing his plight, and
by recalling for us the cherished relationship Abraham enjoyed with his loyal
friend of the same name. Indeed, the
intimate nature of the relationship is modeled for us at the end of the story
as we see Lazarus at Abraham’s bosom after he is carried to heaven. The NRSV translates verse 22 to read that
Lazarus died and was carried off by the angels “to be with Abraham,” but the
better translation of the Greek is that Lazarus was carried by the angels “to
Abraham’s bosom” – that is, close to his heart.
There is, in short, a great chasm
in the parable between the loving relationship that Abraham and Lazarus share
and the lack of one between the rich man and Lazarus. The text vividly portrays for us how the rich
man, so absorbed in his own pleasure, keeps Lazarus out of sight, physically
separated on the other side of a gate.
The rich man seeks to protect himself from all the Lazaruses of the
world, leaving them to be tended to by the dogs, who lick their sores. The rich man literally doesn’t want to see
Lazarus, keeping him at a distance, refusing to recognize him as a fellow human
being, treating him like just another domestic animal. There is no effort to know Lazarus, to
encounter him, much less to share his bounty and be in relationship with him.
And notice this too: even after the rich man is condemned to the
fires of Hades for his callous self-absorption, and pleads with Abraham for
mercy, the rich man never calls out to Lazarus directly for forgiveness. Instead, he pleads with Abraham to send Lazarus
as his messenger to save the rich man’s brothers, once again treating Lazarus
not as a brother himself, but as a servant to be used for the rich man’s own
purposes.
Again, the rich man’s sin is less
his wealth per se, as it is his
indifference. He remains blind to the
reality and dignity of his fellow human being, both in this life and in the
next.
Please don’t misunderstand my
implication. I’m not so naïve as to
believe that each of us can have a relationship with all the poor and homeless
folks we encounter each day. We are
frail and limited human beings who can only do so much, and who have other
relationships and responsibilities that legitimately compete for our
attention. But perhaps if we start by
looking at our neighbors a little differently – seeing a Phillip on the street corner,
rather than just another nameless homeless person – by God’s grace we will
gradually be brought into a deeper, healthier and more generous sense of
community, as we are slowly brought into more authentic relationships with
those with whom we share this earth. And
then, perhaps, we will be surprised that such a renewed sense of community and
relationship suddenly becomes the catalyst we need to move us forward toward
real social change.
St. Augustine once said: “God gave us things to use and people to
love; and sin is the confusion of the two.”
Maybe that is not a bad caption for today’s gospel lesson. God gave us things to use and people to love. The rich man’s terrible confusion, and
ultimate sin, was in falling in love with his things rather than with his
brother, Lazarus.
May God help us from making this
same mistake. In the words of our epistle lesson today, let
us not “set our hopes on the uncertainty of riches,” but rather, let us “be
rich in good works, generous, and ready to share,” so that we might “take hold
of the life that really is life.”
Amen.
