On the Path Together (Week 4)

Amos 6:1a, 4-7

Luke 16: 19-31

Good morning everyone.  I’m here with you digitally this morning.  I hope this works.  Like I said last week, don’t let anyone from the balcony try to fast-forward through the sermon.  Also, I want you to know that we have embedded a special technology in this video that allows me, even from this screen, to tell who’s napping and who’s on their phone reading articles about this afternoon’s Chiefs game against the Lions.

This morning’s sermon – the last in our “Open Path” series – is titled, “On the Road Together.”  For the past several weeks, we’ve been responding to our Scripture readings by imagining our lives as a form of adventurous travel and faithful wandering.  The image of “The Open Path” stresses God’s gracious invitation to all of us to walk forward into a new way of life.  God graciously calls and invites, and yet at some point in life we experience ourselves as being called; we experience ourselves as being pulled by God’s Spirit onto this path. God won’t force us into this caravan of travelers.  This is a path for people who have gathered up their best energy to say, “Yes. Yes. This is what I want.”

But even after you choose this path of faith, hope, and love, you’ll have to keep choosing it again and again.  You’ll need God’s grace to keep moving forward.  Jesus warns us about the temptations of money and wealth and possessions.  It’s hard to stay on the path.  And more often than not, it will be some form of greed, or selfishness, or desire for comfort, pleasure, or security that derails the journey and gets us lost and confused. 

But one more really important thing needs to be said about this adventure.  You always travel with other people.  This is a path for people who are walking together.  It’s not just your own personal trip.  It’s not an individualized journey.  It’s a path wide enough for all of us, different as we may be.  And part of the journey is noticing the people who are traveling with you.

So let’s look at this parable from Luke 16 for a few minutes.

The first thing you’ll notice is that there are two main characters: the rich man and poor Lazarus.  And the few details we’re given about these two characters play up the contrasts between extremes.

·      The rich man isn’t named; the poor man’s name is Lazarus.

·      The rich man is dressed in purple and fine linen; whatever Lazarus is wearing isn’t worth mentioning.

·      The rich man appears to be healthy; Lazarus’ body is covered in oozing sores.

·      The rich man was attended by servants; the only care Lazarus received was from the dogs who licked his open wounds.

·      The rich man “feasted sumptuously” every day; Lazarus was so hungry he would have been happy with the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table.

·      The rich man lived inside the gate; Lazarus lived outside.

·      The rich man had a proper burial; Lazarus is carried away by the angels.

Now these stark contrasts make for a pointed parable.  But they might also make it difficult for us to see ourselves in this parable.  Which one are we?  I find it a little hard to see myself as the rich man.  Sometimes the leftovers I eat for lunch are pretty tasty, but I would hardly consider that “feasting sumptuously.”  But I also find it hard to see myself as poor Lazarus.  My body is not infested with untreated sores, and rarely do I experience hunger for very long.

So if neither of the main characters provides a way into the story, what else is there?  Maybe we can recognize the gate that separates different kinds of people.  Maybe we can recognize that the “gate” in the parable is actually the gulf, the gap, the boundary that exists between rich and poor even today.  One of the most remarkable features of American life – when you compare us to other countries, or even to ourselves from years past – is the radical and rising inequality between the “haves” and the “have nots.”

We Americans tolerate a good bit of inequality.  It’s almost as if we can’t see it.  Or don’t care. 

·      Look at the fact that women make about 80 cents on the dollar compared to men, and you’ll see that we don’t have gender equality. 

·      Look at high-school drop-out rates, job opportunities, and incarceration rates, and you’ll see that we don’t have racial equality.

·      Look at the huge and growing gap between pay for CEO’s and average workers – that gap is seven times larger than it was in 1965 – and you’ll see that we don’t have wage equality.

·      Look at how much wealth is concentrated in the hands of the very wealthiest Americans, and you’ll see that we don’t have wealth equality.

The rich man in the parable doesn’t do any harm to poor Lazarus.  He’s not portrayed as especially wicked.  He just lives in a nest so comfortable that he doesn’t even see Lazarus at the gate.  One funny moment in the parable comes when the rich man is burning in agony in the afterlife.  He calls out to Abraham, “I’m in agony in these flames.  I’m dying of thirst.  Would you mind ordering Lazarus to bring me a drink?”  Even after his fortunes have been reversed, the rich man still can’t come to see Lazarus as a friend and a brother.  The rich man still imagines himself as worthy of having servants.  And he still imagines poor Lazarus as living on some lower rung of importance. 

Maybe this parable can help us begin to look more clearly at the reality of how the world works around us.  Maybe this parable can help us see the pain and struggle of those who are poor, or brown or black, or uneducated, or in prison.  Maybe it can spur us to open our eyes and our hearts, to truly see the wounds and worries that others are carrying.  Maybe when others are able to tell us about their pain, we can genuinely listen in a way that honors their struggle.

The good news of Jesus Christ has always been a story about reversals.  Mary sang about it in her song (Luke 1) and Jesus taught it in his famous sermon (Luke 6): the rich will be brought low and the poor will be raised up.  The first will be last, and the last will be first.  Luke tells us right up front that Jesus was anointed to preach “good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18).  So, this story will sound threatening to those who have a lot.  And it will be comforting to those who are in pain and to those who are poor. 

Stephanie and I have been watching a comedy series on Netflix.  It’s a show about a wealthy family who loses everything.  They had no choice but to move to a backwards little town that the father had purchased years earlier as a joke, a birthday present for his son.  So they moved out of their enormous mansion into a little rundown motel in a small town.  They had to sell everything from their former lives.

The one thing that didn’t sell, that no one wanted, was an enormous oil painting of the family, all of them dressed in formal attire, seated in the marble lobby of their mansion.  They can’t fit this giant painting in their motel room.  So they put it in the motel lobby.  But after a few days of walking past that painting of what their lives used to be, they finally decide that it’s time to let the past go.  Together, the family hauls the painting out to the trash.  They experienced a reversal from rich to poor, from important to unimportant, and they were beginning to see that there might be some advantages to this new kind of life.

The reversals that Jesus warns us about sometimes happen in the middle of our lives.  Sometimes we lose what we thought we had to have.  Sometimes, we find ourselves facing difficulties we never could have imagined.  And these re-balancing events give us an opportunity to re-assess who we want to become.  They give us a fresh opportunity to open our lives to the people we once thought were in some different category; to embrace them as our friends; to link arms with them, glad to be on the road together.

You probably heard the story about the young boy who made his own University of Tennessee t-shirt.  His elementary school was having a college color day.  Though he lived in Florida, he was a Tennessee fan.  He told his teacher that he didn’t have a Tennessee t-shirt.  But he had an orange shirt, so he’d wear that.  And he was excited about showing his colors. 

When he showed up at school that day, he had drawn “U of T” on a piece of paper and then pinned that paper to his orange t-shirt.  During lunch, some kids at the next table began to make fun of his shirt.  As you can imagine, it ruined his day.   

Without identifying the student, his teacher made a post on social media asking if anyone had connections to the University of Tennessee and could get him a shirt.  That post went viral and came to the attention of the University.  They sent a large box to the elementary school that included a Volunteers hat and t-shirt for the boy, along with lots of other swag for his classmates.  He got to hand it out to everyone else. 

But the university went a step further.  They took the boy’s hand-made sign and made it into an official school t-shirt.  They planned to sell it and donate some of the proceeds to an anti-bullying campaign.  When they posted the t-shirt on their website, it sold out so fast that it crashed their website.  The teacher said that this whole experience gave her class a good opportunity to talk about the power of kindness.

Look, this is a great story.  It warms our hearts to see this young boy encouraged after some fellow students made fun of his shirt.  But the truth is, in the new light that this parable shines on our lives, we can decide – today – to begin to live differently.

Whether it’s poor Lazarus outside the gate, hungry and covered with sores or a young boy who didn’t have the right kind of shirt, we cross paths all the time with people who are hurting.  Whether it’s a co-worker or a neighbor, whether a family member or someone we know at church, whether a young child or an older acquaintance, we cross paths all the time with people who are in pain.  And often, we just don’t see them.  We’re not terrible people.  We’re just too distracted, or too engrossed in our own lives, or in too much of a hurry, to really see them; to notice them; to stop what we’re doing long enough to be with them. 

God has called you and me to follow the way of Jesus.  God has called us to lives of discipleship and learning, lives of trust and risk, lives of sharing and kindness.  This is not a road we walk by ourselves.  We walk it with lots of others.  Sometimes you’ll fall.  That’s ok, there will be others around to help you up.  Sometimes others will fall, and you’ll be there to help. 

Like the rich man’s five brothers in the story, we are the ones who still have time to change.  We won’t get any miraculous signs.  God will not thunder from the heavens.  We will have to rest content with being part of a little band of struggling Christians who gather to sing and pray and listen to odd stories.  We will have to trust – beyond anything we can see or hear or really even know – that the very air we breathe is the risen Christ among us.  And based on that meager evidence, that slender sliver of hope, we’ll have to decide to stay on the path, to join hands, and to walk the road together.