September 26, 2004 - Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost - Father Fred Myers

FIRST READING: Jeremiah 32: 1-3a, 6-15
PSALM: 91: 1-6, 14-16
SECOND READING: 1 Timothy 6: 6-19
GOSPEL: Luke 16: 19-31

O. K.! It looks like we get to pick on the rich for one more week! But, actually, I don't think so. If I were going to entitle this sermon (which I never do), I would entitle it, "Walls and chasms". Walls and chasms. We have to remember what Jesus is doing here. Luke put all of these stories together because Jesus has gathered together with His disciples, and He is teaching them. He is teaching them what the Kingdom of God - that is the Kingdom of God's love - what it looks like, or what it will look like. The Kingdom of God - the Kingdom of Love.

And so, last Sunday, do you remember that we had the shrewd manager? Jesus was trying to teach them that, if you are as shrewd about your spiritual life as you are about your secular life, your spiritual life would blossom and would grow.

Now, this week, He is talking to them, and He is telling them this story about Lazarus and the rich man. The rich man's name is traditionally Dives (pronounced Di-vees). He is talking to them about walls and chasms, not about being rich and poor, actually. In the story, we learn that Dives is a very rich man. He dresses very nicely; and he lives in the center of town, probably right close to the temple; and he has a big wall around him. We out here in California know about gated communities, don't we? I was so surprised when I came out here from Michigan and found that everybody lived in a gated community. What are we doing here? Why are we keeping things out or keeping us in, or what is happening here? And they are a worry, sometimes, because people can't come in to see me; and I have to give them the code to the gate, you know! But, we understand what that is about, a gated community.

In Dives' case, he lived in this gated community, and, right outside the gate, was this poor man, who was down on his luck - somebody we would probably call a loser - somebody who didn't make it in life. He is ill. He has sores all over his body. He is hungry. Dives knows that he is there because he has to open the gate and go in and out of the gate. He knows that Lazarus is there, but he pays no attention to him - no attention at all. He has this wall set up - this wall around him - and he is protected. He is protected from people like "him".

Now, don't we sometimes set up our own walls? I mean, they don't have to be made of masonry or wood or metal. They can be walls of pride, like, "I'm important; you're not". They can be walls of prejudice. We can keep people out that we don't like - you know, they look different; they act different; they are not like us - and we want to wall them out.

This past Friday, we had a wonderful documentary at the Integrity meeting on young gay people who are thrown out of their houses by their families - actually just thrown out of their houses into the streets. That just doesn't happen to gay kids. It happens to other kids, too. They get thrown out of their houses, and they have to live on the streets; and they find any way possible that they can to survive. And we put up walls around us and say, "I don't want those kids around me. They're different from me; they don't think the way I do; I don't want them there". So, I put up this wall - this wall of prejudice. Thank God that Andrew was there, and he told us about three houses that are being developed to help kids on the street. That's great! That's wonderful! It is a step in the right direction. That is breaking the wall down. That is opening up the gate. That's great!

You know, another thing that happens when we set up these walls around us - these walls of pride and prejudice and whatever else we can think of to wall other people out - we close ourselves off to wonderful experiences. We close ourselves off to experiences of the people who are out there. I remember when I was in Seminary during the summer and when I did my clinical pastoral education, commonly called CPE, I did it at Children's Hospital in Chicago. It was an ambivalent experience, to say the least. It is hard to see kids who are really sick, because this was a tertiary hospital, which meant that they were assigned there by another hospital because the other hospital couldn't do anything for them. While I was there - do you remember the boy in the bubble? He was there, and I got to know him a little bit. It was wonderful. But, in the process of my clinical pastoral education, we had an office that was separate from the hospital. Every morning, before we started our rounds and our ministries there, we would get together, the chaplains in training, and we would have coffee and doughnuts (of course!). Every morning, a street person would come in, and she would come in and have her breakfast with us, which was fine - we didn't mind. I had the opportunity to talk with this person, and, come to find out, she was very intelligent - very intelligent and well versed. She could quote Shakespeare better than I could (I can't quote it at all, so . . . .). She was really a very smart lady, and you could tell from her accent that she was from the east, probably from Boston, which is where she said she was from. We asked her, "You have this education, and you are a very fine person; so why are you living in the street?" (Prejudice - prejudice - prejudice - street people don't need to exist.) "Why are you living in the street?" And she said, "I choose to. I choose to. I can take care of those who are living in the street better." So, she lives with them in the street. I got to know her, and I got to understand what a real street ministry might consist of. Every morning, she would come in, and she would say something like, "Oh, I am worried about John. I didn't see him last night. He wasn't in his usual place. I wonder where he is?" A real ministry was going on, and, yet, she was a street person. She lived in the street. I got to understand her. I got to understand her better, because I had opened my mind to her, and I had opened my heart to her and took the time to talk with her and to understand what a street person does and who a street person is. We can't put them all in one box. They are not all the same. She was not a drug addict. She didn't suffer from alcoholism. She was just a plain person who was doing a real ministry, in her mind, to the street people around her. And Children's Hospital is not in a very good part of Chicago - it is right down on Fullerton there, where John Dillinger was shot, if you remember!

So, just opening that gate allowed me another dimension on my own ministry. And, we can do the same thing if we open our gates - those gates and walls that we set up. Jesus reminds us in this teaching that that gate, that wall, turns into a chasm, a great chasm. It reminds me of that spiritual or camp song, "Rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham" - so high, I can't get over it; so low, I can't get under it; so wide, I can't get around it.

And I think this is ironic. Dives calls to Father Abraham and says, "Send Lazarus to bring me some water" - "send Lazarus to warn my brothers". Even in the afterlife, Jesus says, that chasm is so great, so great. Prejudices are still there, and there is nothing that can be done about it. You can't reach across it. Poor, poor Dives. Anyway, he said remember, "You got your reward. The reward that you were seeking, you got. You were rich. Poor Lazarus, here, didn't make it, didn't quite have it."

So, this story is sort of convicting to us, and that is O.K. We need to hear those stories once in a while. We need to hear those stories where we ask, "Am I rich? Am I Dives? Or am I Lazarus?" Well, the fact that we are here in Palm Springs in the United States of America, and, if we earn over $30,000 a year (I found this on a web site), we are in the top 5% of the economy of the world. We are the rich. We are the rich. So, if this story convicts us, then let it - let it - not to make us feel guilty, but to understand that the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of God's love, is like this. We take care of those who don't have. If we are the have's, we take care of those who have not, and we try to do our best to do that. Jesus is not saying it is a sin to be rich. Paul said it is not a sin to be rich, it is what we do with the gifts that God has given us. We are stewards of God's gifts to us. We are called to take care of those, and we are called to take care of one another. So, if we are convicted, so be it. We can change. We can change.

So I would invite you to gather around our Communion table today, bringing with you your understandings, your new knowledge, if you have any - bring together all of those things and bring them to the altar and share with one another.

This is God's gift to us. Let us be God's gift to others.

AMEN