September 26, 2004 - Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost - Father Barry Woods

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

A familiar Gospel story for anyone who has been in the Church for very long - the familiar story of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man lives a wonderful life, and Lazarus lives a miserable life. And the rich man dies and goes to hell, and Lazarus dies and goes to heaven. And the rich man discovers the error of his ways when he was alive and asks for rescue from hell, and he is told that there is a great chasm that makes that impossible. A familiar story - one that hardly needs a sermon at all, but a sermon there will be, nevertheless.

Remember a few things about the story. The rich man's sin is not in being rich. The rich man sins in ignoring Lazarus. In his failure to have compassion on Lazarus - in his failure to see him as a real human being with the same kinds of needs and desires and fears as the rich man has - he fails completely to see him in any meaningful way. He lumps him together in a category of "the poor", and, in doing so, he misses the reality of Lazarus, misses compassion, misses any true real honest concern for Lazarus. He sins in ignoring and abdicating compassion for Lazarus, and he goes to hell; and there is a chasm, and no one can cross it.

The other thing to remember about the story, I think, is that there is no great virtue in Lazarus. He goes to heaven simply because God has a special place in His heart for the poor. There is no virtue in Lazarus, according to the story. There is certainly no virtue in being poor, but there is something special in the heart of God when it comes to the poor - a special and mysterious and powerful love for those who have little or nothing.

You and I are often very much like the rich man. We fail to have compassion for the poor. We ignore them. The Lazarus's of the world are all around us at the door of each of us, and, yet, we have found a way to ignore them; and, when we do that, we sin. We sin just as much as the more popular sins. Ignoring the poor is a sin, and, when we ignore the poor, we dig a chasm between ourselves and them and between ourselves and the God who loves them so specially. And we are very much like the rich man when we lump the poor together into a category, and we say things about all of them, like, "Well, they are all just lazy; they are all addicts; they are all alcoholics; they just don't want to work anymore; they are losers; they are bad people and unworthy, somehow." We lump them together into categories, and we use slogans to relieve ourselves of any responsibility for them. And, when we do that - when we no longer seem them as individuals, as people, and when we no longer see them as people just like us in terms of their internal reality - when we do that, we sin, and we dig a chasm.

You and I are very much like the rich man in some ways, but we are very much unlike him in one very important way. When the rich man discovered his sin in his lack of compassion for the poor - when the rich man discovered that - there was a chasm between him and God, and there was no one to cross that chasm. He was left alone and desolate for all eternity. But you and I are different. We have someone to cross that chasm for us. In the birth and ministry and death and resurrection and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth, you and I have found the One who will cross that chasm for us, no matter how wide, and no matter how deep. And so, when you and I ignore the poor, and when we sin, and when we dig that chasm between us and God, we have One who will cross it for us and grasp hold of us and bring us back - bring us back so that, in the spirit of true repentance, we can no longer fail to have compassion on the poor. We can no longer fail to see them as individuals. We can no longer ignore them.

It's a great and powerful story, so familiar that, sometimes, we might just let it go; but, this morning, you and I are called to remember that the poor are, in fact, not only our responsibility, but our duty. Caring for the poor is not something Christians can choose to do or not to do. There is no choice. It is a sin to ignore them.

And, in the power of Him who crosses all of our chasms, may we resolve this morning to do better.

AMEN