Sept. 29 – The Invisible Challenge Luke 16:19-31

The story of the rich man and Lazarus is another of those well-known parables of Jesus that we often hear with selective hearing. We listen to those parts that comfort us and ignore those parts that challenge. What I mean is that often we first of all define, in our minds, the word rich. We are never in that category. Warren Buffet or Bill Gates, they are rich. This parable is about them and the other 1% group in our nation and how they should act. We inwardly smile that they are getting a “talking too” and hope they listen and treat the poor better than now is the case. We rarely place ourselves in Lazarus’ shoes and ask, “Is this story of Jesus for us?” What I want to do today is to have this parable of Jesus confront us and our actions and our assumptions. Look at the attitude of the rich man towards Lazarus. It is clearly shown in this painting. Lazarus is seen just outside the door of the rich man’s kitchen. He’s literally right there, not a full step away. But you have to look for him. The painting is so full of the riches of this kitchen, that Lazarus, though right at the door, is hard to see at all. This parable is a reminder for us to think about all those we interact with on a daily basis. Too often some become invisible. We don’t really see them or their needs; they are just there, part of the fabric of life. This is how it was for the rich man. I don’t think he was deliberately hostile towards Lazarus. As we will see later he even knows his name. He had just gotten so use to Lazarus begging for scraps at the door that his needs no longer evoked compassion. He no longer thought about his responsibility towards him. The rich man expected that his kitchen would throw him some scraps, which they obviously did since Lazarus continued to hang around his door. So, even though he saw Lazarus on a daily basis for all intents and purposes he and his needs had become invisible. That Lazarus had become invisible to the rich man is appalling enough but it is actually worse after both have died. Even after death Lazarus is a non-person. The rich man is condemned first of all in knowing his name. This means that Lazarus was more than a nameless “homeless person.” He knew him and yet ignored him. After death when you would hope that the rich man would begin to understand that things are different, that values are different we still find him ignoring Lazarus. He never addresses Lazarus directly but instead talks to Father Abraham as if they are equals! He wants Abraham to send Lazarus to cool his torment or to visit his brothers. He never thinks to talk to Lazarus and ask him. In life or in death Lazarus did not count in the rich man’s view of reality. He was there to be ignored or to command for the scrap of food he would get for his efforts. Unfortunately, too often even to this day we find people having this callous attitude towards the poor. Now I am not saying that there are no abuses among the poor. Some use and abuse the systems we put in place to help them for their own benefit but do not the rich do this as well? Yet, we often hear about these abuses as if this is typical of all the poor instead of seeing the triumph of spirit so often shown, where they are working hard, keeping their families together and handling sometimes incredible personal issues with dignity and grace. Those stories don’t enflame passion and might even justify our support so they are ignored. I have been amazed and I must say appalled that there has been so little response by people in general and the church in particular to the massive scaling back of head start programs, one of the most effective programs there is to help level the playing field in school between those with few resources and those who can afford to send their children to pre-school and provide for them books and computer access. But again, we are not around head start children, so they are invisible, like Lazarus at the door. Something else we need to do as we hear this story is to dispel the myth that this parable is not about us. We are rich. Maybe not when compared with Bill Gates but in relationship to much of the world we are wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. We own our homes, we drive cars, we have more than two sets of clothes to our name and we have food in our refrigerator and cupboards beyond what is needed for dinner tonight. When there are many places in the world that people exist on a dollar a day, where people go to bed hungry much of the time and shelter is what has been scavenged from the dump we are rich. We hear about the refugee crisis brought on by the ongoing conflict in Syria but, except for a brief image or two on the news, which, if we think about it, we avert our eyes when it is on so we don’t have to see it, they and their needs are invisible. We need to understand that the sharp edges of this parable are addressed to us. Just to drive it home one more time look at this picture: (put up pictures of people going to church in other parts of the world.) In comparison our church and parking lot makes it clear, we are rich. So the first question we need to ask is, “Do we see those with less as our equals?” We want to quickly say yes and on an intellectual level we strive to live by our actions. Yet, in insidious ways that we may not even be aware of, we often treat others as second class citizens. Who are our second class citizens, the poor, youth, those with tattoos, etc. Who do we treat as less than us? We all do this in one way or another. We treat the grocery checker with disdain if we have had to wait in line for a while because she is there to serve us, same is true for the waitress who doesn’t get a tip, not because they did not give good service but because we thought the potato was undercooked. A banker friend of mine recalls how he was manager of a branch near Lake Union in Seattle. He noticed a young man come in. He was wearing a dirty t-shirt, shorts and shoes without laces. He asked to talk to someone about opening an account. He was told to sit and someone would get to him as soon as possible. The manager noticed that none of the new account people were particularly interested in helping this young man. You could tell that they were thinking that it was a lot of work to do the paperwork of opening an account for one like him. This was in the days before computers when opening a new account was fairly labor intensive. He decided he needed to remind his employees that everyone was valued so he made a point of inviting the young man into his office to set up the account himself. This was early 60’s and the young man had sailed the family yacht up from California. Dad was making it big in the early days of the Silicone Valley. He had brought along a cashier’s check from Dad to pay for living expenses during his first year at the U of W. The amount of the check of the individual who was not worth writing up was for $100,000. The second fault of the rich man was pretending that the plight of Lazarus was not his concern. He had ignored his needs even though he saw him every day. How often do we tend to ignore the needs of the poor or justify our responses to them? It is always a challenge to figure out how to help without enabling certain behaviors. It might not be the best choice to give money to a panhandler but that doesn’t mean we should not work to make sure there is adequate housing and places where people can find nourishment. It is a delicate balance but we should never let the needs of the poor here or around the world go by as if we do not care. We cannot let them become invisible. Then we have let the love of money become a very corrosive thing to our souls. Finally, if we who claim the name Christian are to take the Bible seriously what do we do with Luke’s beatitude on the rich? Here it says blessed are you poor for yours is the kingdom of God. Matthew softens it by saying poor in spirit. Luke who has much of the conversation Jesus shares about money and who seems to be a strong advocate of the needy says blessed are the poor. Do we really want to believe it or live by it? Do we want to hear God is on the side of the poor? What would that mean to us who by the standards of most of the world are rich? There are no answers to these questions. Parables often don‘t give us answers. They instead cause us to feel unsettled so that we reassess our lives and change some of how we think and behave.