The Here and Now

After preaching a sermon two weeks ago on Lazarus and the rich man, I realized it was too long for one post. I'm breaking it up and here is part one.


Two men, one a taxi driver, one a preacher, show up at the pearly gates and meet with Saint Peter. Saint Peter lets both men in, but to he obviously favored the taxi driver, as he was given a golden robe and a golden staff. The pastor, who received a wool robe and wooden staff asks Saint Peter what the deal is. Saint Peter replies, “Well, while you preached, people slept. While he drove, people prayed.

How many times have you heard a joke like this that begins with, "Three men die and find themselves standing at the pearly gates facing St. Peter." Or, "Three men die and do not find themselves quite so fortunate." How about conversations between the two, "St. Peter says to the devil..." or "God says to the devil..."

We are fascinated by this dichotomy of life after death, the heaven/hell thing.

The people of Biblical times were familiar with this concept as well. It is thought that this was a common story or tale across a number of ancient cultures. The story is thought to have originated in Egypt.

There are two men. One man exhibits the extremes of wealth and comfort. He wears fine linen robes of purple: the color of royalty.

Then we have the other man. He lays outside the gates of the rich man's property, longing for the scraps from his table. He’s clothed, not in fine purple linens, but in sores that refuse to heal. 

In this first act of the story, we see two worlds which sit side-by-side: the world of comfort and the world of affliction, separated by a gate.

In the second act of the story the two men die. We are left to guess at the causes of death, the poor man probably because of his poverty, the rich man probably because he ate a Thanksgiving dinner every night. As usually happens in this ancient story, the positions of the two men are reversed: Lazarus ends up in the place of comfort, while the rich man finds himself in the place of affliction and torment.

The fates of these two people speak a fairly dire word to us regarding the after-life. But we are in luck, because this story is not about the afterlife.

The story is divided two scenes: that of the here and now, and that of the afterlife. The most powerful part of the story happens in the afterlife scene. Yet to see this story as one about the afterlife and the fate that awaits us is to miss the point. 

This story is about the here and the now, not about living a certain way because of the eternal consequences. When we say, "Thy will be done one earth as it is in heaven," we are accepting responsibility to embody the kingdom of God here.

This is why the story ends the way it does.

The rich man asks if he can send a message back to his brothers in order to make sure they don't make the same mistake he did. This is where this story is different from the other ancient renditions. In other traditions, the sufferer was allowed to warn his friends and relatives, thereby producing a change in their behavior. But Abraham delivers the wow line of the whole story. He says they have Moses, they have prophets, they have the holy Scriptures. That's everything they need. If they don't listen to those things, they won't get it, even if someone rises from the dead."

Where can we find ourselves in this text? While we may not dine on smoked turkeys, dressing, mashed potatoes, and all of the other Thanksgiving treats every day, we can probably find our situation much closer to that of the rich man than to Lazarus.

If we set up a spectrum with Lazarus on one end and the rich man on the other, I'd be willing to bet that most of us would find ourselves at least on the rich man side of the spectrum.

So what is it that the rich man does wrong? When we look at the story, he really doesn't come across as that bad a guy. He doesn't order Lazarus away from his home. He doesn't come out and kick Lazarus in the face. He doesn't even really notice him.

Which is the biggest error he makes.

Robert Frost wrote a poem called Mending Fences. In this poem the speaker describes his interaction with a wall that separates his property from his neighbor's. In the spring, the two men walk along either side of this wall making repairs. The frost of winter and the work of hunters has created gaps in the wall that separates their properties.

The speaker questions the need for the wall, but his neighbor replies with the popular phrase, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Frost writes:

"Why do they make good neighbors?...
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down...
I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
in each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

The men work toward a doomed goal. They attempt to build a wall which nature perpetually disassembles. Yet they continue to meet and try to construct this barrier between them. 

This is the kind of barrier that the rich man constructed between himself and Lazarus, and these are the kinds of barriers that we find ourselves constructing. Our barriers may not be walls that we physically build. They may not be the things that we would acknowledge as barriers. We may not even see them, understand them, or realize that they are there, but they are the things that separate us from other people.

The most damaging thing that we can do to someone in poverty is to not notice them - to give in to the barriers that we or others have built.

When we look the other way and refuse to truly acknowledge the plight of the poor, we relegate those in poverty to a fate worse than death.

In preparation for the upcoming movie I am rereading the Hunger Games. This book series set in a land called Panem.  Once upon a time, Panem was known as “North America.”  Now, Panem is composed of twelve “districts” and the Capitol.  The story is told by Katniss Everdeen, a teenage girl from District 12.  This district is very poor, and starvation is a scary reality for many of its citizens.

Citizens of the Capitol, on the other hand, are generally preoccupied with excessive fashion, parties, and gossip.  They live extravagant lifestyles.  In the words of the Gospel of Luke, they wore purple and fine linens and feasted sumptuously every day.  Residents of the Capitol are removed from the poor quality of life in the Districts, and they are oblivious to the poverty that occupies the rest of Panem.

Katniss visits a party in the Capitol, and she is in a foreign world.  Katniss illegally hunts to feed her family – to keep her family from starving to death – and she finds herself in a Capitol banquet.  Food is everywhere.  She wants to eat everything, and so she limits herself to one bite per dish. After visiting ten tables, only a small sampling of the food available, Katniss is stuffed.  She can eat no more.  The Capitol residents, she notices, continue eating … and eating … and eating. 

“Why aren’t you eating?” one of the Capitol residents asks her.  “I have been, but I cannot hold another bite,” she replies.  They all laugh as if it’s the silliest thing they’ve ever heard.  No one lets that stop them in the Capitol!  They lead Katniss over to a table that holds tiny stemmed wineglasses filled with clear liquid.  The drink, she quickly learns, will make you sick, and that will let you keep eating … and eating … and eating.  All Katniss can think of are the emaciated bodies of children in her District.  The prescription to save them is more food, but that’s exactly what they cannot afford.  And here in the Capitol, they waste food for the pleasure of filling their bellies again and again. 

There has been a barrier of distance and ignorance erected between the people in the Capitol and those in the districts. They look the other way, unable to adopt an economy of sharing, the economy of God.

As often happens, I search to find us in the text. And in searching, I come across the hope that this text brings me. I find myself placing us in the position of the brothers of the rich man. The ones who are still alive. This places us in a position filled with possibility.

The rich man wishes to reach out to those he left behind, for whom there is still an opportunity to change. For whom there is still a chance for reconciliation, a chance to adopt the economy of God.

We have the words of Moses. We have the commands of the prophets. We even have the good news of Christ risen from the dead. This isn’t a story meant to scare us into living one way or another for fear of eternal punishment, it is a story to encourage us to see Christ’s resurrection for what it is: the chance to bring the kingdom of God here and now. How do we do that?

We do it through ministry. By ministering to those who are in deep need. By being ministered to by those who are in deep need. It means living life for another, and discovering what life is like for the other.

I read this joke. A man says, "I heard that the thing that causes the most tension between neighbors is a fence...so I went and tore my neighbor's fence down."

We might be better off tearing down our fences, walls, and barriers together. But do we have the strength to do that? Do we have the strength to challenge the status quo by asking, "Why do fences make good neighbors?"