Law, Prophets, and Fiscal Compassion-September 25 2016 Sermon

Your

September 25 2016
Your Money­:Living Life Abundantly

19 ‘There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. 2 0 And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, 21 who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. 2 2 The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham.* The rich man also died and was buried. 2 3 In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side.* 2 4 He called out, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.”

25 But Abraham said, “Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. 26 Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.” 2 7 He said, “Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house— 2 8 for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.” 2 9 Abraham replied, “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.” 3 0 He said, “No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” 3 1 He said to him, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” ’

This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.

Let us pray: Holy God, pour out your Holy Spirit on us gathered here and on our worship. Open our eyes, ears, and minds that we might experience your word afresh. Amen.

This is the fourth and last week of our preaching series ‘Your Money: ­Living Life Abundantly.’ We have looked at parables pertaining to unbridled greed, the accumulation of wealth, and the credit manager who helped restore economic vitality to his neighbors by slashing their debt payment. This morning, our parable comes right on the heels of the one from last week as Jesus continues to teach about the kingdom of God and the role of money in it.

During the course of a lifetime there are times and events that if you could do them over a second time you would. You would do them differently. Or if you knew a friend or a family member was about to venture into a similar situation you would offer words of wisdom and experience so they might choose differently than you did. Spare them the pain, the heartache, the sleepless nights.

I imagine parents and grandparents could be especially prone to this: sparing their child the difficult experience of learning a lesson the hard way when it could be bypassed altogether in the sharing of a personal story. But then again sometimes the clearest and most enduring lessons, the ones that stick around the longest are the ones etched into your psyche because you lived it deep in your bones. You wish to convey the urgency and gravity of your experience to another to spare them similar pain.

Our parable ends right at this point, the rich man who has carved out a place in eternal torment is begging Father Abraham to send Lazarus back to his five living brothers. Have Lazarus give a word of caution to the brothers­ offer them a glimpse of eternal bliss and torment so they might choose wisely how to live in this life. I feel for the rich man at this point. I would want to send warning to my wife, Keeli, and sister, Heather, if a day ever arose in which I could spare them from some sort of suffering. I like to believe this is something we would all seek to do for the sake of our loved ones.

But the rich man is given a stark word from Father Abraham. Lazarus isn’t going back to the land of the living to do the rich man’s bidding. The rich man’s family has the fullness of God’s vision already available to them in the Mosaic law and the prophets. If they can’t make sense of how to handle their money and wealth from the religious tradition they already have, no messenger or word of caution from the afterlife is going to change their hearts.

There are a few things going on in Jesus’ parable that are worth noting. As is the case throughout the gospels, the ministry of Jesus Christ is firmly anchored in the Judaic tradition. Jesus is a 1st century Jew, whose ministry is an extension of the covenant that God made with Abraham, Moses, and King David. When Jesus is asked by a lawyer what the greatest commandment is, he does not deviate from the tradition. His teaching sits squarely in Judaic practice. He answers the lawyer, echoing the Shema from Deuteronomy: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.[ a ] 5 L ove the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” After telling the lawyer that the second greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself, Jesus suggests that all commandments given to the ancient Israelites and recorded in Exodus and Deuteronomy, and all the teachings of the prophets such as Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Malachi depend upon those two commandments.

All the law and the prophets depend upon those two commandments, instilled first in the hearts of the ancient Israelites through the 1st century Jewish communities in which Jesus has his livelihood. Perhaps this is why Father Abraham is so blunt and seemingly unbending in the rich man’s request to send word to his living brothers. The rich man’s brothers have all they need from the stories and commandments of their faith and the prophetic truth tellers of their tradition to know what God expects of them. Hearing it again one more time will not change their hearts. I can almost hear Abraham adding ‘they should know better’ to his exchange with the rich man.

The Mosaic covenant, expressed in the 613 commandments for the Israelite people makes provisions so that the most economically disenfranchised people in the community have a way to live. Don’t harvest the entire field so that if someone needs to pluck heads of grain there will be a little left over to do that. Don’t pick every bunch of grapes from the vineyard­ leave a few for those who have no land to plow themselves. Don’t be hardhearted or tight fisted toward the poor among you­be open handed and lend whatever is needed. These teachings are the untold back story that serve as indictment for the ostentatious and luxurious lifestyle of the rich man who pays no notice to Lazarus at his gate. Lazarus is the invisible neighbor of the rich man who though suffers immensely in this life, finds hospitality in reclining next to Abraham at an eternal banquet.

This past Wednesday night in Bible study, a question came up about why Jesus commends his mother to the care of the beloved disciple during his last moments of life. A widow would depend upon her sons or her brother in law for financial livelihood. Without a close male relative to care for her, a widow would become one of the most vulnerable individuals in society. She would be left with seemingly no way to make an income or her housing status would be tenuous at best. The community’s treatment of its widows was a visible demonstration of fidelity, trust, and faithfulness to God. If a community was unwilling to care for its widows, leaving them destitute on the street to fend for themselves, it was a breach of covenant with God. God had instructed the Israelite people not to cause suffering to widows, orphans, and the strangers in the midst of community. The prophetic tradition of Isaiah and Jeremiah reminded the Israelite people to uphold the rights of the orphan, defend the cause of the widow, and not to oppress the refugee or stranger.

You can tell a lot about a faith community, even an entire nation about how it treats widows, orphans, refugees, and those who are poor. This has been one of the biblical markers of faithfulness to God across the two testaments. How are we doing? Do we see ourselves in the actions of the rich man? How do we pass by invisible neighbors at the gate?

Over the past three months, as I have come to know you, I have visited in homes, and even some business offices. You have commended me to go visit others in nearly every part of Kingston Springs. I have become quite familiar with some neighborhoods and stretches of road, visiting them far more often than others. But it was in a visit with someone who is not part of this faith community that they commended me to go and visit some other parts of town, ones that I had passed by often because there were no church members currently living there. I realized in reflecting on today’s text that I resembled the rich man passing through his gate each day far more than I wanted to. Some of our neighbors had become invisible to me as I moved about from one end of town to the other. This is not the greater way of love and charity for Lazarus is our neighbor.

In 1965, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr addressed this parable so that his hearers and us who live as the five brothers might heed the cautionary tale and call Lazarus, neighbor, brother, beloved.

“There is nothing in that parable,” King says, “that says Dives [the Latin name for the rich man] went to hell because he was rich. Jesus never made a universal indictment against all wealth.” King names the story of the rich young ruler, but says that in that story, when Jesus tells the man to go, sell all he has, and give his money to the poor, Jesus was “prescribing individual surgery, not setting forth a universal diagnosis.” King moves on, pointing us toward the kind of symbolic long­ distance call that takes place between Dives in hell and Abraham, with Lazarus, in heaven. King claims that, “Dives went to hell not because he was rich, but because he passed by Lazarus every day and never really saw him.” He moves on to say that, “Dives went to hell because he allowed Lazarus to become invisible…because he failed to use his wealth to bridge the gulf that separated him from his brother Lazarus. In fact, he didn’t even realize that Lazarus was his brother.”[5]

King continues: “I submit this is the challenge facing the church, to be as concerned as our Christ about the least of these, our brothers and sisters. And we must do it because in the final analysis we are all to live together, rich and poor, lettered and unlettered, tutored and untutored. Somehow we are tied in a single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.” [5]

We have heard the instruction from Moses, the calls for justice from Isaiah and Jeremiah, the parables of Jesus the Christ, and know well enough to change our hearts and lives so that Lazarus who was once invisible to the rich man at the gate, finds welcome and a place at the table among us.

Bless you in the name of the Everlasting God, through the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.