We Are In This Together
Posted on Sep 25, 2016 by David Whetter
Grace and peace to you from God, our Creator, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, who abides in each of us.
Today’s gospel story is unique when it comes to all the other parables that Jesus told. First of all, this is the only parable in which one of the characters actually has a name. Secondly, this is the only parable in which the whole story doesn’t take place on earth. This story has to do with life after death and this story seems to be saying, if you living a comfortable life now, then your life after death won’t be so comfortable and you are struggling in this earth, you won’t have to worry after you die. But is that what Jesus is telling us today? This story begs the question who is going to go to heaven and who is going hell? So, let’s take a little closer look at Jesus’ story.
It is important to now that Jesus tells this story as a follow-up to our story last week where Jesus ended buy saying, “You cannot serve God and wealth" (16:13). But upon hearing that, Luke immediately tells us, “The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this, and they ridiculed him” (16:14). Keep in mind, the Pharisees were basically laypeople dedicated to keeping and defending the law of Moses. They studied the law and their job was to insure that God’s law was adhered to, and so it should be no surprise when Jesus comes along with a differing interpretation of the law that there is conflict between them and Jesus.
The conflict was about different interpretations of keeping and defending the law. We have the same conflicts today with good, God-fearing Christians and with good law abiding citizens. “Keeping and defending the law, whether it is God’s Law, or our own civil law, there is often conflict over defending what we interpret to be correct. But let’s stick with God’s law. God’s law begins with the Ten Commandments, words God initially gave to her people in the Wilderness, so that they might live together in peace and harmony. There were teachings about how we are to relate to God, about stealing, murder, and even about personal relationships. All are very important to living life as God intended it to be lived and the Pharisees of Jesus’ time were quite concerned about keeping these. What do any of these laws have to do with this story of the rich man and Lazarus? Well, at first glance one would say nothing, but also as part of the law, God had instructed her people to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18), a command that once given by Moses, has been lifted up by the prophets ever since. The prophet Amos said woe to the rich who “lounge on their couches” and enjoy delicacies (does that sound familiar?) but “are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph” (Amos 6:4-6). And of course, centuries later, Jesus would remind all that this command was second only to loving God with all our hearts.
Now we come to today’s story. A rich man spent his life witnessing a poor, sick man at his gate daily, while the rich man enjoyed life and did nothing to help the poor man’s situation. When they both die, we learn that the poor man, Lazarus, seems to go to heaven, while the rich man ends up in hell. So, was the rich man condemned for his wealth? Jesus said nothing about the rich man being dishonest, greedy, or mean. My guess is this man was a follower of the law, as again Jesus never implies that he wasn’t. But, this man, even though he followed much of the law implicitly, when it came time to witness the sadness and hardship of the world around him, failed to do something about it. This man failed to love his neighbor as himself even though he had the means and the ability to do so. For this man, his understanding was, “it’s not my problem.” Does this sound familiar, at all?
You now in our baptismal vows we say that we will come to know Christ and God’s ways so that we might come to trust God, proclaim Christ in word and deed, care for others and the world God made and work for justice and peace. In a few weeks several of our confirmands will make this commitment for themselves. Our youth take this serious and back in July many of our high school youth went on a mission trip; a trip that focused on justice. Today, two of those youth, Anika Roy and Nicholas Wallenberg, want to share their story with us.
Nicholas’ Story
“When I read this passage about Lazarus and the rich man, it strikes me with the theme of serve the poor. But the more I think about it, the more I realize it’s much broader than that in the sense that it’s “serve those in need, those that are worse off than us. This summer with the mission trip we experienced serving those that are worse off than us. We served a primarily African American community in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, one of the most racially divided areas in the world. I don’t think I truly understood what it looked like for people to be in need until I served in that community. These were kids that were struggling every day to get food that had a neighborhood filled with unfathomable violence. All People’s Church (the one we were serving at while in Milwaukee) was putting on a camp that educated young kids about the civil rights movement and self-empowerment. They hired the teenagers from the church to help out. It gave all of these kids a better alternative to what they would be doing if they weren’t there, gave them a guaranteed meal, and even put a little bit of money in the teenager’s pockets. This was a perfect example of giving to those that are worse off. The staff at this church was by no means well off, and yet every day they give to people that are worse off than them. It was truly empowering, and it kind of made me wonder why I needed to take a weeklong trip, 8 hours north, in order to help those that are worse off than I am.
The number of people in MY community that are worse off than me is massive, yet there I was serving in Milwaukee. This seems really weird when you think about it. But this trip taught me so much. While I expected it to be a very one sided thing, where I came in and did work just to make those that I was serving feel happy in return for cool parties and a trip to a jelly bean factory, it was so much more than that. I felt true joy sitting through these kids songs and chants, and talking to the lady who ran the garden, and so many other things all because I was serving. This is truly an experience I would not have gotten if I stayed in my Kansas City bubble. But now that I’m back I have the drive to recreate that without sitting on a bus for 10 hours before and after which is why I firmly believe that this scripture was directed right at us; the middle class people of the suburbs. We have so many people in our presence that are sick, and starving, and homeless, and yet we don’t do much about it on our own. We only really help when our church is helping. We go serve at St. Mark’s Hope and Peace when Salem is there, we help at with pantry packs on Thursdays, but on our own we aren’t doing so hot. We walk right by the kid in the lunchroom sitting alone, we pretend not to notice the guy holding the sign needing money, we ignore the signs of depression and mental illness in our peers. This scripture is telling us to change that! God doesn’t want us to sit in here and sing him songs and read his word and confess our sin if we don’t go out and do anything about it. It’s like that annoying kid in your class that always claimed to be amazing at something but nobody ever really saw him do it. It made what he said entirely meaningless! We don’t want to have meaningless faith, do we? You know, one of the main things we were told on the mission trip is that we had to get out of our comfort zone at least once. So that’s what I would like to challenge all of us to do this week, to get out of our comfort zones and help someone in need at least once. I think something you’ll find is that, while it seems like a chore at first, the return is truly amazing.”
Anika’s Story:
“Hi, I’m Anika Roy and I’m a sophomore at Mill Valley high school. For the few that don’t know, I grew up in a town right outside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which coincidentally was the location of our mission trip this summer. When I heard that we were going to Milwaukee, I was incredibly excited, because I remembered the city only as that wonderful place where I took so many fun trips to the zoo or the art museum, or Miller Park for a Brewers game.
Then, a week before we left for our trip, I got a phone call from an important adult in my life. He said he didn't want me traveling to downtown Milwaukee because of the dangerous and terribly bad people that lived there. I told him that Milwaukee wasn’t all that bad and that we were only going to help a few people with less money than us, no big deal at all. His response was “it’s not your job to solve their issues.”
Today’s scripture kind of scares me a bit, as I’m sure I’m not the only one. The rich man in the parable witnesses Lazarus’ struggles and yet does nothing to help fix them, even as Lazarus is begging at the rich man’s feet. Although the adult from the phone call was ignorant in the sense that these people need help with issues and I was ignorant to the fact that the issues even existed, we were both acting similar to the rich man, and we all know how well the story ended for the rich man.
The mission trip however took that ignorant perspective I previously had and turned it upside down. I was expose to these children of Milwaukee who were not any more dangerous than the people from Kansas City on the trip and certainly weren’t any worse of human beings. The only real difference between us and those kids from Wisconsin that we met are the violent and racist issues occurring in their very community that they have to deal with on a daily basis that we do not. I remember painting a rain barrel one morning on the trip with the sweetest 10 year old girl. She told me all about her summer, including the fact that she could no longer go to the park with her friends after camp like she had done the previous summer. When I asked her why, she looked at me, shocked that I even had to ask, and responded with “Anika, it’s not safe.”
When I was told, “it wasn’t my job to solve the issues of the people of Milwaukee,” as awful as it sounds, there was a part of me that agreed. I wondered why they were having such a hard time just fixing it themselves and why we needed to get involved. But after spending a week in the community, hearing the stories of that young girl scared to death about basic safety, I was impacted, and I am changed. I see now that these issues of violence and hatred aren’t just going away anytime soon and affect so many more people than I could have even imagined. Just because I personally may not be discriminated against for the color of my skin, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t my job to do something to prevent it from happening to others. God has put me here on earth to be a light. To go out and share his love and his word through my actions and to not be ignorant towards those obstacles I may face while doing so, but to face them head on. Thanks to the 2016 mission trip, I will strive every day for the next year, and hopefully the rest of my life, to do just that. I challenge you to do the same. Thank you.”
As you heard from both Nicholas and Anika, as hard as we might try, we cannot ignore God’s command to love our neighbor. The command to love our neighbor applies in ALL life’s situations. Did you know that from January 1, 2016 until today over 170 black men have been killed in incidents involving law enforcement in this country? That death rate is about nine times higher than any other demographic as a percentage of the population. Now, I am sure some of those killings were justified, but that isn’t the issue! The issue is that we have serious problems in this country with relationships between races and apparent unhealthy relationships between certain communities, most often African American communities and the law enforcement community. We have to stop ignoring this problem. We have to stop arguing over laws, that are all quite valid, but do not address the issues of racism and building healthy relationships between various racial communities. The chasm has gotten so big, that it seems impossible to cross today. Recently there’s been controversy about the phrase “Black lives matter.” Some people object that we should say instead “All lives matter.” And as a general principle, that’s true — every person’s life, regardless of color, is important. But in a situation in which black lives — and especially lives of young black men — seem particularly threatened, to say “All lives matter” is a distraction from the core issue. The particular thing that needs to be said — and given attention to — has to do with the lives that are being treated as of lesser value.
Today, Jesus is reminding us that saying, and even doing, things that themselves are right can be a way to evade the responsibility of saying and doing the right thing about the situation you’re faced with. Brothers and sisters, we cannot continue to sit at our comfortable tables, in our comfortable homes, in our comfortable communities and ignore the issues of this world. We have been commanded to love our neighbor. In our baptisms our parents promised they would raise us in the faith so we would learn to work for justice an peace, and as adults, we have each confirmed our baptismal vows for ourselves and we have promised to proclaim Christ in word and deed and seek justice for the world. If we are condemned some day, like the rich man in this story, it won’t be because we were rich, it will be because, like this rich man, we ignored the world around as we sat in our comfortable beds of ivory, as Amos warned. Our condemnation will be because we failed to seek justice in a world filled with injustice. I pray this is not the case. Jesus has warned us. Jesus has challenged us and as baptized children of God we are called to be the hands and feet of Christ, in this world. May we not wait until it is too late. Amen.