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What Will Convince Us?
Sermon by Cynthia A. Jarvis April 2, 2006, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Job 21:1-26 Luke 16:19-31
“One dies in full prosperity, being wholly at ease and secure,” rails Job in the midst of his suffering, “his loins full of milk and the marrow of his bones moist. Another dies in bitterness of soul, never having tasted of good. They lie down alike in the dust, and the worms cover them.” The end? Apparently not according to Jesus! Enter the rich man—Dives as he has come to be called from the Vulgate, Latin for rich man—dressed to the nines and a gourmand to boot. At his gate sits Lazarus (meaning God helps) covered with sores and begging for the bread the rich have used like napkins to wipe their greasy hands once they have had their fill. Dives dies in full prosperity, being wholly at ease and secure while Lazarus dies never having tasted of good. The story continues. Lazarus is carried to the bosom of Abraham while Dives is buried and wakes to the fires of Hades. He appeals to Abraham and is told that in life he enjoyed good things and Lazarus evil things; now in eternal life, Lazarus is comforted and he is in agony. Fair is fair, injustice is addressed, Job is vindicated. The end? Once again apparently not, for Jesus is still talking. Having established that there is no turning back or trading places on the other side of the grave, Dives tries to warn his brothers and means to use Lazarus as his personal messenger. Pointless! Abraham says in so many words. Lazarus can add nothing to the call God has already issued to them through the law and the prophets. Dives begs to differ: Imagine, he says, if someone goes to them from the dead! That would put the fear of God into them! But Abraham’s response ends the matter, both in the parable and between Jesus and the Pharisees: “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” Make no mistake: Dives’ riches are not at issue here, though riches are a contributing factor to his eternal separation from God. Nor is Jesus’ point the need to believe three impossible things before breakfast—like the virgin birth, the incarnation and the resurrection. At issue is our turning, our responding to God’s address, our faith. “Faith,” writes theologian Eugene Wehrli, “is not credulity about a wonder. Rather faith comes from hearing the call or the righteousness of God proclaimed.” In other words, faith is not believing that God parted the Red Sea or that Joshua fit the battle of Jericho and the walls came tumblin’ down or that Mary was a virgin or that Jesus walked on water or that Lazarus (the one in John’s gospel) was dead as a doornail and came walking out of the tomb three days later practically smelling like a rose. Faith is not credulity about a wonder. Rather faith is hearing the call of God to “go out not knowing where you are going”; faith is the response of Isaiah saying simply, “Here I am; send me!”; faith is Mary saying to the angel Gabriel: “Behold the handmade of the Lord”; faith is following Him who had no place to lay his head; faith is living to God and for the other. Before us in this season of Lent, and in the world of the parables that have been our texts, is our turning, our changing, our repenting of the lives we have led thus far for ourselves, in favor of the life given us by God to live for the other at our gate. Presumably Dives’ brothers still have a shot at living such a life except, as Wehrli goes on to note, “The rich man’s brothers, like himself…live the life of luxury, are men of the world…belong to the old age and are anchored in its values. They are completely incapable of responding to that which makes all things new. The parable,” says Wehrli, “is addressed to a society which resembles the brothers”, to a society that resembles our own. In short, the parable is addressed to us. What will convince us that the command to love God with our whole heart, mind, soul and strength and our neighbor as ourselves (the content of the law and the prophets in a nutshell) is not optional for those who would know God or for those who would follow Jesus or for those who, by way of Christ’s obedience, have become heirs to eternal life? What will convince us that the kingdom is won or lost around the kitchen table and on the streets of this city, in the bedroom behind closed doors and even in this community? What will convince us if--having heard the scriptures read and proclaimed for years having been told the news that one has been raised from the dead--what will convince us if still we remain unchanged? Sometimes we think that tragedy will convince us to live to God and for the other, or a near brush with death ourselves. The release of the World Trade Center tapes reminds me of this as does Stephen King’s commencement address to graduates at Vassar a few years ago entitled “Scaring You to Action”. Reflecting on his own experience of lying helpless by the side of the road after being hit by a van, King says “I had a MasterCard in my wallet, but when you are lying in a ditch with broken glass in your hair, no one accepts MasterCard. [Likewise] If you find yourself in the ER with a serious injury, or if the doctor tells you yeah, that lump you felt in your breast is a tumor, you can’t wave your Diners Club at it and make it go away….We all know that life is brief, but on that particular day and in the months that followed, I got a painful but extremely valuable look at life’s simple backstage truths.” Unlike Dives, King was given that look before he was laid in the grave. Maybe his look will convince us too. For King, rich as he is, one of those truths was this: “We come in naked and broke. We may be dressed when we go out, but we’re just as broke. Warren Buffett? Going to go out broke. Bill Gates? Going to go out broke. Tom Hanks? Going to go out broke. Steve King? Broke. Not a crying dime.” In a sense, we are back to Job: we lie down alike in the dust and worms cover us. “But how long in between coming in and going out?” King asks. “How long have you got to be in the chips? ‘I’m aware of the time passin’ by; they say in the end it’s the blink of an eye.’ That’s how long.” King delivered that commencement address in 2001, two years after his accident and while he was still in the throws of a painful recovery. No telling whether the word he heard about the life he had been given to lead and had missed is still as convincing some five years later. We all have known people who have had close calls, survived dire diagnoses, managed to rise out of the rubble of terrible tragedy with great resolve, only to return--after a few weeks or months or years--to being the same son-or-daughter-of-a-gun we knew and tolerated before the accident or diagnosis or tragedy supposedly changed them forever. Life in the chips or on the dole or above the fray or set in our own ways—the person untouched and unturned by God’s address that we became on our own--is a drag (literally) on the person God intends us to be. Sin it is called, though it masquerades under the guise of indifference, arrogance, insensitivity, callousness, selfishness, to name of few of our more charming traits. These traits, as the old theologians said, are deadly. They land us on the other side of the grave, according to the parable, having missed the chance to be human. One gets the sense that even on the other side of the grave, Dives will eternally not get what there is to get about a life lived for the other. That he wants to send Lazarus to his brothers from the dead, so that they will wise up before it is too late, seems to have nothing to do with the poor, the hungry, the homeless. He simply wants to let them in on the scheme that will land them in the bosom of Abraham and at the head of the table in God’s kingdom. So even in death one gets the sense that Dives will be eternally unconvinced of the truth of the gospel. What, then, I ask again, will convince us before the end and we go out? What will open our eyes to the humanity of the other in need and so open our lives to the human life we are called by God to live? “Here’s another scary story,” King goes on. “Imagine a nice little backyard, surrounded by a board fence. Dad—a pleasant fellow, a little plump, wearing and apron that says YOU MAY KISS THE COOK—is tending the barbecue. Mom and the kids are setting the picnic table by the backyard pool: fried chicken, cole slaw, potato salad, a chocolate cake for dessert. And standing around that fence, looking in, are emaciated men and women, starving children. They are silent. They only watch. “That family picnic is us, ladies and gentlemen; that backyard is America and those hungry people on the other side of the fence, watching us sit down to eat, include far too much of the rest of the world,” says King. We know this, you and I, and like Dives, for the most part, we choose not to see this, not to let it concern us overly, not—for God’s sake—to let it change us. “God’s righteousness,” note the theologians, “through the presence of Lazarus, is a humanizing call, and only as we grasp it is a humane life possible.” Or as Jesus put it, the poor are always with us, with us as the same word, the same face, the same presence made flesh in Jesus (when did we see him…?). Apparently their humanity has convinced us only to keep our distance, divert our eyes, walk on by, shelter our income. What will convince us? How is it that Albert Schweizer, when a young man in medical school, upon hearing this parable concluded that Africa was Lazarus at the doorstep of Europe and went out not knowing where he was going? How is it that in these same words we have read this morning, Schweizer bowed to God’s claim upon his days? In Bonhoeffer’s words, I suspect Schweizer simply obeyed, took the first step, followed. “It is the other way around” says Wehrli in sum: “Those who in some halting way begin to hear the word of God are those to whom [Christ] comes confirming…that new life of faith. It is not resurrection that convinces, but it is the resurrection of Jesus, who has already been heard with repentance, which become the assurance of [eternal life] and the inauguration of the new age toward which the believer has already turned.” Pray, then, for the hard grace of God’s hand turning you, clean contrary to your desire, toward a road, in the end, called Emmaus. There a stranger will meet you—like one raised from the dead--and, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he will interpret to you the scriptures. If this should happen, invite him to your table. Do not leave him to beg again outside your gate. For in the breaking of bread, you will recognize the human being God intended you to be from the beginning and I promise you, you will be changed. Thanks be to God. |