Luke 16:19-31
Thank you so much for having me with you today. It’s truly a privilege to be here and share my story with you.
Did you notice what is unique in this parable that Jesus tells -- the one about me? Maybe you didn’t realize that usually, when Jesus tells parables, he never refers to people by name. But in this parable, when he tells my story, he gives me a name. That has always made me feel good. After all, in my lifetime there were so many people who looked right past me as if I wasn’t there, as if it was easier just to pretend like I didn’t exist. Something about hearing Jesus speak my name when he told my story, well, it gave me a sense of peace and pride like I’d never known before. But if you’ve spent any time at all around Jesus, then you probably know: he has a way of doing that.
I’m assuming most of you don’t speak Hebrew, and if that’s true, then you probably don’t know what the name Lazarus means. It means “the one whom God helped.” When I first got sick, when I lost my job and then when I lost the ability to even walk and I had to count on my neighbors and my family to carry me each day to the rich man’s gate where I begged, there were a few months there where I hated my name. Clearly, God had no interest in helping me. Or so I thought. And I wasn’t alone in that thought, either. Most people believed that God was punishing me, sometimes even I believed that, although I didn’t know why. I had always tried to live a faithful life, studying and keeping God’s laws, observing the Sabbath, giving what I could to help those in need.
So when I first got sick, my name, Lazarus -- the one whom God helped -- just seemed like a cruel joke. Especially when I was reduced to begging at the gate of the rich man. Now, I don’t know exactly how it is in your time, but when I was alive, most of the wealthy people felt entitled, they believed that they had earned what they had, that it belonged just to them. They looked down on the rest of us, as if it was our fault we hadn’t been more successful. And when I got sick, they sure looked down on me, as if I had done something to deserve the terrible sores that broke out all over my body.
You heard about it in the story, how I used to go to the gate of the rich man every day. I didn’t want money, all I wanted was a little bit of food to take away the gnawing hunger that made my stomach ache constantly. And the rich man had huge banquets every day -- even on the Sabbath! I had friends and family, but they were poor, too. I didn’t want to take from them what little food they had. I would have eaten the leftovers from those daily banquets the rich man had; I would have even eaten the scraps off the plates!
Back then, villages were different than they are today -- everything in your country is so big! -- they were very small, even the most lavish houses. And the rich man’s house was certainly lavish by our standards -- he had not just a house, but also a garden, and all if it surrounded by a gate. The rich man and his family and friends would have their meals outside in the garden, just beyond the gate. It was close enough that I could hear them eating and drinking and talking and laughing. I could see them as they came and went through the gate. Surely they could see me, too, but if they did, they preferred to ignore me. I guess it was easier that way.
You heard Jesus talk about it in the story, and he wasn’t exaggerating. As I lay there at the rich man’s gate, the only positive attention I got was from the dogs. In fact, it was because of those dogs that I actually started to believe again that maybe God was helping me in spite of my suffering, that maybe my name wasn’t so ironic after all.
I guess I need to explain that, because most of you probably don’t think it’s a positive thing that the dogs were licking my sores. I know it sounds kind of gross, but the truth is, those dogs showed me the only bit of kindness I knew.
You see, those dogs weren’t pets -- the rich man had dogs because he had the biggest house and property in town. They were guard dogs and they were not friendly; in fact, they could be vicious -- I saw plenty of evidence of that. But for some reason, after I’d been coming and lying at the gate for a couple of months, hoping against hope that the richest man in town might take pity on me, they began showing me a kind of mercy that their master did not. And when they licked my wounds, it was a good thing. It actually relieved my pain, if only for a short time, and sometimes even helped the wounds to heal. And frankly, it meant something to me that a creature -- any creature -- would treat me kindly.
Once the dogs began showing me kindness, it restored a sense of dignity to me, as shameful as it was to lay there every day, begging. And gradually, the frustration I felt with the rich man and his rich friends dissolved. That’s how I knew that God was helping me, even in my suffering. Because the anger and frustration I felt never could have gone away on its own.
You see, even though the rich man and his wealthy colleagues pretended like I didn’t exist, I couldn’t bring myself to hate them. A lot of people have asked me why, once I got to heaven and received mercy and comfort from Father Abraham, why I didn’t gloat over the fact that the rich man was condemned to a life of torture in Hades. The truth is, I felt sorry for him. I don’t think he was a bad person, but all that money, all that wealth, just made it hard for him to see clearly. I mean, even in Hades, when he saw me up in heaven with Abraham, he still seemed to think that I was beneath him even then, and that he could order me around, to get him water or to go warn his brothers. And the truth is, I would have. I would have gladly helped him. Because maybe then he would have seen the truth: that none of us are so different from one another. Even in my earthly suffering, I eventually came to see that God helped me -- even me. I had a place to go each day and even though sometimes it was awful to hear the rich man and his friends feasting just beyond the gate, sometimes it wasn’t so bad. I could close my eyes and pretend I was one of the ones feasting. And the dogs comforted me. Even in my suffering, I was still Lazarus, the one whom God helped. And, of course, once my earthly suffering was over, I received eternal comfort and peace in heaven.
Which brings up a question: why would I ever come back? Especially when, in the story Jesus tells, Abraham refuses to let me go back to the rich man’s brothers and warn them to change their ways. Well, I’m not back to warn you. You’ve got the Bible, you have the words of the prophets like the ones your pastor read from the book of Amos. You have the words of Jesus. And all these make it pretty clear that God wants justice, and for us to have justice on earth, the ones who have the most are going to have to recognize that what they have comes from God, and God calls them share with the ones who have the least. But, like I said, I really didn’t come back to talk about that.
What I want to tell you is this. I’m not the only one named Lazarus. The truth is, no matter what name your parents gave you, you are one whom God helps. We all are. That’s what I came to realize when I discovered that I could find peace even in the midst of my suffering. Our God wants, more than anything else, to be with us in all things, in every circumstance. If you are one of the fortunate ones, someone who has material resources, enough to share, then you will experience God’s love when you help God’s people, especially the ones who are suffering. If you are one of those in the midst of a time of terrible suffering, for whatever reason, then God especially longs to be with you and to give you some measure of comfort in the midst of your suffering, something that tells you that you are one whom God loves and you never have to doubt that. And God is preparing a place for you where you will know peace and comfort and an end to suffering, just as I have.
I guess I’m really here because God’s love -- the kind of love that Jesus shows us -- is contagious. I want to tell my story because I want to spread that love around. If you’re here today, it must be, at least in part, because you have experienced that love -- in some way, it has touched your life. So I want to tell you to share that love, spread it around however you can, tell your story to whomever will listen. Who knows? You might just bring comfort to one who has forgotten or who never knew that we are all Lazaruses -- those whom God helps.
Endnote:
Credit goes to Kenneth Bailey’s chapter on this parable in the book Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes which offered excellent historical background and informed my interpretation of this passage.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Monday, September 13, 2010
Lost (sermon, Sept. 12, 2010)
Luke 15:1-10
Exodus 32:1-14
When I was in the sixth grade, my class had the opportunity to spend three weeks in London. One day, thirteen of us, two teachers and eleven students, set out to go sightseeing, which involved riding the subway. We waited a few minutes on the crowded platform for our train, and when it finally arrived, we pushed ourselves on, the teachers bringing up the rear. But when only half of our group was on the train the car simply ran out of room and before the rest of the students and the two teachers could get on, the doors began to close. For a moment, as the train began to pull away, we were terrified, and our teachers looked panicked. Then one teacher began frantically shouting, “Get off at the next stop! Get off at the next stop!”
We got off at the next stop and waited for the rest of our group to catch up, which they did within ten minutes. For years, I kept a framed picture in my room of those few minutes we spent on the subway platform, waiting. My friends lounged on a bench, with expressions on their faces that revealed the delicious sense of freedom we felt and the total absence of fear or worry. When our group was together again, the teachers made it clear that from then on, if we got separated, we were to stay put, and wait to be found, since to do otherwise would just get us more lost.
Not long after the Israelites escaped their life of slavery in Egypt, their leader, Moses, received the Ten Commandments from God and passed them on to the people. The very first commandment was this: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.”
Seems pretty straightforward, right? But God has a few other things to talk to Moses about, so shortly after Moses delivers the Ten Commandments to the people, he disappears again up Mount Sinai, leaving the Israelites waiting...and waiting...and waiting for his return. And the longer they wait without Moses, their leader, the one who represents God for them, the more they feel hopelessly, profoundly lost. But instead of staying right where they are and trusting that Moses would return to find them, they start looking for ways to feel like God is right there in their midst again.
Last week, just in time for all the back-to-school excitement, the New York Times published an article called “Forget What You Know about Good Study Habits.” As the title suggests, science has shown that most of the assumptions we have about good study habits are, in fact, wrong. The researchers also learned something surprising about tests. It turns out that tests aren’t just a way of assessing how well a student has learned the material, they are also a powerful tool for helping students retain what they’ve learned. When you sit down to a test that challenges you and makes you think hard, all that information gets more deeply anchored in your mind and you have a better chance of recalling it later. Tests are some of the best tools we have for learning. (1)
With Moses back up on Mount Sinai with God, the Israelites face a test for which they feel woefully unprepared. Without their leader, without their representative from God, they begin to think that maybe God isn’t with them anymore, that maybe God has in fact abandoned them. They feel utterly lost.
When we feel lost, creating idols is one of the first things we do. Sometimes we substitute something else for God, usually something that makes us feel good, that masks the fear we feel when we sense that we are lost and alone: money, food, alcohol, and work are just a few of these things. The other way we create idols is more subtle, but no less dangerous: we make God into something God is not, often something that looks like what we think God should look like. Sometimes we decide God must look just like a certain person, a spiritual mentor, whether a pastor, parent, or teacher. Sometimes we associate God too closely with a beloved tradition in the church, like a particular style of worship. No matter how we do it, though, the outcome is clear: we distort God’s image and begin to worship something that is not God.
Most people who read this passage believe that what the Israelites did was the first thing: they took something that was not God and worshipped it as a god. It’s no wonder we make this assumption, since the text says that after Aaron made the golden calf he brought it before the Israelites and proclaimed, “These are your gods, O Israel!” But in Hebrew, the original language of the text, the word for gods in the plural is the same as the word for the one true God. So it is just as likely that Aaron said, “This is your God, O Israel.” In other words, it’s not that the Israelites are trying to replace God with the golden calf; instead they’re trying to create something that can represent God for them while Moses is gone. (2)
It’s an understandable mistake. After all, they were on a long journey, far from home, even if home was slavery in Egypt. They want God to stay with them, to be a tangible presence. As long as Moses was around, they had that. But they soon forgot that it wasn’t Moses who had brought the Israelites out of the land of Egypt, even though Moses was their leader: it was God! Remember the first commandment: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt...” The Israelites were not unlike the four year-old who says to her friend, the pastor’s daughter, “You’re so lucky that your daddy is Jesus.” It’s an understandable mistake for a preschooler, but the Israelites are supposed to know better.
In the children’s book The Kissing Hand, a raccoon who is afraid to go to school gets a kiss from his mother on the palm of his hand so that all day during school, he can look at his hand and know that his mother’s love is with him. (3) Children need these reassurances that their parents are near, even when they feel alone. This is why so many children have special blankets or stuffed animals from which they become inseparable. Because without these tangible representatives of their parents, they feel scared. They feel lost, alone. Only over time do they understand and truly believe that when their parents say goodnight or leave the room, they will eventually return.
At this point in their salvation history, the Israelites have not yet learned to trust that whether they can see, feel, or sense God, God is still with them. It’s a difficult lesson for all of us. We all tend to revert to our childlike fears when we face a time of confusion or doubt, and it is incredibly tempting at those times to make God into something we can handle, something that makes sense to us, something that is predictable, that we don’t have to fear.
When God sees what the Israelites have done, God is furious -- furious enough, in fact, that God is ready to to give up on the people altogether. But with a little reminder from Moses, God does remember, and God’s love for the Israelites overcomes God’s anger. Wronged by a fickle, fearful people, God refuses to let them stay lost. God refuses to abandon the people God loves and instead commits once again to pursuing them, to doing whatever it takes to find them, no matter how lost they are.
This is the God Jesus describes in the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin. He tells these parables because the Pharisees and the scribes, the ones who thought they had figured out exactly what God was like, were infuriated that Jesus, this prophet, this God-representative, was hanging out with sinners, those who were utterly lost. So Jesus asks a question, “which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?”
The answer? Well, sorry, Jesus, but none of us would do that. I mean, if we were shepherds with a hundred sheep and one went missing, would we really leave ninety-nine sheep alone to find the one? To do so was to take a huge risk that another sheep would get lost or, worse, eaten by a wolf. No decent shepherd would do that. And Jesus knows it. No, you wouldn’t, Jesus is saying. But God would. (4)
The same logic holds with the woman who lost a coin. Yes, we would probably all do what she did and search the house for a lost twenty dollar bill, but would we then turn around and spend a hundred bucks on a party for our friends and neighbors to celebrate? No, of course not. But God would. God has promised to be our God. God has promised that we are God’s people. And God will find us. No matter what it takes, no matter how lost we have gotten ourselves. God will find us. Every time.
My friend Amy has terrible eyesight. Without contacts or glasses, she can barely see this far in front of her face. As a child, she loved to go to the beach with her family and play in the ocean, and she would inevitably stay in the water longer than anyone else, usually drifting with the current far from the family blanket. Since she couldn’t wear her glasses in the water, when she would come back onto the beach, she couldn’t see her family. The only way she could find them was to get as close as she could to the people lounging on their beach towels. That method never worked well and was always embarrassing. So Amy finally learned that the only thing to do when she came in from the water was to stand on the beach and wait for her family to come to her and lead her back to their blanket. And they always did.
On this journey of faith we all have times when we know Amy’s momentary sense of terror, as we wait, vulnerable and afraid, wet and cold, utterly alone, completely lost, wondering if this time God really has abandoned us for good; waiting and hoping against hope that God will see us standing there and claim us and take us home. In those moments may we remember, may it be imbedded deep in our souls, that very first commandment, “I am the Lord Your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.” And may we trust that our God -- who has already claimed us in the waters of baptism -- will search high and low until every lost soul is found. Amen.
Endnotes:
1. Benedict Carey, “Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits.” The New York Times, Sept. 8, 2010. Online here.
2. Thanks to Rolf Jacobsen for this interpretation, found in his commentary on the passage at Working Preacher. Online here.
3. Audrey Penn, The Kissing Hand. Tanglewood Press, 2006.
4. David Lose suggests this interpretation in his Dear Working Preacher column “Desperate” for September 12. Online here.
Exodus 32:1-14
When I was in the sixth grade, my class had the opportunity to spend three weeks in London. One day, thirteen of us, two teachers and eleven students, set out to go sightseeing, which involved riding the subway. We waited a few minutes on the crowded platform for our train, and when it finally arrived, we pushed ourselves on, the teachers bringing up the rear. But when only half of our group was on the train the car simply ran out of room and before the rest of the students and the two teachers could get on, the doors began to close. For a moment, as the train began to pull away, we were terrified, and our teachers looked panicked. Then one teacher began frantically shouting, “Get off at the next stop! Get off at the next stop!”
We got off at the next stop and waited for the rest of our group to catch up, which they did within ten minutes. For years, I kept a framed picture in my room of those few minutes we spent on the subway platform, waiting. My friends lounged on a bench, with expressions on their faces that revealed the delicious sense of freedom we felt and the total absence of fear or worry. When our group was together again, the teachers made it clear that from then on, if we got separated, we were to stay put, and wait to be found, since to do otherwise would just get us more lost.
Not long after the Israelites escaped their life of slavery in Egypt, their leader, Moses, received the Ten Commandments from God and passed them on to the people. The very first commandment was this: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.”
Seems pretty straightforward, right? But God has a few other things to talk to Moses about, so shortly after Moses delivers the Ten Commandments to the people, he disappears again up Mount Sinai, leaving the Israelites waiting...and waiting...and waiting for his return. And the longer they wait without Moses, their leader, the one who represents God for them, the more they feel hopelessly, profoundly lost. But instead of staying right where they are and trusting that Moses would return to find them, they start looking for ways to feel like God is right there in their midst again.
Last week, just in time for all the back-to-school excitement, the New York Times published an article called “Forget What You Know about Good Study Habits.” As the title suggests, science has shown that most of the assumptions we have about good study habits are, in fact, wrong. The researchers also learned something surprising about tests. It turns out that tests aren’t just a way of assessing how well a student has learned the material, they are also a powerful tool for helping students retain what they’ve learned. When you sit down to a test that challenges you and makes you think hard, all that information gets more deeply anchored in your mind and you have a better chance of recalling it later. Tests are some of the best tools we have for learning. (1)
With Moses back up on Mount Sinai with God, the Israelites face a test for which they feel woefully unprepared. Without their leader, without their representative from God, they begin to think that maybe God isn’t with them anymore, that maybe God has in fact abandoned them. They feel utterly lost.
When we feel lost, creating idols is one of the first things we do. Sometimes we substitute something else for God, usually something that makes us feel good, that masks the fear we feel when we sense that we are lost and alone: money, food, alcohol, and work are just a few of these things. The other way we create idols is more subtle, but no less dangerous: we make God into something God is not, often something that looks like what we think God should look like. Sometimes we decide God must look just like a certain person, a spiritual mentor, whether a pastor, parent, or teacher. Sometimes we associate God too closely with a beloved tradition in the church, like a particular style of worship. No matter how we do it, though, the outcome is clear: we distort God’s image and begin to worship something that is not God.
Most people who read this passage believe that what the Israelites did was the first thing: they took something that was not God and worshipped it as a god. It’s no wonder we make this assumption, since the text says that after Aaron made the golden calf he brought it before the Israelites and proclaimed, “These are your gods, O Israel!” But in Hebrew, the original language of the text, the word for gods in the plural is the same as the word for the one true God. So it is just as likely that Aaron said, “This is your God, O Israel.” In other words, it’s not that the Israelites are trying to replace God with the golden calf; instead they’re trying to create something that can represent God for them while Moses is gone. (2)
It’s an understandable mistake. After all, they were on a long journey, far from home, even if home was slavery in Egypt. They want God to stay with them, to be a tangible presence. As long as Moses was around, they had that. But they soon forgot that it wasn’t Moses who had brought the Israelites out of the land of Egypt, even though Moses was their leader: it was God! Remember the first commandment: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt...” The Israelites were not unlike the four year-old who says to her friend, the pastor’s daughter, “You’re so lucky that your daddy is Jesus.” It’s an understandable mistake for a preschooler, but the Israelites are supposed to know better.
In the children’s book The Kissing Hand, a raccoon who is afraid to go to school gets a kiss from his mother on the palm of his hand so that all day during school, he can look at his hand and know that his mother’s love is with him. (3) Children need these reassurances that their parents are near, even when they feel alone. This is why so many children have special blankets or stuffed animals from which they become inseparable. Because without these tangible representatives of their parents, they feel scared. They feel lost, alone. Only over time do they understand and truly believe that when their parents say goodnight or leave the room, they will eventually return.
At this point in their salvation history, the Israelites have not yet learned to trust that whether they can see, feel, or sense God, God is still with them. It’s a difficult lesson for all of us. We all tend to revert to our childlike fears when we face a time of confusion or doubt, and it is incredibly tempting at those times to make God into something we can handle, something that makes sense to us, something that is predictable, that we don’t have to fear.
When God sees what the Israelites have done, God is furious -- furious enough, in fact, that God is ready to to give up on the people altogether. But with a little reminder from Moses, God does remember, and God’s love for the Israelites overcomes God’s anger. Wronged by a fickle, fearful people, God refuses to let them stay lost. God refuses to abandon the people God loves and instead commits once again to pursuing them, to doing whatever it takes to find them, no matter how lost they are.
This is the God Jesus describes in the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin. He tells these parables because the Pharisees and the scribes, the ones who thought they had figured out exactly what God was like, were infuriated that Jesus, this prophet, this God-representative, was hanging out with sinners, those who were utterly lost. So Jesus asks a question, “which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?”
The answer? Well, sorry, Jesus, but none of us would do that. I mean, if we were shepherds with a hundred sheep and one went missing, would we really leave ninety-nine sheep alone to find the one? To do so was to take a huge risk that another sheep would get lost or, worse, eaten by a wolf. No decent shepherd would do that. And Jesus knows it. No, you wouldn’t, Jesus is saying. But God would. (4)
The same logic holds with the woman who lost a coin. Yes, we would probably all do what she did and search the house for a lost twenty dollar bill, but would we then turn around and spend a hundred bucks on a party for our friends and neighbors to celebrate? No, of course not. But God would. God has promised to be our God. God has promised that we are God’s people. And God will find us. No matter what it takes, no matter how lost we have gotten ourselves. God will find us. Every time.
My friend Amy has terrible eyesight. Without contacts or glasses, she can barely see this far in front of her face. As a child, she loved to go to the beach with her family and play in the ocean, and she would inevitably stay in the water longer than anyone else, usually drifting with the current far from the family blanket. Since she couldn’t wear her glasses in the water, when she would come back onto the beach, she couldn’t see her family. The only way she could find them was to get as close as she could to the people lounging on their beach towels. That method never worked well and was always embarrassing. So Amy finally learned that the only thing to do when she came in from the water was to stand on the beach and wait for her family to come to her and lead her back to their blanket. And they always did.
On this journey of faith we all have times when we know Amy’s momentary sense of terror, as we wait, vulnerable and afraid, wet and cold, utterly alone, completely lost, wondering if this time God really has abandoned us for good; waiting and hoping against hope that God will see us standing there and claim us and take us home. In those moments may we remember, may it be imbedded deep in our souls, that very first commandment, “I am the Lord Your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.” And may we trust that our God -- who has already claimed us in the waters of baptism -- will search high and low until every lost soul is found. Amen.
Endnotes:
1. Benedict Carey, “Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits.” The New York Times, Sept. 8, 2010. Online here.
2. Thanks to Rolf Jacobsen for this interpretation, found in his commentary on the passage at Working Preacher. Online here.
3. Audrey Penn, The Kissing Hand. Tanglewood Press, 2006.
4. David Lose suggests this interpretation in his Dear Working Preacher column “Desperate” for September 12. Online here.
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