Bridging the Chasm
The hard messages from Jesus keep rolling out of Luke’s gospel.
Let’s begin by situating this story within the broader teachings in Luke’s gospel. Two weeks ago, you will recall that Jesus is being hounded by the religious authorities. In the parable of the lost sheep, Jesus challenges the religious authorities’ care and concern for the marginalized. And in last week’s text about the shrewd manager, Jesus pivots toward his disciples to teach.
Off camera, if you will, in the space between last week’s text and this week’s, the pharisees (the religious authorities) have once again criticized Jesus’ teaching. Luke 15: 14 - 15 reads:
The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this, and they ridiculed him. 15 So he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others, but God knows your hearts, for what is prized by humans is an abomination in the sight of God.
It’s a pretty direct strike (once again) by Jesus naming the misplaced priorities of those tending the religious institution. Today’s parable is a continuation of Jesus’ critique in response to them. And it’s not such a vague teaching.
This is one of those stories that church-going folks are familiar with, and when we have that familiarity, it helps to step back and revisit with fresh eyes.
Jesus is in dramatic story telling mode here – this is a story rich with detail. Beginning with the rich man clothed in sumptuous fabric and Lazarus clothed in sores, hearers can immediately “see” the social and economic station of each man, the contrast between them.
In the story, the rich man is never named. He is always just identified as “the rich man.” But Lazarus is known by name throughout.
The rich man possesses some brazen entitlement. After ignoring Lazarus at his gate during their lifetime, in the afterlife the rich man sees at Lazarus situated with Father Abraham and asks for Lazarus to be sent to his location in Hades to serve the rich man, to cool his thirst, to soothe his agony. Even as he looks at their differing circumstances now, rather than question the why of that, the rich man asks to be served by the one he understands as below him.
And when Abraham says that will not happen, the rich man pleads for Lazarus to serve as a messenger of salvation to the rich man’s surviving family, so that they are warned to change their lives so they don’t suffer the same fate in Hades.
This is a story that seems full of some straightforward right and wrong ways of being for some readers.
At first blush, one takeaway might be that the rich are damned, destined to the thirst and heat of the underworld in the afterlife, and those who suffer in the earthly life instead rest in the afterlife with faith ancestors and prophets.
But I think it is more complicated and nuanced than that.
In the arc of Jesus’ teaching throughout Luke, from Mary’s proclamation of justice for the lowly and the hungry in her song of praise in Luke 1, to Jesus’ first teaching in the temple, claiming his place in bringing good news to the poor, to teaching upon teaching that lift up the poor and marginalized, Luke’s gospel continues to highlight the risks of privilege to be sure.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve lifted up two challenges in these teachings:
gospel means good news, and so there must be good news here for the hearer, and none of these stories are simply boiled down into a single teaching.
Scripture is the living word of God – and that means it touches us where we are. Parables are multi-dimensional and matter in history and in the present.
So let’s explore a bit…
As I was reading this week, there was a new detail in this story that settled in my heart. In verse 26, as Abraham rejects the rich man’s request to have Lazarus come cool his tongue, Abraham references the chasm that is between Lazarus where he rests with Abraham and the rich man. And Abraham says that the chasm is fixed.
In this reading, the chasm can be understood as the distance between their afterlife circumstances or the distance between their worldly stations in life.
That word chasm touched in me a definition of sin which is separation from God. There is a separation between the rich man and Lazarus – a separation of circumstances made even more dramatic by the rich man’s failure to seek a relationship that addresses Lazarus’ worldly conditions. And as a result, there is a separation between the rich man and God. There are two chasms, and they are related.
What would it have looked like for the rich man to have a relationship with Lazarus?
And what does it look like today for “the rich” to have a relationship with the Lazarus’ of this day?
I can’t help but think about the pleading of the rich man. Send Lazarus to warn my people… If he appears to them, they will understand. Because they haven’t been paying much attention to what the tradition says, what the church ways, what the way of life says.
I wonder how many messengers I’ve had in my life that I’ve failed to hear and understand clearly?
I know that there are folks who have expressed discomfort about our conference’s focus on the work of anti-racism. There is the initial sense of being accused of racism, without actually being aware of having acted on any racist intent. No one wants to own that…but I wonder if for generations we have failed to be in right relationship with our black and brown oppressed siblings in Christ… and we haven’t received, in generation after generation, the full meaning of the prophets’ teaching about the marginalized, about justice, about God’s love, about right relationships with others and with our money.
I’ve also thought a lot this week about the political mud-slinging of flying asylum seekers to Martha’s Vineyard and bussing banned books into Florida. Both things make a statement but neither brings the privileged into meaningful relationship with the oppressed. Neither addresses the needs of the least and the lost directly and relationally. Neither is about a person-to-person desire to understand, to relate, to love, to unburden.
Again, I wonder how many messengers I have had in my life that I’ve failed to hear, to understand?
When we fail to be in relationship with one another, especially across chasms of difference, we fail to be in relationship with God.
And that is part of the definition of sin – a separation from God.
How then do we listen and hear and understand to the prophets today, draw close across differences and recognize our interconnectedness even when we are divided by social, economic and political status?
Kendra Mohn, Lead Pator at Trinity Lutheran in Fort Worth TX notes this in the Working Preacher commentary:
The parable serves to refocus the hearer on what we do with what we have, how our vocations serve our neighbors. Virtue is not determined by wealth, type of employment, gender, immigration status, or body type. Virtue is borne out in deeds.
I think we can keep going from there because I think it is an even bigger question than what we do with what we have – if virtue is borne out of deeds, deeds call us into relationship – both with people in need and with the God who calls us through God’s word which includes the prophets.
Do we ask God daily for guidance about to whom we relate, how we use our resources, what we might need to open ourselves to learning more about? If we do, we might find God speaking in surprising and direct ways.
This week my prayer is that we will mind the chasm – tend to the places where we are distant from one another, especially distant from those whose lives are very different from our own. My prayer is that we will seek ways to bridge that chasm so that our hearts are touching one another and being touched by God.
May it be so.
Amen.
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