Sermon
September 25, 2016
Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 21
+Marc Andrus
How does the heart come alive, warm to the needs of those who suffer? That is the question at the heart of the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. What this parable is not: a blanket approval of poverty; a general condemnation of wealth.
This question, of how the heart can, once deadened, be brought to life again, is that which occupies the poet George Herbert in The Flower:
Who would have thought my shriveled heart
Could have recovered greenness? It was gone
Quite underground; as flowers depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown,
Where they together
All the hard weather,
Dead to the world, keep house unknown.
... These are thy wonders, Lord of love,
To make us see we are but flowers that glide;
Which when we once can find and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us where to bide;
Who would be more,
Swelling through store,
Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.
Like a poem, every parable may be thought of as a little world, a world in which there are not many distinct features, not a great deal of detail, or “world-building,” as it is called in fantasy and science-fiction writing. There is, however, enough world-building to intrigue us, and once we have accepted the invitation to enter this demi-monde, to give us some room to move around, discover things about, mostly, ourselves.
The central, transformative feature of the parable worlds that Jesus creates is found once we are inside the parable. So let me say a few things about the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus that caught my attention, before arriving at the question that lies at the center of the parable: the question about coming alive in the midst of life.
First, this is the only parable of Jesus in which a proper name is used, and it is no ordinary name, it is the name of one of Jesus’ closest friends, the brother of Mary and Martha of Bethany. The rich man is nameless; the poor man is identified as Lazarus. This reversal of the norm – Jesus lived in a world that is like ours in that there are many, many humble people who are nameless, and where there are a few people who gain widespread name recognition.
‘Lazarus’ was a popular Jewish name at the time of Jesus, so despite the fact that both Luke and John identify the three siblings who are Jesus’ friends by name, and uses the male name, Lazarus, also in this parable, it could be like telling a story today using a currently-popular name. But the reference to being raised from the dead makes this less likely – Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary is the man Jesus raised from the dead.
Maybe Jesus is pointing to an experience, from within the world of the parable to the shared world of his listeners, to press his point: the awakening of the heart does not take place by either having a divinely-given set of teachings (the Law of Moses, the witness of the prophets) nor even by the return of someone from the dead. The Gospel of John relates that after Lazarus was brought back from the dead by Jesus, far from being won over by this miracle, there were those who tried to kill Lazarus in order to erase his story from the minds of their contemporaries. As Father Abraham says in the parable, not even the witness of one returned from the dead can’t awaken a heart so stony that the witness of Moses and the prophets won’t work!
Another feature of the parabolic world is calling upon the Patriarch Abraham as the rich man’s father. Jesus derides his opponents who bolster their status by saying, “We have Abraham as our father.” “God can make children of Abraham out of stones,” Jesus replies – it is not one’s lineage that counts, but one’s deeds of compassion. The world of the parable surprises us, though. Abraham speaks across the great chasm that separates the rich man from the Beloved Community and says, “Child...”. I think this single word, “child” holds the key to the question of how the heart may be awakened.
The great Parable of the Prodigal Son, told by Luke only a few verses before the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus may be seen as taking place in the same parabolic world. After we have followed the career of the self-centered, profligate younger son, and he has been received into the bosom of his father, we meet a cold-hearted older brother. After the older brother pours forth his bitterness at father for having welcomed back the prodigal, the loving father says, “Child...”.
Like the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, we don’t see the end of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. If, however, we feel within ourselves a tug, a slight tremor of life when the parent says, “Child” to the cold-hearted one, we have not only entered the story fully, but we know how it ends.
Admonitions, divine teachings, exhortations, appearances from the dead, all of these may leave us unmoved. The experience of love that is “out of the blue,” unmerited, and unconditional, this alone is what cracks the husk that has built up around my heart. The rich man in torment may not know it at that moment, but Abraham’s loving reply to the cry, “Father!” – the acknowledgment of relationship that is not destroyed by sin – this tender reply, “Child” is the beginning of a new life for the rich man.
How have you heard God speaking “Child” to you? The appearance of the Resurrected Jesus Christ is not a device to convince us to change, but the living Jesus Christ is the One who speaks words of divine love, does acts of divine love in our midst. How does this happen for you?
One way that Christ continues to speak and act among us, in The Episcopal Church, is through our clergy, our priests and deacons. Their vowed responsibility to proclaim the message of God’s love, to proclaim a living Savior, takes many forms in daily life. I give thanks for the Diocese of California priests and deacons, gathered this past week at the Bishop’s Ranch for our annual Clergy Retreat. Their retreat is the occasion for my writing this sermon to you, the people of God in the Diocese of California, who, nurtured by love in your congregation are the voice, the hands and feet, of the Living Christ in the world.
+Marc Andrus
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment