“Phone Call From Hell”

A Sermon Based Upon Luke 16: 19-31

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Pentecost 19c, September 29th, 2013

Mitch Albom is a Jew who tells good stories.  His stories are about death and dying, but his point is to give the living a message of why life is worth living and how we should best live it.   Recently, the national Hospice movement named Mr. Albom “Hospice Man of the Year”.

Albom’s notoriety started with the success of his 1997 book, “Tuesdays with Morrie”,  which reports Albom’s interviews with his college professor, Morrie Schwartz, as he slowly died with Lou Gehrig’s disease.   Albom used the profits from the book to pay  Morrie’s final medical bills.     With the success of this book about dying, wisdom, and how one should live until one dies, Albom continued to write.   Since “Tuesdays with Morrie” Albom has written about “Five People You Meet In Heaven”, “One More Day,” “TimeKeeper”, and his most recent book, “The First Phone Call from Heaven”.   All these books have similar themes that warm the heart, instruct on how to live toward death, and point to how we can redeem the time we have left.

But of course, Albom is not the first Jew to share wisdom about living, dying and death.   But in contrast to the ‘heartwarming’ approach of Mitch Albom, in our text today Jesus gives us a warning from hell.   Most of you know the story, pretty well.   It’s the story in which there is a conversation between Abraham and a very rich man who opened his eyes in torment.   Besides the torment of the flames, the rich man can see a poor man named Lazarus, whom he recognizes, resting beside of Abraham.   Realizing the reversal of their fate, the rich man begs Father Abraham to allow Lazarus to come and put drops of water on his tongue, but Father Abraham will not allow it.  Besides, between Lazarus and the rich man there is a very large crevasse that can’t be crossed.    This is anything but a heart-warming story that could make Jesus a nominee for “Hospice Man of the Year”.      

A SURPRISING RESPONSE

So, what is the point of this very graphic story from Hell?  Perhaps we see it at the end.  In the final moment it is this rich man that is begging, not the poor man.   But now, this rich man is no longer begging for mercy and he is no longer begging for another drink of cool water.   He is begging for Abraham to send Lazarus to go and warn his 5 brothers.  But Abraham sternly refuses, saying “They have Moses and the Prophets, let them hear them.”  Still, the rich man will not take ‘no’ for an answer, so he gets all religious, hoping to change Abraham’s mind: “No, Father Abraham, if someone goes back to them from the dead, they will repent!”     Abraham adamantly refuses again and explains: “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead” (vs. 31).  End of story.

That’s a mighty big claim, isn’t it?  When you think about it, this an amazing statement considering that right at the center of our Christian faith is the claim that God raised Jesus from the dead, and that Jesus himself raised Lazarus and several others.   Would it not make a huge difference if someone came back from the dead?   When I was a young boy someone told me about a body lying in the casket still having muscle spasms so that it had to be tied down.  I still haven’t gotten over that story yet.   Wouldn’t just about any kind of message from the dead get our attention?  Mitch Albom’s books about dying people sure do?  Didn’t that Neurosurgeon get our attention, when he said he could prove that his ‘death’ and his return to life is a fact of medical Science?  Didn’t that little boy in the book, “Heaven Is For Real” have the same kind of effect when he told stories no child should tell?  What about the guy who spent 90 minutes in Heaven?   Someone has recently written about having spent 23 minutes in Hell.  With all this incredible talk, how can Father Abraham assert that the testimony of someone ‘rising from the dead’ would not be persuasive?   

While Father Abraham doesn’t put much stock in messages from the dead, he tells us twice (just like Jesus says “truly, truly”) what people should be listening and obeying.   “They have Moses and the Prophets, let them hear them!”   This brings us to ask: So, what did Moses say?  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might . . . And your neighbor as yourself.”(Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18).  And what did the prophets say? “Thus says the Lord: Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practice steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth; for in these things I delight, says the Lord” (Jeremiah 9:23–24).

The whole point of Jesus’ story about Hell serves as a warning to the Pharisees, who think they know Moses and the Prophets, but evidently they didn't.  If they did, really, they would be ready and willing to listen to Jesus. (http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/sermons/preparing-to-receive-christ-hearing-moses-and-the-prophets).

AN ALL FAMILIAR PROBLEM

But of course, these religious leaders are not willing to listen to Jesus because, as Luke has said, in preparation for this story, they are “lovers of money” and are ‘scoffing at (Jesus)’.   The law and the prophets have been preached to them from John the Baptist, but they did not listen.   The gospel of the kingdom is being preached to them through Jesus, and they still won’t listen.   The law is clear, and has not failed, not even in one single point, says Jesus.   It would be easier for the world to pass away than the truth of God’s law (16:17).  And what truth is it that these people will not follow? It’s simply this:  Since these hard-hearted people do not follow what Moses said, (love your neighbor), how will they understand or follow what Jesus is saying, “love your neighbor as yourself”.  Since they didn’t get what God said the first time, they don’t get it now.   And they won’t get it, even though Jesus (or anyone) will be raised from the dead.   

The “phone call from Hell” is the warning Jesus gives, not for comfort, but to confront.  He confronts the fact that we can fail to follow the most basic truths, rules, instructions, and when we do, the worse consequences imaginable can happen.   Take that driver of that runaway train which crashed in Spain back in July.   That driver knew what the speed limit was.  He knew that a curve was coming.   He had driven that way many times.  But what was he doing  He wasn’t paying attention.  He was talking on the phone.  That was surely also a kind of phone call from hell, because by taking that call and not watching his speed his train more than doubled its normal speed and went off the tracks, crashed into a wall, and killed 79 innocent lives, not to mention the fact that it will probably put him in prison for many years.   Don’t ever think there are not consequences for not paying attention to simplest rules of life.

This is what Jesus wants to remind these Pharisees.   If the most basic rules and laws of God have not motivated you to do the right thing, the most necessary thing, don’t think for a moment that Jesus can do anything with you either.   “Even if someone comes back from the dead,” it won’t change you.    If you don’t see the truth right in front of you, which in this case is Lazarus, a suffering neighbor sitting right at his gate, then you don’t get it.  If any of us can’t see the simple things we need to do, choosing to live for ourselves only and to ignore the needs in front of us, needs that are plain as the nose on our face, if we can’t respond to these things, then we can’t be helped.  God helped Lazarus; (the name Lazarus is Hebrew for “God is my helper”), but God cannot help the person who ignores the obvious truth right in front of them.

Paul Rauschenbusch, the grandson of the well-known Baptist pastor, Walter Rauschenbusch, who once pastored a church in the middle the part of New York called, “Hell’s Kitchen”, has said that the problem of the rich man was not merely ignorance, but “IGNORE—ANCE”   In other words, it wasn’t what he didn’t see that got him into Hell, but it’s what he didn’t want to see, who he didn’t care to see, and what and who he refused to pay attention to, and did nothing about, when he had the means and ability to care, but he didn’t.  He ‘ignored’ the need; IGNORE-ANCE.  He acted as if he didn’t see poor Lazarus, but he did see him.  Lazarus was there sitting at his gate every day, but the rich man did nothing.  That's and what got him into hell.  It wasn't what he did wrong, but what he didn't do that was the right thing to do.

HOPE FOR A DIFFERENT OUTCOME

I don’t want to end this parable of warning without giving us hope.  Remember, Abraham does not say that the 5 brothers will end up in Hell with their rich brother, but Abraham says, “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets”.  That’s a big “if”.   Since they ‘have Moses and the Prophets’, they could ‘listen’.  They might hear.  Abraham leaves the door open for the 5 brothers and of course, Jesus leaves the door open for us, and for all the many generations to come.   What does it look like if someone like us, someone who has Moses, the Prophets, and also knows the preaching of Jesus, and fully knows what needs to be done, and will do it?  What does that look like in our world?  What does it mean not only to ‘hear the word’, but to ‘do the word’.

Did you read in the Statesville Paper the other day the article about the woman, now living in Mooresville,  who has a movie being made about her?  A book has already been written about her by Penny Loeb entitled: Moving Mountains: How One Woman and Her Community Won Justice from Big Coal.    The story begins with Patricia Bragg living in the tiny community of Pie, West Virginia.   When a deep coal mine drained her neighbors’ wells, Bragg heeded her grandmother’s admonition to “fight for what you believe in” and led the battle to save their drinking water.   She and her friends quickly convinced state mining officials to force the coal company to provide new wells.   However, large-scale mining continued on the mountains behind her beloved hollow.  Fearing what the blasting off of mountaintops would do to the humble homes below, she joined a lawsuit being pursued by attorney Joe Lovett, the first case he had ever handled.   So, in the case against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Bragg v. Robertson), federal judge Charles Haden II shocked the coal industry by granting victory to Joe Lovett and Patricia Bragg and temporarily halting the practice of mountaintop removal  (See Statesville Record and Landmark, July 28th, 2013).  

Patricia Bragg was not against the coaling industry.  She recognized that coal mining was the lifeblood of her community and her own husband was a disabled miner himself.   Still many turned against her, even people in her own church and community.    But Patricia Bragg battled on, even from Mooresville, making the two-hour trek to the legislature in Charleston, West Virginia over and over to continue to demand better controls on mine blasting and more concern for those who had been her neighbors.   In the end, she brought about one of the most important environmental and social empowerment battles in the nation in the past decade.  It was fought by a woman who saw a people like "Lazarus" in need, and she did not ignore what she could do.  She did not turn the other way.  She investigated.  She spoke up.  She took action.   She did the most obvious thing.

Of course, the gospel is much more than helping people have clean, drinking water, but it’s not any less either.   If you recall Jesus only was able to speak to the woman at the well about ‘living water’ (spiritual things) after he asked the woman for drinking water (physical things).   Jesus was not one to overlook the most obvious thing, and neither should we.   A German Theologian once said, “One cannot understand and preach the gospel concretely enough (D. Bonhoeffer, Collected Sermons, Fortress Press, p 34, 2012).   I could add that either Christianity is about the most concrete thing, or it’s not about anything concrete at all.    I believe that this is what Jesus is trying to say to us in this story.  If we overlook the most obvious thing, the most concrete need in front of us, whether it something we need to do for ourselves, for our world or what we need to do for our neighbor---if we do nothing, or even if we have intentions of doing something but never do, well, you know what they say, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”.   Jesus wants us to take another route and to arrive at a very different destination.    Amen.