A
sermon based upon Luke 16: 19-31
By Rev.
Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.
Flat
Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership,
November
3rd, 2019
This
parable reminds the approach to evangelism that was once popular in America, by
the name of “EE” or “Evangelism Explosion.
It was an approach intended to demonstrate the latest techniques for
saving souls and building bigger churches. The strategy for this approach was to make
cold calls in the community - door to door - seeking converts for Christ. According to this technique, the evangelists were
armed with two memorized questions, which sooner or later, were to be introduced
into the conversation. The first
question to be asked was, "If you
were to die tonight are you assured that you would go to heaven?"
"Yes," "No," or "I don't know," would suffice as
an answer. The second question, however, was the most important one, "On what does your assurance
rest?" The only acceptable answer was faith in Jesus Christ.
Robert McClelland*, tells of using this approach and going up to a door where a very gracious and
charming couple were at home and invited us in. After the pleasantries were exchanged, in
which we learned that the husband was a professor of psychology at a large
university, eventually, the first question - the one about dying and going to
heaven - was introduced into the conversation. "If you died tonight would
you go to heaven?" asked the evangelist.
"I don't know," replied the woman
pleasantly, "and we don't really
care." This is the kind of answer no evangelists every wants to
hear. Is didn’t fit the rehearsed
answers. All that was left for the expert to do was
either accept the fact that the matter was a dead issue for our hosts, or to decide
to argue with them, trying to convince them of its importance. In any case, in that situation, they never got
to second question. Because the question
of ‘eternity’ didn’t resonate with them, there was no good way talk about Jesus
could have easily been inserted into the conversation. The evangelists had to leave unsuccessful, wiping
the ‘proverbial’ dust off of their feet.
Very
often, we in the church have been preoccupied with getting to the next life,
whereas most of the world has been preoccupied trying to survive long enough to
get through this one. For this reason,
the major focus of most interpretations of this parable, has been about facing
the reality of ‘hell’ or the future eternal judgment of standing before God. The point being that: Good guys will win; bad guys will lose! Believers will be rewarded. Non-believers will
be punished. If you believe in and know Jesus,
you’re on your way Heaven. Know and
trust in Jesus, and you know you’ll miss ‘hell’ for sure.
What
people miss, in this parable, is that the focus is not on what happens after
you die, but the focus is what you should be doing while you are alive. In this story, human destiny is determined,
not by trusting Jesus as your savior, but by having the kind of attitude Jesus was
teaching about others. The rich man in Jesus story, whether he believed in or
God or not, was not the issue; but that he walked right past poor Lazarus every
day, having no compassion for him; that was the issue. Lazarus' needs were obvious. The rich man’s
obligation was also obvious. But the
rich man felt nothing. He felt no sense
of obligation in looking for Lazarus, for seeing Lazarus, nor for helping Lazarus.
Again,
it was not his lack of religion, nor his lack of faith in God that got his
ticket punched to the wrong destination, but it was his lack of regard for
Lazarus. This person who had the wherewithal
to help, didn’t do a single thing, and that’s what got him his ‘ticket’ to ‘torment’.
This was the single point Jesus made: living in luxury while others suffer
without what they need, and you not lifting a finger; will get the finger from
God pointed straight back at you.
FEASTING LAVISHLY EVERY DAY (v. 19)
What we
must see, first of all, is that the major point of the telling of this parable
is about instruction on how to make it into the next life, but it is a story
told about how to live in this one. Jesus wants us to live in this world wisely,
responsibly, and charitably. He doesn’t
want us to ‘waste’ the good we have made, or been given, only for ourselves and
our own luxury. We are gifted to be ‘givers’,
not ‘takers’ only.
The
issues that Jesus sets before us are larger than putting stars in our
individual crowns. Human suffering is not a matter of indifference to God.
Indeed, it is a matter of eternal importance. God's concern for the well-being
of others here on earth follows us to the grave and beyond. Old Jonathon
Edwards had it right! In the last analysis a
person's business is with God. But
God is less concerned with our sinful bumps and warts than with changing our
hearts and filling them with an understanding of the physical and spiritual needs
of people around us. The question the Bible continually asks is, "What is the focus of your life?" Do
we live for ourselves - our comfort, our security, our salvation - or for
others? Micah, the prophet, prompts us with the correct answer. "He has showed you, O man, what is good; and
what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and
to walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8)." That demand did not change
in all the years separating the Old from the New Testaments. Jesus merely gave
it visibility and clarity when he told his followers to feed the hungry, visit
the prisoner, and clothe the naked. To
love God is to love the neighbor. Remember?
The eternal question to be asked, here and hereafter, is simply, "How are the neighbors doing?" Their
welfare must be of genuine concern to us because it is to God.
The
question that the parable raises for us is, "What are we going to do with the struggles of people in our world?
How are we going take part in shaping history? What legacy do we leave for the neighbors who come after us?"
Dietrich Bonhoeffer argued that for Christians the only ethical question is,
"How shall the next generation live?"
We are stewards of our time and place in history, both globally or locally. We
are not to live only for ourselves, but we are responsible for passing ‘life’
and ‘resources for life’ on to someone else.
HE LONGED TO BE FILLED…BUT… (v. 21)
The
purpose of the parable, then, is to direct our attention to the serious
business of living in this world, which determines what happens in the next. This parable not only focuses on the rich man’s
capacity to care, but it also focuses on the real need that is always there, right
before our very eyes. Here it was the ‘need’
of the poor man who ‘longed to be filled with good things’ and it was also the ‘need’
of this rich man to understand his obligation to care, to see, and to help.
Indeed,
this parable warns about letting our attention wander too far away from what is
really happening right around us; under our very noses. Our lives are short. And if you have ‘made it’ and you ‘have it
made’, the time is even shorter to get you to see what you need to do with what
you’ve been given. None of us have all
the time in the world to do something. A sudden turn of events reminds us that we are
not eternal. A serious accident. The discovery of a lump while taking a shower.
Our lives are bounded by birth and then by death--- our death—your death. Soren
Kirkegaard said the earnest thought of death can be life's greatest ally. When
we begin to do the arithmetic of life, it brings a sense of urgency to take it
seriously. No matter how ‘rich we are’,
when we realize how ‘poor’ we all are, and we feel the ‘longing’ for life, we
get in touch with what is real and what is most urgent in his life.
A woman
in the hospital was weeping after being told she was terminally ill with
cancer. When a friend sought to console her she replied, "I'm not weeping because I'm dying. I'm
weeping because I never lived."
It is this kind of ‘mature’ insight
that the rich man needed, just as much as the poor man needed food. It the lack of this kind of insight that keeps
us following a culture that asks us to keep buying what we don’t really need, squandering
our time and our treasures only upon ourselves. But it is the kind of insight this ‘rich man’
had, that should also ‘shock us’ into feeling what other people are going
through to realize our own obligation to help.
When we miss ‘feeling’ what “Lazarus” felt, we not only miss the ‘joy’ and
‘adventure’ of reaching out to someone, but we also best of what life is about, and we
may, like this rich man, miss the only chance we have, now and forever, to be
the person God has created us to be.
In one
of his novels, Nikos Kazantzakis speaks of the American friend of Zorba the
Greek. He is reminded over and over of the adventurous life which has eluded
him. He is both intrigued and threatened by Zorba's dances in the middle of the
night. They lure him to leave the safe havens of caution and custom in order to
depart on great voyages to another world. Yet he is unable to respond. He sits
there motionless and shivering. He is ashamed. He has felt this shame before
whenever he caught himself not daring to life into the sheer recklessness that
life has called him to risk. But never
did he ever feel more ashamed than in the presence of Zorba. Ashamed and
fearful! Two sides of the same coin.
It’s is
certainly a ‘fearful thing’, as Scripture says, to ‘fall into the hands of a
living God’, but it could be even worse to ‘fall into the hands of a dead one!’ Do you understand what I’m saying? In this story we find a ‘poor’ man who needed
help, and we have a ‘rich man’ who didn’t even notice. We don’t know ‘why’ the rich man didn’t
notice the poor at his door, but what we know that a living God will hold him accountable
for doing something; and he didn’t. We
also know that a ‘dead god’ or having ‘no god’ holds you accountable for
nothing; and that’s all there is too; after you die, there’s absolutely
nothing.
And it’s
easy, as a person of privilege, or a person of means, or a person who has made
it, or who has everything they need, who can live isolated from the pain of the
world, to live, like God is dead, only living for now, turning our eyes and constantly
and continually looking the other way, being content at being thankful for what
we have and doing nothing for others who hurt.
But Jesus will have nothing of this.
He says that a person who has everything they need can still be missing what
qualifies as ‘really living’ in this world, and for certain, they also are
missing what guarantees life and hope in God’s world to come. Here, Jesus isn’t belittling having faith in
God, but Jesus is explaining what having faith in Jesus Christ means: learning
to feel what God feels, and to see what God sees, which will cause us to
respond people who hurt, who hunger, and who are helplessly in need.
To
respond to a world where ‘the poor are always with us’ is a big calling;
perhaps the greatest Christian calling of all---to preach to and to be good news ‘for the poor’. This call
to heal and to help is daunting, demanding, and it can be draining and
difficult; especially for a rich person.
It not only asks something of what we have, it can also make us feel ‘ashamed’
we can’t do more, and make us ‘fearful’ that we haven’t done enough. You are inviting ‘pain’ into your own life,
when you follow Jesus and follow him into the ‘pain’ of the human need. But following Jesus into the reality of human
need is the only guarantee of a ‘future’, both in having faith and in gaining life. It may be scary to have to ‘look’ into the
eyes of a person who hurts, but it is even more tragic and scary, to look into
the ‘eyes’ of people who have lost the ability to care.
When a
young flying student was practicing takeoffs and landings, after one
particularly rough landing, something on the order of a controlled crash, he
commented to his instructor, "That was a terrible landing." The instructor’s reply contained the wisdom
of the ages:"It's always good landing if you can walk away from it."
God is
not interested in the style of our landings. When we stand before our Creator to render an
accounting of our lives, God's concern will not be with our sins nor our
shortcomings. These are foregone
conclusions. They are simply part of the cost of living the great adventure. No, God's concern will be with our ability to
walk away from the landing of our lives with a sense of having lived right, not
just well; that we gave it our best shot and tried to leave the place a better
world than when we came. That’s what
learning about Lazarus’ needs is all about.
Learning how to live, right.
BEING IN TORMENT… HE LOOKED UP… (v. 23) (STOPPED)
In the
end, this parable reminds us that life is serious business. How we live, not just that we stay alive, is
serious business, because we have only one life to live; one chance to land and
to get it right. As the very selfish,
rich man, blinded by his own success, woefully found out, there are no second
chances. We only have a few years to life
our best life, which includes seeing and responding to human need. We have three score and 10 years, the
Psalmist says, or even if by reason of strength (and the luck of the draw) we
have four score, yet we are soon gone. We fly away like a sigh.
The
lesson to be learned is that we can miss our future rest in the bosom of
Abraham, not by being actively evil, but only by being inactively indifferent. In other words, the rich man didn’t go to hell
based on what he did wrong, but because of this one thing he didn’t do
right. He didn’t think about the
hurting person at his own driveway. He
wasn’t supposed to live to get rich or stay rich, by kicking the person who was
down; or by only step over him. No, he
missed what God had for him, because he wasted his life by only seeing his own
wants and by only helping himself to what he had to give.
Jesus
warned elsewhere, "If you save your life, you will lose it. Only if you give it
away, will you find it." You
can debate the economics or logic of this teaching, but we the paradox is
always true. As a person who lives and
dies, you only get to ‘keep’ what you actually give away. What you ‘give’ is all you can ‘take’ with
you.
The
cross of Christ reminds us that he chose to die. He was not a victim of
circumstances, nor was he a tragic hero. He could have died in bed of old age.
But instead, Jesus chose to live by giving and by ‘dying to himself’ every step
of the way. "My hour has not yet come," he kept saying during the days
leading up to his final journey to Jerusalem. Finally, during the last meal with his
disciples, Jesus uttered the words that must have popped their eyes open, "The hour has come (John
17:1)." The words burst forth, not as a death knell, but the glorious
climax to a life intentionally lived to help others. When Jesus invites us to take up our cross and
follow him he also invites us to live for something big and to die for a
reason. We only go around once, and Martin Luther King Jr. put it well when he
said, "Until we are willing to die
for something, we're not fit to live for anything."
Kurt
Vonnegut has written some superb lines which catch the amazement and delight of
life's miracle. "God made mud ...God got lonesome ...So God said to some mud, 'Sit
up! ...See all I've made,' said God, 'the hills,the sea, the sky, the stars.'
...And I was some of the mud that got to sit upand look around ...'Lucky me,
lucky mud.' " But with our the
gift of life comes the responsibility and opportunity to live right. God does
not call us to right living to just to make us feel guilty and to get us into
heaven; but God calls us to live life right, so we can have life; now and
forever. Guilt for the sake of guilt is ‘sick
guilt, and it immobilizes us.’ It is what Archibald MacLeish calls "the
sick scent of dung under our fingernails."
But healthy guilt comes from realizing what we need to do to take life
seriously. The cup of opportunity that life hands me to drink is, of course,
different from the one that it hands you. Lazarus was not sitting at your door
or mine but someone else is sitting there! There are things we need to see and hurts we
need to respond to, to live the kind of life God calls us to live. True guilt, healthy guilt, motivates us
rather than incapacitates us. It comes, not from comparing cups, whether we are
rich or poor, but from the realization that we need to accept the cup that is
ours.
"But
heaven! What about heaven?" someone is probably asking. In Jesus' view, heaven projects us forward,
into God's time and space, and is flows out of a life lived wisely,
responsibly, charitably, and faithfully, here and now. How we live in this world does impact what
happens to us in the next. What we
believe is not just about what’s in our heads, but it’s about what’s in our
hearts, and how we live outwardly from what comes from deep inside.
Apparently,
if we take Jesus’ parable literally, self-consciousness survives death and we
live either with regrets or with joy at responding to the opportunities offered
us. “To whom much is given, much will be
expected.” That point was most graphically made by Jesus in the parable of the
talents (Matthew 25:14-30). To one person ten talents are given, to another five,
and to another one. The distribution is not equal, yet each is expected to
invest in responding to the needs of the world out of their own resources , so
that the Landlord will benefit. Those
who do what is right, good, and needed, are put in charge of greater wealth.
The one who fails in his stewardship of life and others, by hiding his wealth, (or
by wasting it too), will discover what will is taken from him. The good news is
that if God will entrust responsible people with even greater responsibilities
in the world that is still to come.
It
would be nice if we could finally say, "And they all lived happily ever
after." It would be nice, if I
could say “God’s love wins, in the end, and everyone gets in, so that we all
finally be changed by God’s love. But
Jesus - always the realist - was not in the business of telling fairy tales or
giving all his parables happy endings. He knew that we live by the choices we
make. The ending of the story, therefore, is ours to write. Jesus simply said,
"Those who have ears to hear, let
them hear!" Amen.
(* I owe much of this message to ideas given to me by Robert McClelland).
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