Worship with Zion/Knox PC’s – September 25, 2022.
Gospel of Luke 16: 19 - 31 ‘What’s it going to take?’
There is a modern parable about a man whose house stood in the path of a
raging forest fire. City officials went through the streets declaring an
emergency alert on loudspeakers, urging everyone to evacuate - the man
said to himself, ‘God will save me’.
Neighbours came to his door to help him pack up a few things & get them
into his car. He refused, saying, “God will save me.”
As the smoke thickened, firemen came pounding on his door to assist his
evacuation. Again he refused, saying, “God will save me.’
A helicopter dropped a line, saying through a megaphone that the road was
now impassable. The man would not grab the lifeline and yelled into the
wind, “God will save me”.
Shortly after, at the Pearly Gates, he asked Saint Peter why God didn’t
save him? Peter replied, “God sent warnings, neighbours, firemen, & a
helicopter! What else were you expecting Him to do!?”
How does God appear in your life? How do you experience the Divine in
the midst of earthly living? Do you feel His strength when the day is almost
over but there’s still so much to do? Do you recognize His hand in the event
of a ‘chance’ meeting that was exactly the lift you needed? Do you say
‘thank You Lord’ when you absolutely have to be in Toronto for a crucial,
stressful appointment and there’s no traffic on the 400? [cause that’s a
miracle!]
But now how does God experience us?
Faith is a covenant - we’re in this together, always, Creator & creature.
Does God find us open & receptive to His Spirit’s gifts & leading? Does He
experience us as willing to obey & malleable to His Plan, or do we fight Him
because we know better, or His stuff is always too hard? Do we ask for His
wisdom, or have we got everything under control & God is merely a
spectator? Or do we treat Him like Santa: ‘God, I’ve been a very good girl,
so I’d like some new toys, preferably something with a foreign logo on the
front grill.’
What do we expect of our Lord & Maker, and what can HE expect of us?
Lazarus at the rich man’s gate expected very little in this life, only scraps.
We don’t know what happened to him, why he couldn't work, or apparently
couldn’t even move enough to fend off the dogs, or whether his sores were
from exposure, or a skin disease, or a beating. But we do know his name,
which is a significant feature of this parable.
Jesus has told so many stories – He taught mostly through stories – and
even four Gospels don’t include ALL of the stories He told. Yet, for this
story, Jesus gave one of the characters a NAME. He’s never done that
before, & He never does it again. This is the only parable with a named
character. Characters in parables are fictional, as is Lazarus at the gate.
However, we have the advantage of hindsight over those who first heard
Jesus tell this story. Did He use that name as a preview for the life-giving
miracle He would later bestow on Mary & Martha’s brother? Or did He use
‘Lazarus’ because He hoped His listeners would know its meaning: ‘one
God has helped’, or ‘one who depends on God’? Did Jesus name the man
at the gate so that all who hear this story will view the begging & the
homeless as people, rather than the nameless, faceless throngs lumped
into the category, ‘poor’?
This is in sharp contrast to the unnamed “rich man”. What statement, then,
is Jesus making, because His stories are not hap-hazardly thrown together
for our amusement. Jesus has stepped out of His usual storytelling ‘M.O.’
by naming a character,& consequently bringing attention to the other
character by that omission.
Is the “rich man” nameless because he doesn’t matter in the parable? Not
likely – he becomes the focus of the story. Then perhaps he’s nameless,
not because he’s no one, but because he’s everyone. Or at least, everyone
who chooses to ignore God’s surprisingly pushy & frequently obvious
attempts to touch & transform our lives.
As Jesus points out, God has repeatedly attempted to enter human history
– through Moses, through the Prophets, through inexplicable signs – and
we, humankind, respond with trust & thanksgiving. For a while. But we
seem to have commitment issues.
Consider the Jews in the crowds around Jesus; they would know the
stories & the Law of Moses verbatim, as would Jesus Himself, a practicing
Jew. They know all about the power of God, bringing the ancient Hebrews
through 10 horrific plagues, defying death by the final plague, leading them
out of bondage and providing for their every need in the desert as bread &
water was daily available. Yet within weeks, they’re singing, ‘what have you
done for me lately?’; they turn angrily against God, and set up some risque
pagan rituals around their new god, a gold cow.
We can’t judge them. For lots of folks, God is only as good as His last
blessing, His last impressive miracle. Yet God persisted & pursued us,
arriving personally to live with us, eat with us, travel, talk, cry, laugh, walk
with us, and to this moment in Luke, offer healing & wisdom never before
witnessed on earth. And even though He chose the cross, this passage
confirms that He was very well aware that for some, it would never be
enough. Some folks will not believe in God or His redeeming Son. And
some, though they believe that God exists, they don’t want Him involved in
their lives. For others, God’s existence just gives them someone to blame.
Are those people going to hell?
The subject of hell – who’s going, who’s already there, should we bring our
own snacks – that’s a whole other sermon, or more likely, a sermon series.
For now, I will just say this – when you reflect on the love & grace of God, is
it all-sufficient & infinite, or are there limits on God’s merciful capacity to
save? So, maybe a sermon series AND a Bible study.
As we continue with this passage, note that in the original Greek, the word
‘hades’ - normally translated as ‘hell’ in English – was actually a reference
to the ever-smoldering heap of garbage & human waste that normally grew
just outside the main gate of any ancient city. What a lovely welcome for
visitors coming to town! But ‘hades’ alludes to a particularly nasty place set
well apart from the safety & abundance, the belonging & community of
Home. As well, Jesus knew that the Hebrews were introduced to the notion
of an ‘underworld’ when in Egypt, and that concept was reinforced &
tweaked by the pagan practices in which the Jews had dabbled for 100’s of
years before Jesus told this story. So a parable of ‘hades’ would be
relatable to the crowds, but His description is key: a great chasm between
the rich man & Lazarus, between torment & paradise. Hell is defined as
being separate from God, apart from His goodness & loving presence.
It was what the rich man chose for himself, to focus on himself & his needs
& his whims, and choosing to ignore the needs & comfort of another
person, right there at his front door. If he’d only been warned, he moans, he
would have lived differently. If he’d only known how his values & lifestyle
were impacting other people, how his decisions & priorities were taking him
further & further away from God’s purposes and the even richer life that
God wanted for him.
Human beings can be stubbornly blind creatures sometimes, ignoring the
signs & warnings, not learning from someone else’s experience, convincing
ourselves, ‘Nope, never gonna happen to me’. We think there’s plenty of
time to take care of something, or someone, or to make a real change for
the better in our lives, & for the lives of those we love, and for the lives of
those we don’t even know. And then there aren’t anymore tomorrows and
we frittered away our time on …?
What we do today matters because day by day we’re building a life; day by
day becomes weeks & months, until we flip the last calendar page and …
what just happened? Are God’s intentions part of the life we’re living, or are
we just keeping busy? Do we recognize how stunningly gifted we are by
God’s design, and put those gifts back in His hands, so we are actually
CO-creating with Him? What have we done for God lately, or for others in
His Name, or for the people we love & are greatly blessed to have in our
lives, OR for the people who are darn-near impossible to love but God is
asking us to make an extra effort? If God is not already included every day,
what’s it going to take to bring Him fully into our lives, and for us to
participate fully in the life He wants for us? A pillar of fire, a plague of
locusts? Does someone have to come back from the dead? Oh wait …
that’s been done. And thanks be to God, Amen.