So, last May I was back in Chattanooga, Tennessee, visiting my mom for her birthday and doing chores around her new apartment. I stay with my brother who co-owns my grandparents' old house with me. And one of the first things we do when I get home is drive around my stomping grounds of North Chattanooga to look at what has been going on. Chattanooga is actually a booming place, so there's always some new building going up, a new strip mall, new restaurants, all sorts of remodeling. Just loads of hustle and bustle.
And as we drive around, I'm rubbernecking, asking all sorts of questions, getting my bearings. But I noticed that by the next day, as we drive around, I'm beginning not to notice all that activity. I've seen it; it doesn't affect me; and I just drive on by. By the day after that, it's become sort of a visual white noise, just something in the background. And there I am, back in my own little bubble.
We all do this, of course. It's natural. Our brains just work that way. Old information gets mentally categorized and cataloged and stored away. I guess that's important and keeps us from being shocked and stunned by the world every time we wake up in the morning.
But there are other times when we might want to step back and wonder if we let this coping mechanism go too far. Or, more importantly, ask ourselves if we are complicit in encouraging it to go to far.
That man sleeping in the doorway of a public building that we step around as we go in to do our business. That woman down the street in the wheelchair that has trouble getting to her mailbox. That man picking vegetables out there in the fields as we drive by.
Day after day, we let them slowly fade away until they are nothing but white noise. Day after day, we let them fade away until they are nothing at all.
In our gospel reading today, we are looking face-to-face in a mirror. It's the story of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man goes about his business every day, and part of that business involves stepping over Lazarus and doing nothing to help the poor soul. And both of them manage to die but find themselves in very different situations. Lazarus is in the Bosom of Abraham, and the rich man...well, the rich man is not. Tormented in Hades, the rich man cries out to Abraham to please send Lazarus over to give him a little water to ease his suffering. Abraham declines this request and there is our lesson. We sit back and cluck our tongues about folks who are so focused on wealth and power that they won't share with others, and secretly, I think, we might get a little bit of joy or schadenfreude when the rich man gets his comeuppance.
But, y'all, I'm not sure that riches and greed is the point at all. Well, let's face it...it kind of is the point...to a point. I mean, Jesus goes out of his way to point out that the man is rich, and HE doesn't even bother giving him a name; he stands in for ALL wealthy people. And Paul, in his letter to Timothy, DOES remind us that “the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.” So, I mean, call a spade a spade, I reckon.
But seems to me that in the story before us now, the sin is not BEING rich, and Paul tells us that it's not the money, it's “the eagerness to be rich.” It's letting that eagerness for riches replace godliness, faith, and love.
The sin of the rich man begins here: HE DID NOT SEE Lazarus. Or at least he did not see him as more than a transaction, an extension of himself and his own needs --- particularly at the end. For if he had seen him for all that he was: once an infant and a boy, a brother, a husband, a father, a grandfather – if he had seen him as one with hopes and hurts, dreams and disappointments – if he had seen him as a human being, and one beloved by God, then perhaps this story would have ended differently.
This is not a sin relegated to the rich alone. This is a sin we all share in from time to time.
Because while I was visiting Chattanooga, I went to the Walmart. For whatever reason I was in a hurry, and as I was leaving a voice called out, “Sir, do you have a dollar?” I turned around and said, “No, I don't. I don't carry cash. I'm sorry.” Then I hurried on. To my credit, when I got inside, I stopped and thought, “I wonder if I actually do have a dollar?” I looked, and no, I really didn't have one. So, I thought that should assuage my guilt. But what bothered me in the end is, as I started pulling out of the parking lot, I could all of the people going in and out, some just standing, over in the direction the voice had come from...in the direction where I had turned to give my reply. Some were men, some were women. Some were young, some were old.
And I could not begin to tell you which one of those people had asked for the dollar. I couldn't remember if it was a man's voice or a woman's. I looked in that direction and saw nothing. I heard nothing. And y'all that's a sin.
And it's not a sin in that superficial way when we say to ourselves, “That could've been Jesus that I turned away from.” That's a nice way to catch ourselves up and do the right thing, but folks it wasn't Jesus. It was a human being. And when Jesus ascended into heaven he left us the Holy Spirit to guide us and dwell within us and teach us. He left US to do the work that he showed us how to do. He left us to take up where he left off.
It's not a sin because that poor person might have been Jesus. It's a sin because WE ARE SUPPOSED to be. We are to love the Lazaruses in our midst, not because they are Jesus, but because they are human beings! And until we see them...well, we can't see that.
To look beyond the homelessness, beyond the poverty, beyond differences and creeds, beyond skin color and race, beyond origin or orientation. Because everyone, EVERYONE, every criminal or addict, every documented or undocumented man, woman or child, every gay, straight, or trans person, every rich man blinded by power or every poor man blinded by envy, every sinner and every saint – EVERYONE was somebody's baby, born into this world, and into God's never-ending love.
And our job, our responsibility, our vocation as Christians is to see them, to see each other.
You know I'm fond of St. Teresa of Avila. I've looked back, and I see I've quoted her several times in sermons in the last eight years. And I'm going to do it again. St. Teresa said, “Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”
The world today is telling us differently. It is telling us that differences are dehumanizing. We see people being herded, beaten, disappeared, demonized...all because they aren't like those in power.
This is not Jesus. This is not what Jesus taught. This is not who Jesus chose to be with. Jesus saw differences, and in those differences, he saw humans.
I wonder what we see?
Amen.