So, hey, y'all! I'm happy to be here among you today. And I bring you greetings from down South in the civilized part of the United States. . . where the iced tea is sweet and the corn bread isn't, and the only thing that goes good in ninety-degree weather is spicy BBQ with some awesome hot sauce!
I was recently back in Chattanooga, Tennessee, visiting my mom and doing chores around her house. 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 every time we wake up in the morning. Keeps us from being paralyzed as we try to get our bearings each day. I reckon it's important to keep us functioning.
But there are other times when we might want to step back and wonder if we let this mechanism go to far. Or rather 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 mother with a passle of kids in the grocery that is blocking our way. That man picking strawberries out there in the fields as we drive by. Those kids at the playground playing together – or are they sharing a pipe?
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. Tradition handed down to us gives us the rich man's name – Dives. And I think I'm going to stick to that. Dives 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 Dives...well, Dives is not. Tormented in Hades, Dives 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 Dives gets his commupence.
But, y'all, I'm not sure that riches and greed is the point at all. It seems to me that in the story before us now, the sin of Dives 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 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.
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'm sorry.” Then I hurried on. To my credit, 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 see a number of people standing 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, but folks I don't think that's how Jesus rolls. I don't believe Jesus randomly shows up to shame us and trip us up. Jesus told us over again in the gospels that he's going away. And he did, until his coming again in glory. But he didn't abandon us...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.
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 persons! 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 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.
St. Teresa of Avila 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.”
Together we will soon take Christ into our bodies here at this altar, here at this table. And we will go out into the world, changed by the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Ours are the eyes through which Jesus looks compassion on this world.
I wonder what we will see?
Amen.