In 1913, Dr. Albert Schweitzer was barely 30.  He already had three doctoral degrees, in medicine, theology and philosophy.  He gave up a prized teaching position in Vienna, Austria, to go to Africa and live out his faith as a medical missionary.  Throughout his life he pointed to the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus as the scriptural turning point for his decision to leave Europe and found a hospital in Africa.  He believed the continent of Africa was Lazarus lying at the gate of affluent Europe.  Compassion moved Dr. Schweitzer to relieve suffering.  This man, who had been recognized as one of the best concert organists in all of Europe, heard this parable and let it move him to a place where there were no organs to play, but people to serve.

Today the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus poses a question for us.  How far can this parable move us?  It may move us all the way to Africa.  Broadstreeters Walter and Nancy Hull literally made that move years ago.  And Mike and Nancy Haninger literally are in Congo now. The parable may move us to Peru, or to the Food Pantry, or to our checking account, or maybe even to our savings account.

It seems to me that God wants us to know something.  God wants us to know that whatever the chasm is that you or I need to cross, God wants to help us get across.  And Jesus offers us this parable as a bridge.

Our parable is about the world as we know it.  In it we see what we have come to call the “real world,” the great chasm between rich and poor.  After all, the only thing we know for sure about the rich man and Lazarus is their economic reality.  We don’t know whether they are religious or not, or whether they are moral or ethical in other ways.  All we know is that one is very rich and one is very poor.

We know the poor have it hard.  But Luke wants us to see a deeper, less obvious truth, one largely hidden to the world, that the rich have it hard too, way harder.  The poor are missing out now, but the rich will be missing out forever, unless they start seeing the world differently, and get moving.

Luke’s gospel doesn’t say too many favorable things about those of us with money.  It begins with the Magnificat; Mary singing that the poor are going to be lifted up and the rich sent away empty (Luke 1:52-53).  Just prior to today’s reading, Jesus says, “You can’t serve God and wealth” (16:13).  Such news isn’t new to us.  We know there is a gap between the “haves” and the “have nots.”

Of all the parables Jesus told, this is the only one in which a character has a proper name.  In the case of Lazarus, that’s all he has.  Usually, it is the rich whose names we remember.  We know the names of wealthy people here in Columbus and around the world.  The poor are the nameless, faceless ones.  But in God’s economy, reversal occurs.  Lazarus, who has nothing, at least has the dignity of a name.  Lazarus means “God helps;” which points to the sad reality that in the parable, no one else does.

Every so often, a rich person makes a real ‘name’ for himself or herself, by seeing the world differently.  Recently I read a story about the rock star Bono.  He was talking about a change in his life that has moved him: 

I was always seeking the Lord’s blessing.  I was saying … I have a new song, look after it …  I have a family, please look after them…and a wise man said, “Stop.  Stop asking God to bless what you’re doing.  Instead, get involved in what God is doing – because it is already blessed.”  Well, God … is with the poor.  That, I believe, is what God is doing.  And that is what God’s calling us to do.  I was amazed when I first got to the United States (this country) and I learned how much some churchgoers tithe.  Up to ten percent of the family budget.  Well, how does that compare with the federal budget, the budget for the entire American family?  How much of that goes to the poorest people in the world?  Less than one percent… I truly believe, when history books are written, our age will be remembered for three things: the war on terror, the digital revolution, and what we did – or did not do – to put the fire out in Africa. (Bono at the Presidential Prayer Breakfast, summer, 2007).

            Our parable is about a great chasm.  About gaps.  Not just the chasm between rich and poor, though certainly it is about that.  It is about the chasm in each of us – who are way more like the rich man than Lazarus – the chasm between our money and our peace of mind.  No, that’s not quite it, the chasm between our money and our wholeness, our very salvation.  Holding on more tightly to what we have never helps us hold onto God more tightly.  It is letting go that lets us draw closer.  Jesus wants to help us bridge that chasm.

You may or may not know that the great chasm even exists within this church.  Every communion Sunday the loose offering you give goes to assist church members in need.  Friends, that money gets used.  Life comes at us fast.  People need help.  The great chasm is as far away as Peru and yet as close as our own pew.

There’s an irony of the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus.  Consider that the rich man who feasted sumptuously may have, of all things, died of coronary artery disease!  What tastes so good, what feels so good now can have fatal consequences later.  Our God knows that.  God knows how hard it is for us to know that.  And God knows how hard it is, even when we know this, to change our behavior, to move.

In eternity the rich man finds himself in flaming accommodations.  They fall far short of his accustomed standards.  He looks up and sees Abraham and Lazarus chatting across the way.  He cries out to Abraham to “send Lazarus!” over with a cool drink to take the edge off the infernal heat.

Father Abraham explains the realities of the situation.  Just in case he hadn’t noticed, things are now reversed.  But the rich man is a negotiator.  He tries another angle, this time on behalf of his brothers.  If Abraham would just send Lazarus back to them, they would listen.  Abraham replies that the brothers already have what they need in the existing scriptures.

The rich man tries one last time.  He knows how to get his brothers’ attention.  Send someone back from the dead.; they will listen, they will repent; they will move.

Father Abraham gets the final word.  He points out that the brothers won’t be convinced, even if someone rises from the dead.  Because what’s at stake isn’t about being convinced.  It’s about seeing – an alternative way of seeing.  It isn’t so much about witnessing the miraculous as it is noticing the mundane.  Seeing God in the most uneventful of life’s encounters; seeing the single mother working at Wendy’s; seeing the immigrant stocking the shelves.

Jesus is not asking us to stop being rich.  He is asking us to start seeing the poor.  Broad Street’s location constantly challenges us to see those in poverty outside our walls.  The calling of the church is always to turn itself inside out.  As that happens we see them.  We will even see the poor inside these walls, because they are here. When we see we will understand that the great chasm in our lives is not between us and the poor.  It is between us as we are now and us as God wants us to be.  The poor are not an obstacle.  They are a bridge across this great chasm of our own divided selves. 

A few years ago many of us were moved by Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Nickled and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America.  She wondered whether it really was possible to live on minimum wage.  So she got personally involved and decided to see for herself.  She took minimum wage jobs cleaning houses in Maine, at Walmart in Minnesota, and as a waitress in Florida.  With her characteristic writing style she chronicled her exhausting journey.  She concluded that it was possible to survive on minimum wage – barely.  Maybe, possibly, one could survive.  But certainly not live.  The results moved her; and moved many of us who read her book.

It is very hard to break out of the cycle of poverty.  We see that here, week by week, as residents from Community Properties of Ohio meet with supportive allies, trying to take steps to move out of poverty into the middle class.

           The end of Jesus’ parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus is still being written, by us, the brothers and the sisters of the Rich Man.  Those of us with more have a sacred, God-given responsibility for those with less.  So what do we see?  How are we moved?  Albert Schweitzer followed God to Africa.  That same God’s fierce love is at work in our lives, spiritually reshaping those misshapen places in us.  Maybe we have been drawn to church out of a desire to satisfy our own spiritual needs and now we are encountering God’s reality in a way that makes demands on us, that asks us to move.  C.S. Lewis once said that “sometimes we come to Christ for a toothache and find ourselves being wheeled into the operating room for major surgery.”

            It is hard to know how to end a sermon like this.  Maybe it doesn’t end.  This is just the beginning.  Amen.

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