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“And Lazarus Had a Name”

Rev. Julianne Stokstad

October 17, 2004

   In today’s scripture, Jesus tells yet another in a series of parables to teach us about God.   In this one, Lazarus had a name.  Now this isn’t the Lazarus raised from the dead, but another fellow and he didn’t have much else besides his name.  He didn’t have a house, and he didn’t have a car.  He had no job, no Social Security, no medical care.   He didn’t even have enough food to eat.  Hungry and sick, he was disgustingly dirty, in his rags, covered with oozing sores.  He must have smelled badly.   But he had a name and in biblical times this is very significant.   In contrast, the rich man had everything money could buy, achieving what we call "the American dream" nowadays.  He lived in a big house.  And he was something to behold, dressed in purple, the color of Kings and his clothes were expensive made of finest linen, always clean, always fresh.   And his meals were amazing banquets---made just to please him.   Only wild caught salmon would he eat and the very best fresh fruit money could buy.  But he has no name.

 Then they both died. What happens next is most unexpected, a complete reversal of their situations!  The angels carried Lazarus away to heaven and rich man went down to suffer forever in a fiery hell.  That’s good news for those suffering poverty, but scary stuff for the rich folks listening especially if economics is what determined their fates.   To a Jew hearing this story from Jesus, it was an enormous reversal of expectations.  There was an assumption that wealth was as a sign of God’s blessing for living a good moral God-fearing life.  Poverty and sickness, suffering of most any kind were understood as curses from God for wrong action.  Remember the Job story?

 Jesus says it is not like that.  Now Lazarus is the one at the fabulous dinner table and rich man is in a worse place than Lazarus was back before they both died.   Is the reason for this that Lazarus rewarded for his suffering on earth?  This explanation has been given by the church all too often to justify abuse, injustice and poverty on earth.  I don’t think that is the point.   It is the gulf that separated them that especially interests me in this story.

 How did that great chasm get there?  Did God put it there to punish the rich man?

 In nature, canyons are most often created by slow gradual erosion.   Picture in your mind the Grand Canyon created over millions of years by the flow of the Colorado River. Currently in our country and world we are aware of great divisions, for example between Republicans and Democrats, between fundamentalist and progressive religions, between rich and poor.  It’s an us versus them world.   In our lives, gulfs are usually created in gradual manner to a river canyon; dug day by day by our attitudes, assumptions, by our behavior especially habits.  

 Rich man’s attitude of self-centeredness, pride and arrogance dug his ditch.  Each day he would leave his big house and go by Lazarus paying him no attention.  Lazarus would call out asking for the smallest bit of help and rich man would go by without a sideways glance.  Rich man didn’t notice or care that Lazarus was cold or sick or eating rotten scraps of garbage.  Rich man thought it wasn’t his problem.  Rich man didn’t help Lazarus and every single day the ditch between them got deeper and deeper and wider and wider until one day it became a chasm too large to cross.  That deep gulf was dug in their lifetimes; it wasn’t made by God’s judgment.

 Hell is a place of separation from God.  That’s what the chasm represents, complete separation from God.  I don’t limit heaven and hell to be places of God’s reward or punishment in future for our behavior.   I believe heaven and hell are experienced right here on this earth as a result of our attitudes, beliefs and actions.  Hell may be a place of future fiery torment, I don’t know, but I do know that a place of total separation from God is hell, right here on earth.  So the chasm represents gulf rich man dug as he lived for himself, apart from God and God’s commandment for us to love God and love our neighbors. 

 It is the final and permanent separation of rich man from God.  What we do and believe in this world matters more than we know. 

 It is possible for us to change.  But change, we all recognize, is one of the hardest things for us to do.   It’s never too late as long as we a breath left in us.  I believe this parable is telling us that there is nothing more important than the need for us to turn to God, to repent. 

 We humans have created terrible messes on this earth often falsely invoking God’s name to prove how our side is right.  God doesn’t take sides.  God loves us all.  God never abandons us.  We create these gulfs between each other and also in our relationship with God by all manner of our sinfulness.   Our fears of each other, our terrible need to get revenge and to be right dig chasms between us. 

     In my previous church, children often led us closer to God by asking profound questions.   Kathleen Norris tells of an experience she had teaching children.  She had them write cursing psalms because she feels that writing offers a safe place to work through their experiences and desires for revenge, thus making a place for positive change. 

     One little boy wrote a poem called "The Monster Who Was Sorry."   He began by admitting how much he hates it when his father yells at him.  In the poem his response is to throw his sister down the stairs, then wreck his room, and finally to wreck the whole town.  The poem ends:  "Then I sit in my messy house and say to myself, I shouldn’t have done that." 

     My messy house says it all.   With more honesty and self-awareness than most adults could show, the boy made a metaphor for himself that admitted the depth of his rage and the gulf it created but that awareness also gave him a way out.  You see the boy had begun to build a bridge, a bridge of repentance, like Jacob wrestling with God.  He was not such a monster after all, but only human.   If our house is messy, why not clean it up, why not makes it into a place where we invite God to dwell?  

     The point is that rich man could have bridged the ditch he had dug in his life.  Rich man didn’t even recognize his need for repentance until too late, when the gulf was permanently fixed.  In our scripture, Abraham tells rich man, if your brothers won’t listen to the prophets and Moses, they won’t be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.  There will always be those who don’t get the message of Jesus’ life.  Don’t you be one of them!   Open your eyes and see where you are separated from God.  Reach out; bridge the ditch before it becomes too large!  The need is enormous in our world.   We are all God’s children.  We are here on earth to help each other.  It is in reaching out to help each other that some how we ourselves are led to God.