Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
September 25, 2016
21 Proper C
Today is Social Media Sunday in the Episcopal Church. On Social Media Sunday, the Church invites
all of us, this one Sunday, to take out our smartphones and post images or
ideas that arise from worship to Facebook, twitter, Instagram, or other social
media sites. By posting photos or
thoughts about our worship, Sunday School, our ministries, coffee hour, or
other programs, we tell our story to the wider community. And by telling our story, we bridge the
divide that separates the church and the community, and we make a connection between
the gospel story and longing people have for deeper meaning in their
lives. Social Media Sunday is another
way to tell our story in a way that is relevant and understandable.
Jesus tells us a story about another gap or chasm this
morning. In Jesus’ parable, there is a
rich man who lived in tremendous luxury and there is a poor man named Lazarus
who lived in utter squalor. When the two
men died, their situations were reversed, and now the rich man is in Hades
being tormented, and Lazarus is with Abraham.
The former rich man wants Abraham to sent Lazarus over with a drop of
water for his burning tongue, but the chasm between the two is so deep no one
can pass from one side to the other. The
former rich man then asks Abraham to send Lazarus to warn the rich man’s 5
brothers so that they will not come to the place of torment, but Abraham tells
the former rich man that if the brothers won’t listen to Moses and the
prophets, they won’t be convinced by the resurrection of a dead person.
We are left to wonder what the rich man wants Lazarus to
warn his brothers about. The rich man lived the life of a rich man, but that is
not a crime in and of itself. Lazarus
was destitute in his earthly life, but does even the deepest suffering earn
someone a place with Abraham in the next life?
Or are we to think that all roles are reversed after death? The rich man has the decency to care about
the fate of his brothers, but what are they to do differently?
The rich man could hardly claim ignorance about Lazarus in
his earthly life, since Lazarus lay at the rich man’s gate and was likely hard
to miss as the rich man went in and out each day. Day after day, week after week, the rich man
likely turned his head to avoid seeing Lazarus, sick and starving at his
gate. Not until the rich man needs a
drop of cool water and a word of warning to his brothers does he acknowledge
Lazarus’ existence. The truth is that
the great chasm between the two men was fixed long before they died, and cannot
be bridged even in death.
When
the rich man asks Abraham to send Lazarus to warn the 5 brothers, Abraham’s
reply is that the brothers have Moses and the prophets. What do Moses and the prophets teach? Moses
and the prophets all warn about creating a divide between the rich and the
poor. Over and over again throughout
the prophets, God’s chosen people are admonished to serve the poor, the widows,
and the orphans. Over and over again in
the prophets, the failure of God’s people to take care of the poor or worse,
their exploitation of the poor, meets with disastrous consequences. God’s people have always been called to
bridge divides, not create them. So
perhaps the rich man wants to warn his brothers that chasms created on earth
will be chasms turned inside out in the afterlife.
We
do not have to look far to see deep and volatile political, racial, and economic
divisions in the world around us. Jesus’ parable reminds us that God calls us
to live as God’s children and to treat each other as God’s children. We can too easily ignore people with whom we
disagree, or to treat them as the rich man treated Lazarus. Jesus doesn’t call us to agree on
everything. Jesus calls us to the work
of staying connected with those with whom we disagree. In the words of 1 Timothy, God calls us to
the pursuit of righteousness, which is completely different from
self-righteousness, and to godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness and to
do this in our dealings with all people not just those with whom we agree.
Some days this feels unrealistic at best and impossible at
worst. Some days there seems to be little
reason to hope for a world in which great chasms of suspicion and distrust do
not separate people from each other.
Into a world that seemed equally hopeless if not more so, Jeremiah receives
a sign from God. We hear the story of
what seems to be a fairly ordinary real estate transaction. The only problem is that this is a very bad
piece of real estate and Jeremiah is actually in prison. Jeremiah has told the
people of Judah, his own people, that God is using the Babylonians, the enemy,
to punish the people of Judah for their sins. Those sins were things like
worshiping foreign gods, and ignoring the poor in their midst. The real estate
is a bad investment because the property will soon be destroyed and worthless when
the Babylonians invade Judah. But God
tells Jeremiah to put the deeds to the land in an earthenware jar where they
will last a long time. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel:
"Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land."
To the people of Judah, God’s words sound about as unlikely as a promise to
heal the divisions in our country sounds today.
But God calls Jeremiah and the people to hope in a future that is better
than their current situation or than the immediate future.
God calls the church to be the sign of hope in this divided
world that Jeremiah’s real estate transaction was for Judah. God calls the church to bridge divides, not
create them; to make connections not foster division; and to fill the chasms
which divide us rather than expand them.
We are called to give the world hope that people who are different can
be in community together and even love each other by living that reality. Lazarus and the rich man were separated by a
deep chasm in death because they were separated by such a chasm in life. In the Kingdom of God, there are no
chasms. God calls us to work to make the
Kingdom of God a more present reality and be a sign of hope for this broken and
divided world.
Amen.
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