Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
In the name of the One God, who is Lover, Beloved, and Love Overflowing.
It’s so easy to feel smug when we read Jesus’ parables. We’ve read them so often, heard so many sermons on them, that it’s easy to think we’ve got them—and by extension Jesus—figured out. Because of this tendency we normally see ourselves in the outcasts in the stories, never as their persecutors. We’re always Israel, never Egypt, always the publican, never the pharisee.
Our smugness betrays us, however. Jesus tells stories like those we’ve been hearing the last many weeks to confuse us and untangle the knots of our complacency and stubborn self-regard. As soon as we think we’ve figured out a parable, it shoots out of our hands, falls between our feet, and trips us.
This morning’s story of the rich man and Lazarus is just such a story. On it’s surface it’s rather simple. There’s a callous rich man who feasts all day in his mansion while a beggar starves on his doorstep. He’s very wicked, but his wickedness primarily lies in his self-absorption. It’s not that he bears Lazarus any ill will. He’s just so concerned with his own comfort that he doesn’t even see Lazarus. Even when he ends up in hades being tormented by fire, he treats Lazarus as a tool—someone who can either give him water or warn his brothers for him. Never does he see or acknowledge Lazarus as a child of God.
Fortunately for us, our God is a righteous and just God. Lazarus, who suffered while he was alive, gets to recline at the eternal banquet against the bosom of Abraham. Hopefully the dogs are there, too, being fed the choicest of kibble. Not only does Lazarus get the care he never received on earth, not only does the rich man get to burn for the rest of time, but—and this is the best part—Abraham tells off the rich man for his negligence and self-absorption. It’s a classic tale of the reversal of fortune and the delicious comeuppance that those ignorant rich folks get when we all get to heaven.
You see, surely, how tempting that reading is, how brilliant Jesus’ rhetorical skill is to draw us in and make us identify with the poor man at the gates over against the callous rich guy. Jesus had it before Hollywood. But there’s our smugness again. There’s our hypocritical self-righteousness. There are our callous, unforgiving hearts on full display.
More than Lazarus or the rich man or Abraham, though, I find myself fixated on the chasm. It’s the part of the story that makes no sense to me. One translation I read described it as “a large chasm filled with sharp stones.” It’s something of a moat or gate, some barrier that is fixed in place, unmoving and unmoveable. It must be quite something if even Abraham cannot get past it. And just like the walls around the rich man’s house, this chasm keeps Lazarus and the rich man separated for all eternity. No reconciliation. No forgiveness. No chance of conversion or change or healing. Justice, perhaps, but no mercy.
To the extent that we find ourselves caught up in anger, fear, self-justification, and the desire for revenge, this chasm can’t but remain fixed in place, both in the parable and in our world. Every time we hear this story and think, Glad that rich guy got what was coming to him, we pile another sharp stone in the ditch. We have to see this dimension of the story if our hearts are ever to soften. We have to repent of our heard-heartedness, if we are ever to help to reconcile and heal the jagged-edged divisions in our world. We have to learn to see the chasm with dismay, to mourn its seeming fixity with tears of compunction.
Just after the story of Lazarus and the rich man, Jesus says to his disciples “If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, “I repent”, you must forgive.’” This teaching is so difficult that the disciples immediately respond, “Lord, increase our faith!”
It can’t be an accident that Jesus teaches about the demands of forgiveness immediately after telling a story about these seemingly irreconcilable men. True, the rich man never expresses contrition for ignoring the poor man at his gate. But then, Lazarus never has the chance to speak, either. Perhaps it’s naïve, but I wonder, if the two could sit down at the banquet together, what new world might come into being between them?
But, of course, there’s that terrible chasm and its sharp stones between them. As I prayed about that chasm, I kept wondering, where is Jesus in all this mess? And then I knew. Jesus is the bridge over the chasm. Jesus, pouring out his life and his love on the Cross, bridges the gap that cannot be bridged. He makes a way where there is no way. He, who broke open the gates of hell and freed the souls trapped in their torment, lays down his tender body over the sharp stones of our hard and unbelieving hearts so that we, too, can be reconciled to God and one another, so that we can be made whole.
We who follow Jesus know that there is no chasm that cannot be crossed. We know that the Cross of Christ is the bridge over which we walk from this life, with all its brokenness and separation, to the heavenly banquet. I have to believe that Lazarus and the rich man can also walk across that bridge, can finally look into one another’s eyes, clasp one another’s hands, and say to one another, “brother, welcome home.”
In the world in which we live, this kind of reconciliation seems naïve, the stuff of kids’ imaginings. To the extent that that is true for us, we can join the disciples in praying, “Lord, increase our faith!” The God who makes a way out of no way, can bring even you and me to the place of belief and, through that belief, to the place of surrender and wholeness in Christ.
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