I have to admit that I am terrified of the parable about the
rich man and Lazarus the beggar. When
you really think about it, it is terrifying.
A rich man ate well and dressed in fine clothes. Well, he
didn’t just eat well, he feasted every day and he didn’t just wear nice
clothes, he wore purple and fine linen. Purple
was the color of royalty and linen, so light and beautiful, was one of the most
expensive fabrics in Israel. Meanwhile outside the rich man’s house, a poor man
named Lazarus lay there dying. He was not only poor and hungry but he had
sores. And the dogs came and licked his sores. He was degraded to lower than a
dog. He lay in the dirt. And the poor man has a name, Lazarus. And the
rich man does not.
Both men die and Jesus paints a vivid picture of what happens
next. Lazarus is taken to heaven by
angels where he sits with Abraham. The rich man just ends up in Hades and we
don’t really know how he got there. But
what we do know is that he is very hot. There is fire all around him and it
torments him. Worse still, the rich man can see Lazarus and Abraham in the
comforts of heaven. He can see them but he can’t get to them. He must watch paradise from a seat in hell.
The rich man asks Abraham to send Lazarus to dip the tip of
his finger in water and cool his tongue.
It is a small request. He does
not question his fate. He does not yell
and scream. He does not ask for a way
out of hell. All he asks is for a tiny bit of water, enough to moisten the tip
of a finger, a tongue. But Abraham
answers by telling him about the chasm.
Abraham addresses the rich man with the word “child.” He does
not seem angry or offended by the rich man, rather, it seems that he is trying
to educate someone who knows next to nothing, someone like a child.
Abraham describes the gap to the rich man. “There is a great
gap between heaven and hell and you can’t cross over. No one can, not in either direction.” And
this is what I find so hard to digest in this parable. Heaven and hell are cut off from each other. There is no redo. Once you end up in one place or the other,
that’s it.
And the rich man ends up in Hades because he did not see the
man who sat on the ground right on his doorstep. He did not see a person there. He had a chance to make a connection that
would have served as a bridge between him and Lazarus, but the gap that was
there in life was even worse in death.
The rich man could simply not cross over.
The rich man failed to see Lazarus. Lazarus looked so
different. He was so dirty, so ugly, so smelly.
The rich man didn’t want to see.
So he just walked on by and the distance that he created became the
chasm that kept him from God.
The distance that he created became the chasm that kept him
from God.
Our relationship with one another is part of our relationship
with God. When we fail to see each
other, when we allow the gap to exist, we alienate ourselves from God.
All over this country, there are riots going on in our
cities. These riots have been going on periodically for decades. White and black people are not seeing one
another as human beings. There is still
so much blindness. So little
communication. So much hatred. And we all are suffering, all of us.
Lazarus was lying right in the path of the rich man, at the
gate to his home. He was right at his
doorstep. The rich man had to pass by
Lazarus every time he left home and every time he returned. And even still, he
did not see Lazarus as a human being. Day after day, he simply refused to see.
So how can we bridge the gap in this life? What could the rich man have done to save
himself from eternal torment? The answer
is simple. See Lazarus. Enter his
skin. Learn about him. Serve him.
God is not asking us to fix it the problems of the world or
the suffering of humanity, but to see the people who are in our path as
people. To learn their names. To see with God’s eyes and to ask ourselves,
“What is God asking of me?”
This love your neighbor as yourself stuff, it’s no joke. We
are being asked to close the gap.
It’s scary to see each other, to risk letting someone change
our lives. But if Jesus is right, it is essential. We cannot cross the gap to God if we haven’t
crossed the gap to understand each other.
Yesterday, I was leaving the church after an
emotionally-charged funeral. I was
walking to my car when a homeless woman came marching towards me swearing at
the top of her lungs. She seemed to want to tell me something, but the swear
words were so thick that I had to ask her to stop swearing so much simply so I
could understand her. She was carrying a
children’s book wrapped in plastic, like the kind you get at a McDonalds drive
through or a Chick Fil A. When she
slowed down enough, I began to understand her story.
It turns out that this woman had tried to give the children’s
book to a little girl as she and her family were leaving the church after the
funeral. And the little girl refused to take it.
“I had a present for her!” the woman cried. “And she didn’t
want it!”
I realized that this woman, who was so loud and abrasive, had
had her feelings hurt. When I told her
that it sounded like this hurt her feelings, she said, “Yeah it did! That little girl…she broke my heart!”
And then, to my surprise, the woman thanked me for listening
and walked on. Turns out that all that
she needed was simply to be heard.
Who is on your doorstep?
That person is an essential part of your story, a way for you to grow
closer to God.
To close the gaps in this broken world is to grow to God in
the next. It is all so intertwined. We
must see one another as human beings for the very salvation of our souls.
