Josh Bascom, “Choices”
“Americans love to talk about how Americans hate to talk about money.” That’s how Joe Pinsker started his article in the Atlantic Magazine back in February, 2020. It’s true, many people don’t like talking about money, even more people I’m willing to bet don’t enjoy talking about hell. So today’s Gospel reading is a bit of a doozy.
Like Mrs. Hopewell, the mother in Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Good Country People”, who only speaks in clichés and says to her depressive daughter Hulga, “if you can’t come pleasantly, I don’t want you at all,” sometimes we all have trouble looking at and talking about the unpleasant things in life.
But why is it that we don’t like talking about money? Pinsker cites a survey in his article that found that people are “more comfortable” talking with friends about marital troubles, mental health, addiction, race, sex, and politics than they are comfortable talking about money. What’s interesting is that while for many it’s a terrible taboo to talk about income and wealth, we kind of constantly talk about money, just in indirect ways. Our everyday conversations are filled with questions about what we buy, what we do for a living, where we went to college, what neighborhood we live in and all sorts of other subjects that, as Sociologist Rachel Sherman says, serve as proxies for how well we’re doing in the financial game of life. Sherman’s research shows that there is a bit of guilt associated with wealth; the wealthier a culture is the more uncomfortable they are speaking about it. But when we accidentally say the unsayable, when we name just how well off we actually are in comparison to others in the world, gosh, well then Jesus’ words about the rich man in purple enter the room and we want to get out as quickly as possible.
Because I want to say that we’re all the rich man. Either because we live in Charlottesville, and we or our communities do indeed have more resources than our friends in Haiti and Honduras and so many other places in this world. But I would also say that we’re all the rich man, every single one of us, because we’ve all ignored the needs of someone before, just as the rich man ignored Lazarus at his gate. No matter where we are in the world we’ve all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, whether that fall was yesterday, today, tomorrow or all the way back in that garden, we’re all the rich man.
This passage is undoubtedly about money, about how we ought to care for and sacrifice for the people around us in need. But life isn’t that straight forward because the human heart isn’t that straight forward. This is why Jesus doesn’t simply command us to love and support the Lazarus’ of the world. We can’t simply be told what to do and then go and do as we’re told. Jesus knows us, better than we know ourselves, and so instead of offering a simple example of how we shouldn’t act, Jesus speaks to our hearts and moves our hearts by giving us the parable of the rich man and Lazarus to show us how God acts, and more powerfully how God did act upon the cross.
Notice how the story isn’t just about the rich man ignoring Lazarus and ending up in hell, it’s not a simple lesson for the rich or a hopeful message for the poor. No, the story continues beyond the grave with the rich man continuing to miss the point and thinking that Lazarus can still serve him, that he and his brothers could still end up on top if they could just get some help making better choices by being visited by a ghost.
If you’ve watched any TV the past few weekends I’m guessing you’ve seen one of these new Genesis car commercials. In one of them a father is busily handling a work call on his cell phone while his adorable daughter plays on the ground. She asks, “Dad, how big is the ocean?” He lovingly and sacrificially puts his phone down and they hop in his beautiful new Genesis GV80 SUV and cruise straight to the beach, while he asks her about school and her life. And as their toes touch the sand and they slowly walk into the water, the slogan of this new ad campaign pops up on the TV screen, “Life is Defined by The Choices You Make.” Ouch! Now, I was willing to ignore the fact that it appears as if they’ve gone out for an afternoon drive, leaving New York City and somehow ending up on the California coast just a few minutes later, but what I couldn’t ignore was the tidal wave of guilt and anxiety that I felt at those words, “Life is Defined by The Choices You Make.” Gosh, I’ve made some pretty terrible choices over the past 35 years. I’m guessing that you have too. In fact, just a few moments before I saw this commercial my daughter asked if I could read her a book and I said, “maybe after I finish watching this commercial!!” We’ve all made some bad choices, and if my life is entirely defined by the choices I make, then I doubt I’m going to end up being carried off to heaven in one of those sweet new Genesis SUVs.
We hear today’s gospel reading and at first we might think that it’s message is no different than this car commercial; Life is defined by the choices we make. We have to choose to not be the rich man, to not act like the rich man, or we have to choose to have faith like Lazarus presumably had. We have to choose to send or ask that a ghostly messenger might be sent to our loved ones so that they can avoid making the poor choices that we’ve made. Thankfully, when it comes to the unconditional love of God, when it comes to the ways of our God whose property it is always to have mercy, our lives are not defined by the choices we make or have made, instead our lives were defined when the world was turned upside down and Jesus was crucified for us all upon the Cross.
In the context of this passage, in this world the rich man is the one who is blessed by God, at least that’s what the people of that time believed. The good actors receive their rewards—it’s basic Karma. But in this passage from Luke, what we end up seeing is that while the world expects God‘s blessing and favor to fall upon the haves and not the have not‘s, those who have made all the right choices, what we actually see is God flipping all of that on its head and God finding favor with Lazarus.
Notice how Lazarus is given a name, while the rich man is not. Lazarus it turns out isn’t less than human, although he may feel like it, he actually is a stand in for all of humanity. He isn’t subhuman, he is us. I’ve said that we’re all the rich man, but I also want to say that we’re also all Lazarus. The rich man represents what we think matters in the world, while Lazarus represents what matters to God, which is to say, us. Jesus says, you might feel worthless, or pitiful or poor, desperate for belonging and affirmation, for praise and glory, for a better job for a decent meal. Well, Lazarus was as desperate and as pitiful and poor as they come, but “that’s not how I see him”, God says, that’s not how God looks at you. God places ultimate value and blessing on Lazarus, not because of the choices he’s made but because God made him, just as God made you, because he has been forgiven, just as you have been forgiven.
When our first child was born four years ago, Courtney and I realized that we hadn’t read The Chronicles of Narnia since we were kids—we barely remembered it. So I made the bold choice to get up at night when Courtney fed our daughter and I would read the stories out loud. It was indeed a bold choice—the quote I’m about to read comes from page 82 of the first book, and I found a four year old book mark on page 95….that’s how far my bold choice got me.
In the story, the four siblings Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy have gone through the wardrobe and into the snowy, crazy world of Narnia. They’ve befriended a pair of talking beavers and they’re trying to wrap their heads around what’s going on. They hear that it’s been winter for years straight now in Narnia, but some lion named Aslan is “on the move”. And then they turn around and realize that Edmund has snuck away into the woods and maybe gone off to be the white witch. Peter, Susan and Lucy are worried him, they’re scared for Edmund, they feel betrayed, they’re scared for themselves and the entire world inside and outside of Narnia for the choices they’ve made that have brought them to that place.
“oh, can no one help us?!” wailed Lucy. “Only Aslan,” said Mr. Beaver, “we must go and meet him. That’s our only chance now.”
I assumed Courtney was fast asleep, but as soon as I read those words she whispered, “gosh, Aslan really is God isn’t he?”
We might feel lost in the dark wood with the choices we’ve made, but we’re not alone, and more importantly the one who is with us is the one who has made the greatest choice of all for us. Only Aslan can help us now, and he already has.
We don’t need someone to tell us a motivating story or to come to us from the dead and help us make better choices, we need someone to die for us! We need someone to forgive us—to love us despite us. Thankfully for you and me the choice has already been made. From the Cross Jesus has said, “It is finished”. It is finished.
So the next time you see a Lazarus on the side of the road, whether that’s through your front windshield or a reflection of yourself in your rearview mirror, know that you are Lazarus and he is you, know that the only choice you are defined by is the choice that Christ has already made for you. Know that God is love, that God loves you, that we are only able to love because God first made the choice to love us to the point of death upon a cross. Know that God is love, that you are loved, and see what happens.
Amen
