Amanda McMillen, “Jesus Bridges the Chasm”
I saw a New Yorker cartoon recently, of two men, Jesus and one of his disciples, walking together through the wilderness, and the disciple asks Jesus, “Ok so the meek shall inherit the earth, and the rich will have a hard time getting into heaven. But what about the middle class?”
Well in our parable today from Luke, Jesus is speaking in full extremes here in order to make his point. He tells the story of a rich man, one who is dressed in the finest purple (an expensive dye reserved for royalty) and fine linen, who feasts sumptuously every day, and at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered in sores - meaning he’s likely very sick, and outcast from society for being unclean - who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table. In those times, it was common for palaces and other wealthy homes to have a bench outside for beggars to sit and wait, where they would eventually receive leftovers from the over-the-top banquets that were held for the wealthy homeowners and their friends inside; this was considered a responsibility of the rich, to care for those who frequented their palace gates.
So Lazarus is sitting outside the palace gates, sick, outcast, and starving, and he longed for just the crumbs from the rich man’s table, a rich man who was of such means that he threw a feast every single day, and who either refuses to feed him or doesn’t even really see him at all. From the jump, Jesus is setting up this parable of two great extremes - extreme poverty and extreme wealth. There is no middle ground here- these men have nothing in common - except, of course, their eventual death.
It seems from first glance that the rich man doesn’t even really know that Lazarus is there - he doesn’t even really see him. There is something very human in this interaction, or lack thereof, between the rich man and Lazarus - the way that we see other people around us as either liabilities or assets. We may see someone as an asset if we find that they can help us down the line if we need it: I scratch your back, you’ll scratch mine. Or maybe we see another person as someone who either boosts our own sense of status or knocks it down a peg. If I’m around people who are smart and funny and well-off, well then perhaps it makes me feel like I’m smart, funny, and well-off. We avoid those who we fear might bring us down and we cozy up to those that make us feel great about ourselves.
There’s a great Seinfeld episode in which Elanie dates a man who’s almost a doctor but has failed his licensing exam three times, but she sticks with him because he’s really so close to being a doctor, and she has always wanted to say that she dates a doctor. Eventually he passes, and he turns around and breaks up with Elaine. “You're breaking up with me? But I sacrificed and supported you while you struggled. What about my dream of dating a doctor?” The doctor says, “I'm sorry, Elaine. I always knew that after I became a doctor, I would dump whoever I was with and find someone better. That's the dream of becoming a doctor.”
We use people to ease insecurity. Or maybe we look at people as making our lives either easier, or harder. Either way, the Rich Man knew he couldn’t use Lazarus, so he was nothing for him to be concerned with.
This is how the law of the parable works: it makes us feel convicted, and shows us how we fall short. As human beings, we tend to use one another for our own gains, one, and, two, we tend to believe in the whole idea of deserving - that the material things we have in our lives actually belong to us. That we earned them. That we deserve them. And that’s the world we live in, right? We didn’t come up with that concept out of nowhere - that’s the economic water in which we swim. It’s unavoidable.
But as Christians, we also believe that all we have is a gift from God, undeserved gift, grace is another word for it. We may work hard for a living, but even our ability to do so is a gift, right? Dependent on our physical and mental health - which is a gift. In that sense, nothing we own actually belongs to us. The ways we understand status in our world, as related to socioeconomics or health or intelligence or whatever, actually mean nothing in the kingdom of God.
Because Jesus, in this parable, flips the very concept of deserving on its head. The first shall be last and the last shall be first. He who “lost” in life in every way – poor, sick, outcast, dejected - has gained life after death. And he who lived most “successfully” on earth, the winner, finds himself clinging to that success even in death, unable to give it up - which we see very clearly when the rich man orders Lazarus around as his water boy, even after death. The rich man cannot accept the reality of his own death, of his own failure, and it keeps him in torment.
The rich man seems to believe that he somehow deserves his wealth, that he deserves his very life. And entitlement is really not compatible with the kingdom of God. The rich man does not deserve his wealth. There is not something particularly righteous about him - we learn this pretty quickly from the fact that he doesn’t even give crumbs to Lazarus outside his gate. And it’s good to note, there is nothing particularly righteous about Lazarus that we know of either - the only thing that qualifies him to join Abraham after death is that he suffered in life, and that he wants relief from that suffering.
After death, the rich man finds that he is on one side of a great chasm and cannot reach Lazarus in eternal life - in his earthly life, the rich man believed in this chasm, believed that there was something inherently distinct about him compared with Lazarus, he saw himself on the good side of that divide, the side of success and wellbeing. In a twist of fate, after death he finds the exact opposite to be true. And this divide is too large for him to bridge.
The divides we think divide us, the divides that the rich man thought divided him and Lazarus in the world - be they money, political leanings, status - in one sense, in our world of sin, those divisions are real because they have real consequences for our lived lives. But in a heavenly sense, they are complete fiction. We, as human beings, are bound to one another by our shared human condition of needing God for all we have.
Sometimes the idea of helping another person, of extending ourselves, feels so difficult - it feels like bridging an unbridgeable chasm. Like the rich man hoping for just one drop of water from across a canyon. We’re stopped by our sin of self-centeredness, but also just by feeling like we have no extra time, no extra money, no extra energy, and also wondering if whatever we feel compelled to do is even helpful at all. Being with another person in any way that we don’t see on our regular daily basis can feel like a chasm we have no ability to cross. Only by God’s miraculous grace can one person connect with an unexpected other.
But when we get the sense, and sometimes the sense only comes in the briefest of moments during the mad dash of our daily lives, and more often coming in moments of failure and loss, but when you get that sense from the Holy Spirit that all you have is a gift, that your very life is a gift, then you may find yourself in that moment feeling more akin to those suffering in ways you are not. And it tends to be that those we find ourselves akin to, those we see as part of our family, we may find ourselves drawn to being with in some way.
If we see ourselves as the rich man in this story, then we find ourselves up against a law that we cannot fulfill. We find ourselves on the bad side of deserving. The rich man, who even after death believes he is better than the poorest of the world - he understood the world in terms of deserving - but thankfully, Jesus does not, because it is “while we are still sinners, that Christ died for the ungodly.” Not after we’ve cleaned up our act, gotten more generous, really believed that we have a responsibility to the poor - no, it is while we were still sinners, that Christ died for the ungodly. Totally undeserved.
That’s why we pray before we receive communion - “we do not presume to come to this thy table, O Merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness (because that is not what bridges the chasm between us and Jesus at all) - but instead, in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy to gather up the crumbs under thy table, to receive the leftover lunch from your banquet. But thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy.” This prayer takes us right to the foot of the cross where the ground is completely level - rich or poor, we do not have our righteousness to stand on - we are all in need of mercy.
Where we, like the rich man, may have trouble seeing our kinship with the poorest among us, thankfully Jesus does not. The firstborn of all creation, the redeemer of the world, became poor for our sake, he took on the suffering of the world, he touched the outcast leper covered in sores, he fed the thousands with just some leftover lunch. He died a lonely death of betrayal and misery, in order that you would have life, abundant and carefree. And he did it for all of us, the rich and the poor, the miserly and the miserable.
Jesus left his heavenly banquet table and came to us, bridging all divides, as we lay outside his pearly gates desperate for relief from our suffering - he doesn’t use us for his gain, but in fact we use him for ours - instead, he just loves us, and there’s no way we can repay him. The slate is clean. And he offers not just the crumbs under his table, but the whole feast, body and blood. None of it deserved - all grace, all gift, for all people.
Amen.
