The Great Chasm

Sept. 26, 2010                           

The Rev. Laurie Vischer
Luke 16:19-31               

The Great Chasm

(Sing:   Blessed, blessed, blessed are you, blessed are you, who know your need.)

    This parable puts me in mind of wonderful dialogue from Frank Capra’s movie, It’s a Wonderful Life.    Clarence the Angel (who has come to help nearly-suicidal banker George Bailey,)  explains,  “We don’t use money in heaven.”  George replies: “Comes in pretty handy down here, bub.”

    This scripture, appointed for today,  falls on a Sunday in which we are mindful of stewardship.  So, I’m just not going to pull any punches: The point of this story is not about the afterlife.  It’s about this life, and what we do or don’t do. We have the image of a great chasm.  Theologian and preacher Will Willimon, said about the chasm: “If we don’t reach out, reach across, give a hand up, there will be hell to pay.
     This passage echoes the “sermon on the plain” in Luke, where Jesus says the poor are blessed.  For theirs is the grace of heaven.  (Sing: blessed)

    Many of you know that I have just returned from a sabbatical leave.  Part of that leave included a Lily-Endowment funded grant for my family and I to travel together in Italy.  We spent the last few days on the trip in Venice.  I was completely bowled over by the beauty of that city.  We arrived in the main square, the San Marco Piazza, at nearly sunset, when the warm sunlight was bouncing off the gold mosaics and statues on the San Marco church.  Orchestras on the piazza were playing waltzes.  Around the edges of the pristine piazza were stores with designer jewelry and clothes, Murano glass and expensive watches.    Karl summed it up with this word: Opulence.   That beautiful, glittering opulence  was in stark contrast to one of the many beggar women we saw in Italy.  This woman was covered with a head scarf, and had draped her entire body along the side of a bridge.  She was prostrate.  Her face was completely hidden, as she lay face down on the pavement.   The only visible skin showing was her hand, holding a metal cup.  Though we see homeless people here, and we’d seen beggars in Italy, I was shocked by this woman.  Whether she was prostrate with illness, shame or modesty, I don’t know.  But I felt in my bones the huge chasm between her poverty and the  wealth all around us.  I felt the chasm between her desperation and my wealth.

    I know: this is a complicated issue: if you give money to the panhandler, are you really helping, or are you just enabling?  And isn’t Westminster already doing so much, preparing and serving Grace Meals, and the food bank at Genesis Community Fellowship.  We are committed to increasing our outreach and mission, locally and globally.    Financially, some of us are struggling more than ever.  How does this passage speak to that? 
    But the passage is here before us.  It’s uncomfortable.  And I wonder:
Isn’t this a danger of  wealth?   The more of it we have, the more we may be tempted to not look at what makes us uncomfortable.    In wealth,  we may find  false security.  We may become blinded to needs of others.   For people in the first century, and for people today, wealth promises safety and security.  God’s  blessing is for each of us, but sometimes wealth is one of the most potent forces that can distract us from our need to rely upon God. 

    The Pharisees (who we’ve read about in other passages in Luke: you know, the religious liberals who liked to wear long robes, and have seats of honor and who prayed loudly!)  –they could hardly have missed  that the parable was  aimed at them. They regarded  their prosperity as God's reward for their good conduct.   But, the parable warned  that, if they are like the rich man in this life, they will be like him in death.  This great reversal  challenged  the theology that wealth is a sign of God's favor and poverty a sign of God's displeasure.

    In the story, after death, across the great chasm,  Abraham tells the rich man that it would do no good to send Lazarus from the dead, back to the rich man’s brothers as a warning.  They  already have "Moses and the prophets".  That  includes  numerous pleas from scripture for caring for the  poor and vulnerable:  Not to mistreat aliens, widows, or orphans;  to leave gleanings to the poor;   to bring tithes to support the  aliens, the fatherless, and widows;  to cancel all debts every seventh year and to be openhanded to the needy;    to include, the orphans and widows in their celebrations;  to observe justice; not  to exploit workers; to plead the case of the orphans and to defend the rights of the poor; to not take  advantage of the vulnerable. 

    Abraham refused  the rich man’s request because even a miracle cannot melt unrepentant hearts or bring sight to eyes that refuse to recognize any needs beyond their own.    Did you notice that though the rich man didn’t reach out to help the poor man, he knew Lazarus by name?    He knew the name of the man, suffering just outside his gate, but didn’t notice him enough to help.

    What makes the difference between not really seeing and seeing?  This parable is one of several in Luke that shows us that the kingdom of God shows up when and where we least expect it. We don’t expect it to show up in the gap between the pleasant living of some and the inhumane living conditions of others.  We don’t expect it to show up in the invitation to reach across the chasms that divide.

    All through the Bible--through Moses, the Prophets, and the Gospel, we read, God  has a heart for the poor. We can talk politically all day long about  the underlying reasons for this or that form of poverty, about how some poor people contribute to their lot in life by making bad choices.  We disagree about what is really the best way to help the poor. New Deal and Great Society advocates have one approach, Neo-Conservatives and the Tea Party folks have another approach. Republicans think one way, Democrats another.   We can talk and debate all the day long. But finally,  what no biblically literate Christian should dare to deny is that the Bible  makes it clear that God hates poverty and God  expects those of us who are not poor to do something.
   
    The reading also brings into the spotlight the issue of why it is so tough to bring about a just and decent order in the world in which we live.  Part of it may be that we’ve   often restricted religion to worship and a small area of morality. We’ve  focused on interpersonal behavior, civility to our neighbors and the marriage vows, but may have been too tentative on issues of justice in the world. .  We’ve not taken seriously enough corporate sin, or injustice done by a government,  company, university or business.  According to the prophets, we are  to be passionate, and moved to do something about  injustice in the world.  (Sing: Blessed)

    I must confess, that over the past couple of years, I’ve had some fatigue with “causes.”  I’ve taken to deleting  more email.  I’m attending fewer rallies.  Out of a sense of disappointment and frustration, I’ve disengaged a little from speaking up on matters of injustice.

    History tells us about the dangers of such an attitude, as highlighted in the Christian Century article on a huge religious conference in Berlin in 1934.  Then the ugliness and danger of Hitler’s regime has already become apparent, but few in the conference would  support any condemnation.    Instead,  some began to see Hitler as a hero because he fitted in their ‘personal moral code’.  He didn’t  smoke or drink, and he forced German women to stop smoking cigarettes or wearing red lipstick in public.  He had, according to one speaker, brought a sense of morality to the country by banning some books, films and burning books which encouraged communism.       

    But personal morality or sticking to the rules of religious tradition is not enough for those who claim to follow Jesus.  Our duty is to act justly, love neighbor, feed the hungry and shelter the homeless.        

    Preachers at Westminster choose a sermon title by Tuesday,  when we draft the order of service.  But the sermon writing usually comes later.   This time, I had already chosen this sermon title “The Great Chasm” before I heard an interview with Timothy Noah, on NPR.  He wrote an article for Slate  magazine , titled The Great Divergence, about the increasing disparity in incomes in our country.  This  title drew me  to read what he recently wrote.  He noted that in the United States, in 1913,    ( the era of the Rockefellers, Carnagies, and Vanderbilts  ), the richest 1%  had 18% of the nations’s income.   Today the top 1%  has 24% of the income.   “The Great Divergence” is about  the growing inequality gap in income in the US, since 1979.   A large, growing  number of experts agree that this increasing  inequality is deeply worrying.  One of those experts, Alan Greenspan said, “This is not the type of thing which a democratic society–a capitalist, democratic society can really accept without addressing.”

    Noah wrote: “Income distribution in the US is more unequal than in Guyana, Nicaragua and Venezuela and is roughly on par with Uruguay, Argentina, and Ecuador.  Income inequality is actually declining in Latin America, even as it continues to increase in the U.S.”  He commented that the U.S. is big enough to maintain a geographic distance between the villa-dweller and the beggar.   The great chasm.   Noah asked, “In the past, America scorned societies starkly divided into the destitute and the privileged.  They were considered repellent.  Is it my imagination, or do we hear less criticism of such societies today in the U.S.?”

    In the novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities,  by Tom Wolfe, Ralston Thorpe tells his classmate, investment banker Sherman McCoy: “You’ve got to insulate, insulate, insulate!”
 That is the opposite of the call of the Gospel.  Jesus invites us to reach out, to bridge the chasm.  To see one another and be moved by compassion.  To widen from the narrowness of our own concerns and to act with compassion.  Not to insulate.
   
      I wonder, as the gap in wealth does widen, does it make even harder for us to see the need in one another?   Needs in the poor and the rich?  What will it take to convince us? We have scripture. We have the needy at our gate. We have one 'risen from the dead'.   What causes us to really see one another?

    This weekend in Portland, a play opened about Rachel Corrie.  You may remember her–she is the young woman from Olympia  who put her body as a shield between the Israeli Defense Forces and homes in Rafah, Gaza.  She  was killed in 2003.    She was appalled by the suffering she saw, especially the destruction of the wells, greenhouses and homes.  She had written to her father, “I can’t believe that something like this can happen in the world without a bigger outcry. . . It is my own selfishness and will to optimism that wants to believe that even people with a great deal of privilege don’t just sit idly by and watch.”

    Haunting words:  “. . .I want to believe that even people with a great deal of privilege don’t just sit idly by and watch. . .” 

    Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, medical researchers from the UK wrote The Spirit Level.  Their point is that income inequalities aren’t just bad for individuals who are poor, but for societies as a whole.  They note,
                                   
    “Modern societies will depend increasingly upon being creative, adaptable, inventive, well-informed and flexible communities, able to respond generously to each other and to needs wherever they arise.  These are characteristics of societies not in hock to the rich, in which people are driven by status insecurities, but of populations used to working together and respecting each other as equals.”   

    This powerful parable invites us to ask: what will we do with what we have been given through the Bible, through the prophets, through Jesus’ teaching?  What kind of lives will we lead?  What kind of government policies will we get excited about?  What kind of congregation should we be in the midst of this community?
    What would the world be like?  What would our lives be like if our faith, our relationship to Jesus compelled us to never sit idly by, and watch?  What would we be like, then?    

    Sing: Blessed, blessed, blessed are you; Blessed are you, who know your need.


*Paperless music by David Poole