Tripping Over the Poor (Luke 16:19-31; Proper 21C; September 29, 2013)

Tripping Over the Poor

Luke 16:19-31
Proper 21C
September 29, 2013

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA

Parables are stories that are drawn from scenes of ordinary life: farmers planting seeds, women sweeping floors, a father with a conflict between his two sons, a rich person ignoring a poor one, and so forth.  But a parable always includes something that is just a little “off.”  There is always something that doesn’t quite fit.  A parable shows normal, natural, ordinary life in a way that calls into question what is normal, natural and ordinary.  A parable opens up a way of seeing past distractions to the reality that hides behind the normal, natural and ordinary.  So let’s look closely at this parable to see what we can see.

The first thing we see is that only one of the main characters has a name.  The poor beggar who lies at the gate of the rich man’s house is named Lazarus; the other character, the rich man, has no name.  Our tradition has not been satisfied with that, so it has supplied him with a name: Dives.  But Dives isn’t a real name.  It’s only Latin for “rich man.”

In the world that Jesus’ listeners knew and the one that we know too, a rich man is somebody.  People know who he is.  We know names like Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Ted Turner.  In the real world, rich people have names; they are not nameless nobodies.  It’s poor people who are invisible nobodies.  It’s poor people who are nameless.  But in the story that Jesus tells, the poor man has a name and the rich man is only “the rich guy.” The story Jesus tells invites us to value Lazarus over the rich guy, to value the Third World over the First

Two people, Lazarus and “the rich guy,” have been put in the story.  And where they have been put is the gate of the rich guy’s house where Lazarus is lying begging. 

Beggars were a common enough sight in the ancient world.  Most people lived very precarious lives.  Peasants, that is, people who owned and farmed a little land and grazed animals on a village’s common lands, were suffering enormous financial pressure in Roman Palestine.  Under the Romans Palestine’s economy was being “monetized.”  Money was being required for taxes and rents and there was not nearly enough of it.  Peasants were forced to borrow money at interest to make these payments.  They were falling behind and many were losing their land.  Without land, peasants with no special skills became day laborers who earned almost enough to feed themselves—when they were able to find work, which was not every day.  Over time they became under- and mal-nourished and too weak to work.  Then there was nothing left for them but begging and that was only a way to slow the dying process.  Lazarus was near the end.  He was so badly nourished that his body could no longer maintain the integrity of his skin.  And soon he would die.  This is what happens in a society without safety nets, as it will happen in ours if we continue to despise the poor for their poverty.  Jesus’ hearers were all too familiar with how people became beggars and what happened to them next.

So the characters in the story were familiar.  But the setting of the story doesn’t fit.  Lazarus is shown lying by the rich guy’s gate. Then and now the First and Third Worlds seldom meet each other face to face. Then and now the rich and the destitute don’t come that close to each other.  Today we have zoning ordinances.  Today we have laws that prohibit sleeping in public.  We put benches in parks that have arm rests that make it impossible to lie down.  Some people put fences around our communities and install gates to keep “them” out.  We ignore the needs of the poor for decent low-income housing so that they can no longer live in our town and then we discover that we can’t reliably get people to do the menial tasks that it takes to run a community. 

The rich guy didn’t have zoning ordinances or anti-vagrancy laws.  But he had his own way to keep the approaches to his gates from becoming a gathering spot for the poorest of the poor.  He had security people.

In this as in all things the rich guy had arranged his life carefully.  He insulated himself from other classes of people.  He wasn’t the one who collected taxes.  No, he contracted on behalf of the Romans for someone else to do that.  He didn’t collect the rents on his lands.  No, he had an overseer to do that.  He didn’t force peasants off their land when they couldn’t pay their rents.  No, he had his security people to do that.  He covered his tracks so that there was no obvious connection between him and people like Lazarus. 

The only time he had direct dealings with the poor was when he gave alms.  Alms weren’t enough money to solve any problems.  But they weren’t designed to solve any problems.  Alms were designed to be a cheap way to gain him respect and honor in the community.  It was like Wal-Mart tossing a pittance at the problems in our community that they help cause and perpetuate and calling themselves a good corporate citizen for doing it.

What Jesus did in telling his story was to collapse the distance that the rich liked to keep between themselves and the poor.  He stripped away the excuses and the games that the rich play.  He brought the rich guy and Lazarus face to face so that everyone could see what their real relationship was.

And how did the rich guy respond?  Not very well.  In life he trips over Lazarus in his gate but fails to see him.  Even in death he doesn’t get it.  He is so convinced that the world should be arranged for his benefit that even tormented in the place of the dead, as the story has it, he believes that he can order people around.  “Lazarus, get me a drink of water!” “Lazarus, go warn my brothers!”  The rich guy is clueless.

So clueless in fact that Abraham says that not even someone rising from the dead would break through the layers of pride, privilege and self-delusion that shield the rich guy and his brother.

Now here is the thing about parables: they do not tell us what conclusion we are to draw.  We are left with that job ourselves.  Where do we place ourselves in this story?  We are members of the middle class—most of us—and the story deliberately leaves out the many layers between the very top and very bottom of the social pyramid where we would fit. 

Twice Father Abraham tells the rich guy that Moses and the Prophets could point his brothers toward a path that would let his brothers escape the rich guy’s torment, but the rich guy doesn’t seem to think that will be enough.  And maybe it won’t.  After all, we ourselves have a centuries-long habit of reading the Torah, and the Prophets, and even Jesus himself through middle class eyes.  We have a hard time hearing them except in ways that reinforce rather than challenge the comfortable ways we have of living in our present system of wealth and power.

How can we find new ways to read Jesus, Moses and the prophets so that we can place ourselves with Lazarus, so that we, too, may be found by Abraham’s side? 

It comes down to the rich guy and Lazarus; it comes down to the First World and the Third World.  We live in the First World and see life through First World eyes.  We read Jesus and Moses and the prophets through First World filters.  It all looks natural to us. We seldom question it.  How can we come to a place from which we can see our own filters and biases more clearly?  How do we see the First World for what it is? 

As long as we are standing in the First World it is impossible to see the First World for the same reason that you cannot see England from Trafalgar Square.  To see England we have to go somewhere else: to France, say, or Ireland.  To see the First World clearly we must stand in the Third.

And that, fundamentally, is the reason that we send work-campers to Beverly, Kentucky.  That is why we are a part of the Sister Parish movement and why we have had a ten-year relationship with the community of Potrerillos in El Salvador. 

During our last Sister Parish delegation in June, one of our conversations was with a Catholic priest named Rutilio Sánchez.  Padre Tilo, as he is called, was a younger colleague of Monseñor Romero.  Today he works with several dozen Christian communities to help them live out the good news of Jesus in their lives and in the life of their communities.  Padre Tilo asked us a question that has haunted me since.  I never like to keep a good haunting to myself, so I’m going to share his question with you and let it disturb you for a while. 

Padre Tilo said that everyone who comes to El Salvador wants something.  The conquistadors wanted gold.  The colonists wanted cacao and indigo.  In the 19^th century American companies wanted coffee.  Now the mining companies want gold and silver ore.  “So,” he wanted to know, “what do you want?”  Of course, placing us as the latest in the long list of conquerors, invaders and exploiters warns us that just because we have flown from Iowa to El Salvador does not mean that we won’t continue to see the world through First World eyes.  That is always possible, always a temptation. 

What did we want?  He let us off the hook and asked a different question and our conversation went on.  But I haven’t been able to let his first question go. 

What do I want?  I want to be able to stand alongside people whose Third World experience is quite different from my First World experience, to share our stories, to see and to listen and to learn so that I may begin to see what the world looks like to them, to begin to see the First World from the Third, to know myself without my usual excuses and protective strategies, to become open to God’s Spirit, to allow myself to be remade after the image of Jesus, to read Jesus and Moses and the prophets through the eyes of Lazarus. 

What do I want?  I want to see Jesus in the lives and stories of Jesus’ people.  I want to come away changed, converted, reborn.  I want for Jesus to take my old life and ruin it so that I can never again live my life in ignorance.  I want God’s will done.  I want God’s kingdom to come.  I want God’s name made holy. 

That’s what I want.  Or at least that’s what I want to want.  And that’s a start.

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