Prayer:
Lord, what did we do to deserve all that has been given to us? Nothing. Why should we have homes, food, and families when so many have so little? For what purpose has this day been given to us when many are at the end of their days? To what end should we offer our efforts when there are many who are bound, trapped, imprisoned, and can do so little? Lord, what is it that you require in response to your good gifts? We probably know the answer to these questions, but be good enough to tell us once again. Then help us to live the answers. Amen.

In the story of Lazarus and the rich man Luke continues to explore his all-important theme of economic injustice. Here the two players are an unnamed rich man, feasting sumptuously and dressed in purple linen, and Lazarus the poor man, covered by open sores, waiting for scraps from the rich man's table. Is this a story about the rich and poor? About Luke's emphasis on the redistribution of wealth? Yes, that is in part what this story is about. But there's more here too. This story is about more than money. For as the great Lutheran theologian Jürgen Moltmann put it: "the opposite of poverty is not property. Rather, the opposite of both poverty and property is community." This is then a story about choices: about choosing isolation or choosing life in community.

Many of you know that my first parish was in a tough inner city neighborhood of Chicago. I lived in a diverse neighborhood: one third Mexican, one third Puerto Rican, one third Anglo. By middle class standards the neighborhood was poor. I'm sure the neighborhood was similar to those Pastor McKee served in Gary and Indianapolis. But there were forms of wealth in Logan Square I didn't yet know about when Jan and I arrived in 1995. The neighborhood was economically poor. But economics isn't the only criterion for evaluating poverty. There was non-economic wealth in my poor inner city neighborhood. We noticed it right away. People lived in community, interacting, talking, playing.

People live in community, together, interacting. I noticed it right away. After supper, everyone in the neighborhood came outside and hung out on the front porch. I mean everyone did this, or nearly everyone. Every single evening when the weather was nice people came out and sat on their front porches. Kids played catch in the street, everyone talked to each other, people gossiped and laughed and told stories, people walked and stopped to chat, people admired each other's dogs or plants or yards, and it was just amazing. So much contact, so much conversation, so many strangers saying hello, Spanish, English, and combinations thereof... It was remarkable. I'd never seen anything quite like it.

I was used to middle class neighborhoods. I was used to people building decks in the back yard, with high fences. I was used to respecting my neighbor's sense of privacy. Barbecuing in insular settings, with family and maybe a few friends. I was used to the lonely nights alone in front of books or television, or quiet conversations with Jan or other friends. I had never seen so much vitality, so much mingling, so much — well, community.

If I understand all of the biblical warnings against money that we've been hearing lately, it's not so much money that's the problem. It's what we do with money, or rather what money does with us. Timothy says that those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. That seems accurate to me. We've all seen what greed looks like. We can all imagine the kinds of poor decision making that might happen when greed motivates us. Remember the Enron scandal? That's a perfect example of how greed plunges people into ruin and destruction, as Timothy said. What's less obvious but perhaps more dangerous is isolation. Money or wealth can lead to isolation. And isolation is true poverty.

Don't get me wrong. I don't mean to romanticize the poor and demonize wealth. Plenty of dark and horrid things happened in my economically poor neighborhood. Seeing lots of drug abuse and drive by shootings can disabuse one quickly from romanticizing the economically deprived. I'm just saying: one danger of wealth is that it insulates us from the world, from a sense of community. You've heard people say that it's lonely at the top? That's all I'm getting at: we can so easily use money to isolate us from community.

And that, as I read this story, is the rich man's problem. He has chosen isolation, he has chosen a prison of loneliness, he has chosen the Hades of the shut and locked door. And just on the other side of this closed and locked door, his salvation lay in the street waiting for help, and waiting to help.

For that's how Lazarus functions: as a helper. In all of his parables Jesus named only one character: Lazarus. In all of his parables only this man Lazarus is given a name. It's significant. Lazarus comes from the Hebrew El azar, or God helps. El azar — God helps. And the story makes it obvious that God did indeed help Lazarus — comforted the poor man in the company of Abraham. What's not so obvious is that poor Lazarus could also have helped another. Had he been alert, the rich man dressed in sumptuous purple could have been helped by Lazarus. God helps indeed. On the other side of this closed door lay the rich man's helper, Lazarus the poor.

There's an old Sunday school print called the Light of the World by the illustrator Holman Hunt. Jesus, holding a lantern, knocks at a heavy wooden door. The door has obviously not been opened for many years as ivy has grown up over and above the lintel. "Behold, I stand at the door and knock" is the bible verse being portrayed.

The problem with Holman Hunt's picture is that Jesus looks too regal, too neat, too together. Remember who Jesus really was: "He was despised and rejected, a man of sorrows. His appearance was marred, as one from whom people hide their faces." Or translated from today's text: Jesus was "a poor man, full of sores." For Jesus isn't just telling this story: he's one of the main characters. Jesus is Lazarus, God helps.

If the rich man had opened his door to Lazarus he would have met Jesus. If the rich man had opened his door to Lazarus he would have been saved. Away from isolation, toward community. Away from the loneliness of the top to the buzzing busy world of life in community.

It's been said that if a bunch of rich people read the story of Lazarus, they get squeamish, and dance around its clear intent. If a bunch of poor people read the story, they stick out their chests and cast aspersions on whoever has money in the bank. But if rich and poor read this story together, we open a door. We learn about life in community, we learn to step out of isolation into life in community. Together, rich and poor together.

The problem is the closed door. Not the wealth, not the poverty, but the door. Somebody is on the other side of the door we keep so desperately closed. Is it Christ? Is it Jesus who is the poor despised beggar, waiting for us to be tender? Is it Christ who knocks and opens the door to us and invites us into the community of love? The opposite of poverty is not property, as Moltmann reminds us. The opposite of both poverty and property is community. Moltmann was right.

Open the door.  —  Amen.