For Sunday, September 29, 2013 – Luke 16:19-31
One of the “hardest of the hard” sayings of Jesus is today’s story. Jesus knows how to speak to the depths of our need and our greed. He sees us in our total condition—rich one, poor one (beggar and thief)—and he does not turn away. He has a healing vision for all of our many selves, the ones needing comfort and consolation as well as the ones needing the fiery stripping away of pretense.
I see in this story the high-falutin’ parts of us strutting past the poverty stricken parts of us, refusing to see, refusing to stop and attend to the ghetto neighborhoods within our own souls. The Lazarus parts of us also cannot see. They keep begging for a handout from the same old stockpiles of wealth, prestige and social approval that have never been able to satisfy fully, regardless of how we keep layering them on, more and more. Neither sees the truth—that the only real wealth will be found in reaching beyond one’s self to the still point, the meeting ground, of mercy.
Lazarus thinks this wealthy man in his fine robes who feasts sumptuously every day is the answer to his need, so he begs of him a bit of this and that. All the while, the wealthy man is starving, too. Both of them, starving for food that will last, for the food that is Life. They have no idea that the feast of true nourishment lies right there between them. Not in Lazarus in his poverty—oh, how tempting it is to romanticize poverty!—and not in the rich man with all his advantages. The feast of mercy is found only when they finally see each other, when they meet across a bridge of compassion. Seeing each other changes everything.
We are not told the rest of the story, but surely the conversation continues. Surely healing has begun. My brother, of whom I spoke last Sunday, received the healing mercy of death on Monday afternoon. One of the gifts of his abbreviated life, as with this “hard saying” of Jesus, is the warning it leaves behind. See what is really real, what is true wealth, now. Do not walk past your life, failing to notice the condition of your many selves. Don’t delay walking across whatever bridge of compassion is right now waiting for you. Do not pass through this life without having lived.
