For Sunday, September 25, 2016 – Luke 16:19-31
Without noticing, oh so subtly, we drift away. We step around each other, uncertain how to connect, not wanting to interfere, to bear responsibility, to navigate the uncertainties. We feel the chill of increasing distance, and snuggle up closer to our jobs, our worldwide web of acquaintances, our witty and clever opinions. Like adapting to the earth’s dizzying spin, we barely notice how we slide inch by inch by slippery inch from fundamental human connections that are given to keep us steady in the world. We don’t see or value the bridges God puts between us and among us, let alone walk across them. Even among others, we live as though alone.
We think it is the life we prefer, going it alone, making our own private choices, sweet solitude becoming isolation. We place great value on being independent and free. Jesus, not so much. He tells of a rich man, who has everything he wants and more. He dresses in purple and fine linen and feasts sumptuously every day. He has learned not to notice a poor man at his gate. Dressed in rags, longing for food and friendship, his body covered with sores, he is attended to only by the dogs who come to lick him. Both men die, that great leveler, and the scales fall away from the rich man’s eyes. From a distance, he sees his poor neighbor Lazarus now being held and soothed by Abraham. Even now the rich man wonders not about his earlier blindness or his calloused treatment of Lazarus, but how Lazarus might serve him in his own distress. “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.”
But a great chasm lies between them, too wide now to be crossed. Such is the bondage of sustained separation, the utter depletion of our souls when we widen the zones of comfort around us and stay blind to each other’s need. Our independence strangles us, cutting off our breath and silencing our solidarity. Every choice we make—where we live and shop and with whom we align ourselves, whether we speak up or turn and walk away—either widens or reduces the chasm between us. What we are able to SEE is determined by what we are striving to BE. The places we go, or refuse to go; the words we use, or refuse to use; the actions we take, or choose not to take; these create the condition of our soul. Whether or not anyone walks beside us, we do not journey alone. Moment by moment, choice by choice, we build or bring down bridges of connection. We strengthen the bondage of our separation or we set each other free.
