The Distance that Became Too Great

18th Sunday after Pentecost
Ruskin Heights Lutheran Church
September 26, 2010
St. Luke 16:19-31

Lazarus was one beggar who really could have used a food pantry.

He was starving, happy for the rich man’s garbage.

(The report of St. Luke never names the rich man, but tradition has called him Dives, which in Latin means "rich."’ "Lazarus" means "by God's help" or "one who needs help." The very names define the characters.)

Jesus’ story lacks the sort of information that people like to have when deciding whether or how or even when to help someone.

It doesn’t say, for example, if Lazarus was deserving or lazy, clean or drug-addicted, mentally ill and off his medication, or a good guy just down on his luck. It doesn’t even say if he was a disabled veteran.

We don’t know if he cornered Dives every morning like a persistent panhandler at Blue Ridge and Bannister, or if he just lay there annoyingly mute, looking soulful day after day.

All we know is that he was at the gate, sick and hungry.

And that, Jesus seems to say, is all we need to know in predicting how things turn out.

Of course, we don’t have too many details about Dives, either.

Did he invite his friends over to laugh and point?

Did he have his biggest and toughest servant try to chase Lazarus away, only to have him show up day after day?

Did he gag at the sight of dogs licking Lazarus’ sores, or did he even notice?

Was he a cold man, heartless, habitually turning his eyes away.

Did Dives mutter and grumble about the neighborhood going to hell every time he saw Lazarus?

We don’t know.

We know only that he dressed well and ate sumptuously.

And that, Jesus seems to say, is all we need to know in predicting how things turn out.

Anyone who reads the Gospels half-awake cannot be shocked by the way things turn out.

Jesus is unnervingly repetitious about the moral and mortal risks for the next life that the wealthy run in this life.

Mark this - nobody in the Bible ever says “money is the root of all evil.” Scripture says merely the love of money is a real problem. There is a lot of good that can be done with money – when you don’t love it.

But by and large, Jesus seems to think money can be a troubling thing.

Later on in this Gospel, the disciples finally blurt it out, asking Jesus: “But [if what you say about the rich is true], how can the rich be saved.” (St. Luke 18)

Jesus answers, rather enigmatically, “That's up to God."

But it was money, apparently, that separated the two men in life, a gulf that was never bridged.

There is something else altogether odd about this story.

Now they are dead - Lazarus in Abraham's bosom and Dives in hell - and still Dives has not figured out this is for real and for good and permanent.

He hasn’t figured it out that for him there is no way out.

Of course he knows he’s suffering. It’s really, really hot where he is.

And surely, by now, he understands that he has failed to do right by that beggar, Lazarus. But we might even question that.

There is a stubborn residue of privilege that yet clings to him, even in hell.

“Send Lazarus to help me,” he says, as if it will be done simply because it is he who is asking.

It is not an idle line. It betrays habits of control.

Dives still believes, remarkably, that he can command and control and expect a response to his liking.

His assumptions about what is best and who deserves it have made him insensible to his situation.

There is little else to say.

There is no mystery as to what has happened to Lazarus and to Dives.

The question of their destiny has been answered.

Lazarus: to be an indulged and pampered and treasured as a child dangling from a grandfather’s lap.

Dives: to know only the terrors and torments of a place he never thought to be.

Dives may complain, but Father Abraham patiently explains that some conditions, some outcomes, cannot be changed nor influenced.

There are some distances that are too great to be crossed, there is point of no return, and the gulf between them - that might have be lessened in life - has grown too wide in death. There is nothing to be done.

Nor is there any question of what will happen to the two men.

That has been settled.

But there is an open question at the end of the the story, a question yet to be decided.

Those five brothers of Dives still at home, the ones Dives wishes to warn, what will become of them?

The story as Jesus tells it gives no hint of that.

“Send Lazarus to warn them," Dives asks. "If someone from the dead comes to them," he asserts, "they will repent.”

“Well," replies Father Abraham, "if they won't listen to Moses and the prophets, they won’t be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”

Someone has risen from the dead, but we’re left with the question: Will all the brothers repent?

And the answer to that question, brothers, sisters, is answered only within our own hearts.