Crevasses and Crumbs

Crevasses and Crumbs

Luke 16:19-31

One of the most intimidating parts of getting a doctorate in anything is that you have to make a contribution to your field. In science, it means advancing what we know about how the material world works. In teaching, it means advancing how students learn or how teachers teach or how administrators administrate. In the languages, it means advancing new theories or identifying new patterns or making new translations.

Sometimes these contributions help to bridge the gaps in our understanding, and the field takes a giant leap forward. Sometimes these contributions are little more than crumbs which help us keep on the trail. Both of these are good and necessary things to have added to what we know.

People who get their doctorates in a religious field also have to make their contributions. Most of them get the degree in counseling or preaching or church administration or Biblical history – areas where making a contribution looks a lot like a contribution in a secular or lay field. Sometimes, it is a big contribution; sometimes small. But then there is my area.

My doctoral focus was in the area of “going on to perfection.” How in the world can you make a contribution to perfection? On its face, that seems to be an unreasonable request. And since the perfection of God is love, how do you help people be as perfectly loving as God – which by definition, is impossible? I mean, we can all use some help in this area, but is this something we have the power to do, or is it a matter of how we receive the Holy Spirit to work through us?

Even if you can find agreement on that last question, there is now the bigger problem. How do you tell someone, who by definition is at best a redeemed sinner, or a congregation (which is a group of sinners at various levels of redemption) that the good thing they are doing, or their good understanding of the Bible, may not be the right way for them to go on to perfection in love?

Most people have a really hard time understanding how doing something good may not be so good after all. We live with the everyday reality that “good enough” is almost always “good enough,” because perfection is either too rare or too elusive or too expensive for us, most of the time.

I did make a contribution to my field, of course, since I did get the degree. I came up with a one-page survey, to be used by congregations. Scoring the survey can help identify one of the 531,441 ways we can get off track on our journey to perfect love. Not surprisingly, it turns out most congregations are not very keen on finding out there are 531,441 ways they can be wrong – at least, wrong when it comes to going on to perfection in love.

By my rough estimate, this survey has sold approximately 30 million fewer copies than Rick Warren’s “The Purpose Driven Life.” That is a good book which has been helpful to many people and congregations, with a “good enough” approach to understand what it means to be a Christian. But when your focus is on going on to perfection in love, it is wrong in some way in almost every paragraph. And if you are feeling a twinge of discomfort over that assessment, then you understand how hard it is to focus on going on to perfection in love.

Maybe my survey would have been more popular if I had said there were over 500,000 places from which you could start your journey of faith!

My advisers approved the work, and they indicated that I had done something else they had never seen done before in a survey – even as it was exactly what needed to be done. They said it was the only testing device they had ever seen where the right answer wasn't either/or, but both/and. I had worked together God's actions and our response as the necessary and holy tension which reveals genuine, holy, perfect love.

I thought about this comment again this week when I was looking for the artwork to make our bulletin cover. I was looking for photos of chasms, and crevasses, and canyons – to illustrate the either/or difference between these two extreme characters in our reading, to illustrate the impossible, impassable gap between Lazarus and the rich man in the afterlife. What I noticed is that we are not a people who believe in impossible, impassable gaps.

There were photos of people who had laid extension ladders across snow crevasses. There were rope bridges across chasms. There were trams to span mountain gaps. Last week, a stunt man even jumped the Snake Canyon using a small rocket. We are a people who like a challenge. We are a people who like to figure out how to get across. We are a people who like to make connections.

Last Sunday, I said we were more likely to know the truth if we knew that there are exceptions to what is declared. So, let me say this another way. We are a people who like to figure out how to get across if we think it is worth the risk. If getting to the other side is the difference between isolation and community, or between life and death, we will walk on the extension or rope ladders. If the view at the top of the mountain is worth the risk, we will ride the tram. And in a culture where being famous is its own currency, riding a rocket to jump a canyon just might be worth it.

This sentiment was expressed in an old R&B song, recorded by several artists back in the 1960’s and 70’s:

‘Cause baby there ain't no mountain high enough,
Ain't no valley low enough,
Ain't no river wide enough
To keep me from getting to you babe.

But that's the rub, isn't it? We decide. We decide if the risk is worth the reward. And if it is not worth it to us, then any mountain, any valley, any barrier at all can become the impossible, impassible gap. If it is not worth the risk to us, we won’t find a way to get across and make the connection.

And we do decide that some things, or some people, are just not worth the risk. We do decide there are some chasms or gaps we won't cross. We do decide there are some gulfs that are too expensive or too far or just too much to even think about finding our way to the other side.

This is one way for us to look at the news of the world. Some see chasms as challenges which must be bridged; others see chasms as assets to exploit by making their side exclusive. Some people want to close the gaps between disparate groups; others want to see the gaps as evidence of their group's superiority. Some people wonder about the process of how the canyons were formed and then seek to mitigate that process; others see in the process the natural order’s proof for the inevitability of being separate.

The Pharisees, the most common practitioners of Judaism in the time of Jesus, believed in gaps, and crevasses, and chasms, and canyons – particularly when it comes to our relationship with God. They believed that the gap was created by how people observed the law. Their world was divided into kosher and non-kosher, between clean and unclean. Their world view separated the Chosen from the heathen. That's why they emphasized tithing, and cleanliness, and ritual conformity – these are the marks of the faithful on their side of the chasm in the world.

But even within Judaism, there was often a separation which sometimes functioned as a chasm. It is a separation which exists even today, as different factions in the church accuse others of creating an impossible, impassible gap between those who are right and those who are wrong. The parable of the rich man and Lazarus reflects the ongoing, and sometimes unholy, tension between the Law and the Prophets.

While the Law defined right and wrong, who’s in and who’s out, the Prophets lifted up what the theologians call God's preferential option for the poor. This wasn't a rejection of the Law, but a particular way of interpreting the Law. This option gave priority to social justice over the personal piety and cultic practices of the Law. Right and wrong, who's in and who's out, according to the prophets, emphasized how we treat the least of these as evidence of our being the Chosen People of God.

In this parable, the Pharisees would not have seen the rich man as a bad guy. The rich were thought to be blessed by God because they had observed the Law. The signs are all there – the fine clothes, the comfortable home, the delicious and abundant food. These were the signs of blessing for those who did what was right and good and prudent – for those who kept the Law.

Lazarus, on the other hand, was the very definition of someone who was not blessed. Nothing was going right for him, and the people believed this was because he was not right before God. The signs are all there – the sores, the hunger, the palpable poverty. These were the signs of punishment for those who did not do what was right and good and prudent – for those who did not keep the Law.

Then, as now, people wanted to believe that you get what you deserve in this life – that this is God's will. The good are blessed; the evil are punished. But this assumption got turned upside down when they both die – as we all must. In this parable, it is now Lazarus who is blessed, and the rich man who is suffering. Lazarus, interestingly enough, is comforted by Father Abraham, and not by the Law Giver Moses. It looks like, at first glance, that the preferential option for the poor wins out over the Law.

This is the point that many preachers will make this morning. If you are poor, God will take care of you – if not in this life, then surely in the next. If you are rich and you don't help the poor now, then there is an uncomfortable afterlife waiting for you, so do something about it while you still can. And while there is some truth in this interpretation, I don't think this is the point Jesus is trying to make.

If it was, then the parable should have ended there – with the two sides still separated by this impossible, impassible gap. The gap which Lazarus had wanted bridged in life is essentially the same gap which the rich man wants bridged in the afterlife. The only difference is that they have switched sides.

But it bothers me that someone who wanted compassion and mercy for themselves in this life, who understands just how awful it is to live without that sense of being valued and loved by God, would then be complicit in denying that same compassion and mercy to others in the next. It certainly should have bothered the Pharisees when they heard this parable.

Much of the Law of Moses is framed in language which says they are to do what is right by the stranger, the sojourner, and the slave, simply because they are the people who remember what it is like to be the stranger, the sojourner, and the slave.

The rich man, in this afterlife, is certainly bothered by this disparity in tradition and practice. The parable continues with the rich man asking if there is any way this chasm can be bridged, this chasm between what they say they believe and what they actually believe as evidenced by their practice of the faith, so that this his brothers don't have to suffer the same fate.

Father Abraham's answer might be paraphrased as, “These brothers have already been thrown a life line which they can use to make a rope bridge to span the chasm.” The rich man replied that his brothers would never take the risk to trust something which seems to be pretty flimsy when compared to the hard realities of the world. Maybe if someone from the dead comes to tell them to shape up, kind of like Marley's ghost coming to Ebenezer Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol,” maybe then they will do the right thing by the poor.

The last line of the parable is the pay-off. Father Abraham doubts that a ghost would convince them, and probably not even is someone were to rise from the dead to tell them to get their act together.

That sounds pretty hopeless – until we remember the truth we shared last week. We can't save ourselves. We won't merit heaven by our careful observation of the Law, or by our application of the promises of the prophets. We can’t be good enough or obedient enough – and if you doubt that, I can help identify for you more than 500,000 ways that the people of faith get it wrong – even when they are so very intense and intentional about their faith. We can't bridge that gap, that crevasse, that chasm, that canyon. This actually is a mountain that's high enough, a valley that's low enough, a river that's wide enough to keep us from getting to God.

But this gap is not too great for Jesus to bridge. It is in Jesus that we can move from either/or to both/and. What this means is that, through the grace of Jesus, we can lovebothGod andour neighbors. We can practice bothvital piety and social holiness. We can believe in bothdiscipline and grace. Our faith can bebothevangelical and catholic, bothpersonal and corporate, bothsolitary and communal. We can believe this because, as we say it every time we celebrate the sacrament, Christ has died, and Christ is risen, and Christ will come again. We are saved bothfrom the wrath to come and for life in the kingdom of God now. The perfect love of Jesus Christ is deep enough to bothfill the canyon and wide enough to bridge any gap in heaven and earth.

With Jesus, the impossible, impassable gap is gone. With Jesus, we have the bridge between this life and the next. With Jesus, even the crumbs we have to offer will be enough to feed us until that day we all will feast at the heavenly banquet. Let us celebrate our salvation in Jesus Christ our Lord!

UMH 518 “O Thou, In Whose Presence”