Sermon September 26, 2004
How could it come to this? How did the rich man allow it to get to this point where an unbridgeable gulf develops that, despite all his wealth and power, cannot be closed by human hands. He now becomes the living example of the old New England joke about being lost, asking for directions and being told that you can not get there from here. What a crazy scene! Lazarus gets dumped off at the gate. It was neither the rich man’s fault nor his responsibility. He just got the problem laid off on him. Just who did the tossing – the literal meaning of the original language? Was it some family that could no longer handle an addicted member? Perhaps he was an incorrigible uncontrollable youth that has been dumped on a system that could find no better place for him than a bed at the gate of the rich man. The language literally means tossed and when people get tossed it is because other folks have reached their breaking point. Having found that they have exhausted all the possibilities they just give up and in desperation hand over their problem to somebody else and hope for the best. Who knows, maybe they made the round of the doctors, the counselors, the lawyers, and the professionals. Now it is time to hand him over to the streets and see what happens.
It may not have been the rich man’s doing but all of a sudden he finds himself on a course for disaster, because he is unable to close the gap between himself and Lazarus. You know the things that he said that distanced him from Lazarus. This is not my problem: the nerve of those who dumped him on my doorstep. “Why does anybody think that I will do any better with this situation?” This is not my responsibility. If I respond it will only encourage people to be dump on my doorstep. He’s a health hazard. None of that kind of talk however true it might be closes the gap that is developing between the rich man and what God created him to be, for as true as those things might be none of them will help him bridge the gap between the rich man and disaster.
It is not that the rich man was a bad man. We have no evidence that he got his wealth through corruption or exploitation. He had family values and was concerned about the fate of his brothers. It is just that this gap has developed in his life. All it would have taken was some scraps from his table that would have indicated that there was some connection, some affection, and some recognition that Lazarus was more than garbage thrown at the Rich man’s doorstep.
In the story no name is given to the rich man – a sure fire indication that Jesus is intending that he could be anyone of us. He was right on the unfairness of it, man of family values, but still a dangerous fissure is beginning to develop in his life. We know how this kind of crack gets started. It is just not your fault that the problem gets tossed at you at the end of the day after you have taught a whole day and there is this kid pouring his heart out to you about a home situation that stinks and how nothing is going right in their life and what does he expect you to do? Just one too many of those moments when it seems that all of society is dumping its problems on your doorstep and you are not sure how you are going to scrape by let alone have any scraps of humanity to offer. If the system dumps one more piece of documentation, one more piece of paper to fill dumps, one more Medicare patient on you, you will explode. You have done all that work and training, and they dump on you. It is just not fair. You can hear in the cracking voice the crack that can lead to the gap where as it happened to the no name that just might have all our names you can get burned real bad and that can last a very long time.
You get the feeling that this gap can begin to develop very easily in us. It came to this for the rich man because it comes to this for all us in one way or another. Have you finger-painted lately? Have you plaid in a puddle like you did when you were a kid. Have you tried something new more in anticipation than fear of judgment? If not I suspect that the gap has begun to develop in you and that you have felt the first hint that you can get burned and burned out in life in a way that leaves you unable to get from here to there.
I suspect that the folks who are running for president are really beginning to feel the heat if not feel burned by the gap that has arisen. Do I have it right? - This election is all about whether you ride motorcycles, like Nascar racing, hunt animals, clear brush, land on aircraft carriers, or wind surf. Vote for one. There seems to have developed this gap between what Jefferson, Madison Hamilton, Lincoln, and the Roosevelts had in mind. It does feel like we are all getting burned, doesn’t it, and that we cannot get there from here!
At this point in the story it all seems that it is all over for the rich man who cannot get over the gap. God love him - he has one more thing to say, a plan to bridge the gap at least for his brothers who still may have a chance. Only the plan is badly flawed. “Let him warn my five brothers, so they won't come to this horrible place." Abraham answered, "Your brothers can read what Moses and the prophets wrote. They should pay attention to that." Then the rich man said, "No, that's not enough! If only someone from the dead would go to them, they would listen and turn to God."31So Abraham said, "If they won't pay attention to Moses and the prophets, they won't listen even to someone who comes back from the dead."
Don’t you think encountering a dead man returned from the grave would have a way of closing a lot of the gaps in your life? In an unmistakable reference to the events of Easter, wouldn’t that answer all questions? If that doesn’t do it then what does it take? According to the story we don’t get it if we get things out of order. You don’t understand scripture because you experience the resurrection, rather you understand resurrection because you have first gotten the old, old story straight. Otherwise you think the resurrection is all about escaping from life’s problems and scary spots rather than, as the preacher Donna Schaper puts it, entering into them in hope. The old story is about entering not escaping. The tomb opened not so that Jesus can escape but so that we can enter into life, even into the scariest of places in hope, because he has been there before.
So you start to tell the old, old story of your life and you begin to realize all those places where stumbling blocks were turned into building blocks of something better - greater wisdom closer relationships, more strength than you imagined that was in you. Lord knows that is the story in Genesis the first book of Moses, and how these families Adam, Eve, Cain and Able, Noah, Joseph and his brothers, stumbled, yet something was building in their lives. Sounds like my marriage and most families I know. Do you feel the gap begin to close, the heat lowered, the hope rise.
Read all about it. Isn’t the second book of Moses, the Exodus, all about your life? The waters do part and it is only a matter if we trust enough to walk through the waters. Just when all human possibility is exhausted and it seems that the Hebrew slaves have not only dumped on the shore but also so been dumped on in general that only the dogs get excited about their presence. End of story! But the waters do part don’t they? The kid coming to you at the end of the day is an opening into yourself, into finding that you have common ground - you both feel up against the system half the time. There is an opening to common ground, holy ground, dry ground on the other side of fear and helplessness. Do you feel the earth shake, the tomb open, the gap begin to close?
Come on, tell the old, old story that makes all things new. You feel the gap close, and here is something that is vitally important - there is a lot less likelihood that you are going to get burned like the no name rich man who has all our names. The prophets and all their talk of Emmanuel God with us have it right. Sure there have been times when we have been in the wilderness but our difficulties in life have not been caused because we are alone but because we have failed to reach out.
Enter in even if on any particular day all you have is scraps, you don’t have to try and escape life or even your responsibilities in life. Enter in hope! A lot less chance here that you will get burned. The good news is that from here you can really get somewhere!
6:44:49 PM 
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