University Christian Church

Last summer while my in-laws were here with us from South Korea, we got tickets to head to a baseball game, and as usual, getting six people in the car on the road on time never goes easy. My father-in-law had gone out to the car to make sure our extra back row of seats were up, my son, Joseph, went out to get in his seat early, and everyone else got ready, putting on sunscreen, hats, stocking bags with snacks, and so on. I am pretty sure I was the last one out when I closed the front door, making sure it was locked, hopped into the car, and then realized I didn’t have the car keys.

I had assumed that since the car was unlocked - someone else had them.

So not only were we NOT going the baseball game, we also couldn’t get back in our now locked front door to get the keys.

I remember being so frustrated and thinking - maybe I should kick my own door down, but I’m not sure that would have impressed my in-laws.

Luckily, we have a beloved neighbor who has an extra set of keys, and he happened to be home and was able to swing by and let us in.

The morale of my story is - don’t get locked out.

And it’s the image I want you to sit with as we dig into our parable that Jesus offers us this morning.

Don’t get locked out.

Most of us have had moments when we have locked ourselves out of cars or our homes or offices. Sometimes, it’s our own poor choices that lead us into a mess. Just like in my rush and my assumptions and my self-absorbedness that day didn’t pause to make sure I had the keys or someone had the keys, our self-absorbed focus in life can get us into trouble.

We may have even felt locked out of other things - relationships, job opportunities, organizations that can help us, or chances for a better life. Our society historically has been pretty good at locking people out of things based on all kinds of things - money, connections, race, gender, or pre-judgments. I read a story just yesterday of a woman who was fighting for her life and medications to receive cancer treatment and had been told that her case was still under review for three months. Locked out of what she needed.

This week I was confronted by the pleading, angry voice of a Day Center guest when he said to me, “I’m tired of sleeping on the streets!” Locked out of a safe place to live.

Think for a minute of all the things that exist to separate us from what we need, all of the division that drives us apart, all of the chasms that keep a more full and whole life just out of reach.

At the heart of this colorful parable that we heard today, Jesus describes a chasm that separates a rich man and Lazarus.

The chasm to that rich man in this moment of reckoning and agony is like that locked front door. He is surprised to find himself at the wrong side of God’s caring presence, and yet it seems like he is close enough to taste what could have been.

At the beginning of Jesus’ story, the situation looked different.

The rich man was at the top of his game. He had everything - his purple Baltimore Ravens gear, his finest luxury tableware, a partial estate. I am certain he had a gorgeous stretch limo and full compliment of staff at his beck and call. He was a popular guy too with everybody who is anybody showing up on the weekends to party with all the important people at his estate. Of course, we don’t know much else about the rich man - did he gain his wealth in dishonest means? Or was he a decent guy? Maybe he lived a decent life, went to the temple, and gave generously to his community. Jesus doesn’t say.

Lazarus on the other hand is in a state of despair. Here is a man in a state of homelessness, a beggar. He is sick with some kind of disease that produces sores on his skin. He has no way to work because of his state, so he comes to the rich man’s luxurious estate to feast off of the leftovers or rummage among the trash for a little caviar tossed out after the most recent block party. Only the dogs come to comfort Lazarus, licking his wounds. Maybe Lazarus mumbled to himself - maybe he was erratic and out of his mind.

In my modern day mind, though I am tempted to make the rich man into a bad guy who couldn’t stand the sight of this beggar at his gates, it’s more likely that he didn’t even know who Lazarus was. When he left his front gates, he was likely riding in his limo, engrossed in conversations about his stocks and portfolio, fielding phone calls from world leaders and presidents, cutting deals and basking in his own brilliance. No doubt, he had personal assistants on retainer whose job it was to coordinate his schedule and keep his world free of clutter. And that staff worked day and night to keep distractions like Lazarus out of sight and out of mind. The rich man had more important stuff on his plate.

Still, how many times did his limo drive past and he did not see Lazarus?

How many times did he step over this man on his way to pick up his newspaper each morning?

When death comes though, as it does to all human beings, their situations change so swiftly that the rich man realizes he has made some serious mistakes. He is in torment on one side of the chasm, burning up in flames of agony. Lazarus on the other hand is being comforted, closely cared for by God’s most trusted servants. But some things do not change - the rich man still doesn’t really see Lazarus. He calls out to Abraham and asks the father of his people to get Lazarus to serve as a servant in the afterlife, dipping his finger in the waters and offer a brief respite from the pain.

Even in death, the rich man can only see Lazarus for what Lazarus can do for him.

But Abraham tells him, “The chasm cannot be crossed. The door is locked. I don’t have the keys.”

Like the parable of the dishonest manager which we lifted up last week, Jesus’ teaching warns his disciples and all who would hear that wealth can only buy you so many comforts. And in the case of the rich man, you can’t take it with you. Wealth, Jesus is clearly affirming over and over again throughout chapter 16, can become a chasm of evil which separates us from God. The rich man’s wealth separated him from those in need. His highly professional staff, his lifestyle, his network of relationships - all of it, in the end, wasn’t up to snuff when Lazarus suffered on his doorstep, and the rich man had all the means and power to do something about it.

Jim Duff, our Outreach Division chair, responded to one of my emails this week, and he pushed back against the idea that Christians, church people, lack compassion. Compassion is not the problem. Most of us have some compassion for those people in our society who are struggling in one way or the other. Rather, Jim said to me, the problem is that we too often believe the lie that it is out of our hands. We can’t do anything about it. It’s just the way the world is.

But is it? Are the chasms of poverty and racism baked into this Creation? Are they permanent features? Or are they made and manifested by human beings who would, each in our way, rather ignore what lies at our front gates?

Jesus is telling his Disciples and all those religious teachers gathered around him - if you ignore the suffering and ignore the opportunity to lend your voice, your hands, your feet, and your resources to end those sins that create people like Lazarus, you will end up locked out in the cold.

At the end of the parable, the rich man seems to have a small change of heart. Rather than think about himself, he thinks about his father and his brothers who he fears may end up in these fires of agony with him. He pleads for Abraham to send Lazarus back to the land of the living to bring this message to them that they must repent, but Abraham responds coldly, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”

Theologian Barbara Rossing writes, “We are those five siblings of the rich man. We who are still alive have been warned about our urgent situation, the parable makes clear. We have Moses and the prophets; we have the scriptures; we have the manna lessons of God’s economy, about God’s care for the poor and hungry. We even have someone who has risen from the dead. The question is: Will we — the five sisters and brothers — see? Will we heed the warning, before it is too late?”

Last Thursday, Leonard Shands, a child of God, a black man who may have been homeless, was shot and killed in a confrontation with police a block away from us here at this intersection. It is easy for us to justify this as status quo. Shands had knives in his hands, and, by reports, he lunged at police. The officers did many things, in their minds, to deescalate the situation or unarm Leonard before resulting to the use of bullets. It is truly tragic - the Hyattsville community is hurting and shocked. But this parable challenges us this morning to not step over a tragic event. To not walk by and say this is just the way the world is.

But to continue to imagine and create a world where there are no chasms that lock us away from each other -
    to invest in a way of life where no one is shuttled off to the edges of our society because of their addictions, their visible sores, their pain -
        to call an end to ways of thinking that only see human beings as a means to an end and not as fully loved by God -
            to denounce hatred and racism and suffering of any kind and embody communities where there are no more Lazarus’s.

All I know is that I don’t want to find myself locked out of God’s mercy.

On Tuesday evening at 6:30 PM, we will open our sanctuary to the community and to city leaders to provide space for the kind of open dialogue that might move us into that future, and I am grateful as a church we continue to say yes to that call, no matter how challenging it may be. And it’s so fitting on this day that we think about our Reconciliation Ministry as a church, a ministry in our denomination that calls us to tear down the walls that separate people and seek the wholeness of our world. May we heed the words of the prophets and the law and Jesus.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his sermon at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church on this same scripture reminds us of the good news that God refuses to be held back by the chasms we create. The gospel story reveals that “the cross is the boundless bridge of God’s love connecting time and eternity, humanity and God.” God came to us so that no wall, no chasm, no locked door might bar us from the fullest life imaginable. Maybe that message is our wake up call today before you or I am locked out.