On the Other Side of the Gate

Amos 6:1a,4-7 

Luke 16:19-31 

Jesus is not finished with the subject of money yet. 

And we might think that what he he has to say is controversial.  Controversial because he speaks of wealth disparagingly. And this seems to contradict a common belief, based on some of the Hebrew scriptures, that God’s blessings show up in the abundance we receive in this life – abundant property, abundant crops, even an abundance of children all mean that God is smiling on you. 

And there are great reasons why this is not only appealing to our hearts and minds, but also seems to make sense. Abundance of the things we need in life will give us a sense of well-being and security. 

Years ago I was talking with some people about what the Bible says about wealth. We had just read a passage from Luke where Jesus says, “Woe to you who are rich.” We wondered if he really meant that. Because, is it really that bad being rich?

One woman in the conversation said this. “There was a time when I was poor, but now I am not. I thought about money a whole lot more when I was poor than I do now.” It is a privilege to not have to think about money all the time. You might still want to think about it. But you simply aren’t forced to think every day about whether you have enough to buy the food you need, about how you will juggle paying your bills so you won’t bounce a check or have the water turned off at your house. These are difficult and stressful matters to have weighing on you every day. It is a privilege to have enough so that you do not have those worries.

Most of us are privileged in that way. But today I am suspending that privilege and, once again, asking you to think about money, along with Jesus and the Pharisees. Let’s begin by setting the context.

At the beginning of this chapter Jesus told the Parable of the Dishonest Manager to his disciples, which was overheard by the Pharisees and scribes, sinners and tax collectors. We know they heard him, because immediately after he finishes the parable, ending with the words, “you cannot serve God and wealth,” the Pharisees ridicule him.

The Pharisees heard a lot from Jesus that day. They heard the Parable of the Prodigal, where the younger son went out and squandered all the wealth his father had given him, and then the father had to decide how he would respond to that son’s return.

They overheard the Parable of the Dishonest Manager. Jesus directed this one toward his disciples, a story about a manager who squandered his master’s wealth, and then hatched a scheme to save himself – a scheme that also served to enhance his master’s reputation.

In the first parable, Jesus shows his listeners the way God’s amazing grace will bring us into the fold when we humbly seek forgiveness. In the second parable Jesus encourages his listeners to be shrewd about distinguishing the lasting things from the things of this world, which are passing away. And when he hears them scoffing, ridiculing him, Jesus turns to the Pharisees and essentially says, “Here’s one just for you, guys.”

There is a rich man who lives in a great house, wears fine clothes and eats sumptuously every single day. And there is a poor man named Lazarus who lies outside the rich man’s gate. Lazarus, covered in sores, starving, suffering even the indignity of the dogs licking his wounds. He is quite a sight to behold, but Lazarus remains unseen, uncared for by the rich man, who steps over Lazarus’ broken body as he walks through his gate on his merry way. 

Lazarus died and was carried by the angels to be with Abraham. Then the rich man died and descended to Hades, where he was tormented by flames. 

The rich man was high, but he was brought low. Lazarus was low, but he was raised up high. There has been a complete reversal of their situations.

The rich man complains; he demands a better room. This one is too hot. But it is clear there will be no relief for the rich man. “There is nothing to be done now. A great chasm has been fixed between us,” Abraham tells the rich man.

It is really a haunting scene. I don’t try to draw any particular ideas about the exact details of heaven and hell from this story, but I cannot help but hear in it a clear condemnation of certain kinds of choices we make, certain types of behavior we engage in here on earth. And Jesus is building momentum.

We see Jesus raising the stakes as he moves from parable to parable: from the joy of being embraced by the forgiving arms of God (in the prodigal son); to the strong suggestion we turn our eyes to the kingdom that is coming and put all our resources into preparing for it (in the dishonest manager); and now to the stark and sobering vision of how it might all play out in the end for those who choose to ignore the messages they have already heard.

But perhaps because of the sequence of these parables, I firmly believe the message of this one is not all about the afterlife. Rather it is about the choices we make in this life. In particular, a choice to see or not to see all that is around us.

The real problem here is the rich man’s refusal to see Lazarus, to see his suffering even though it was taking place right outside his gate. And make no mistake, it is a choice. The rich man knew Lazarus was there – he even knew his name, we discover – but he chose to not acknowledge him. He chose to not care.

This poor man, Lazarus, was right outside his gate, such that the rich man could not come and go without encountering him. But he did not want to encounter Lazarus. He enjoyed the beautiful things, the pleasures of life – his fine clothes and his sumptuous feasts. Lazarus was not beautiful to behold. Lazarus actually made him uncomfortable. Lazarus, he decided, was to be ignored.

God wants us to see one another. God wants us to care for one another. 

I know this is a hard thing for us to do. There is, in this life, something like a great chasm between us and the suffering poor. A chasm that may prevent us from having compassion for them. A chasm that may even prevent us from regarding them as real human beings like us.

We are actually blessed to have the opportunity every week to see the poor and homeless ones right outside our door. Any Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, you cannot come into the church without seeing them. It is a highly valued mission of this church, but I hope we all know that the ministry of HOPE offers invaluable benefits to us as well. Because it gives us a chance every week to share space, even share fellowship, with the Lazarus in our midst.

There is a story in the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus says to his disciples, “You will always have the poor with you.” On one level he meant that there will never cease to be poverty on earth. But on another level, he meant that because we are his followers we will never put too much distance between ourselves and the needy. Followers of Jesus will never abandon those in need. We will see them. We will know them. We will care for them.

I know, it is still a tall order. It is a challenge, and perhaps feels overwhelming. But let me share with you one story that illustrates this model of Christian compassion.

I was in Washington DC with two other women. It was a hot day and we had been doing a lot of walking around the city on the hot cement. We were on our way to the metro station to begin our trip home. We were walking through one of the many squares in the city and passed by a bench with a man sitting there. He looked tired. He looked beaten by the world. He looked homeless.

We were chatting as we walked, and I barely saw this man. I walked right past him. But then I noticed that one of my companions stopped. She approached the man and politely asked him for directions, although we didn’t need directions. He replied. Then, smiling and still looking at him, she asked, “Are you hungry? Would you like a sandwich? An apple?” And she pulled a sandwich and apple out of her bag. He accepted them. Then she asked, are you thirsty? Would you like some water? When he said yes, she pulled a bottle of water from her bag and gave it to him.

She then thanked the man, for the assistance he had given her, and we continued walking.

Two of us failed to see this man. But one of us really, authentically saw him and crossed the great chasm. One of us bore the image of Christ in the city that day.

In the end it is a matter of seeing another as a human being. Lazarus was a fellow human being. And the question is: what can you do for one human being?

In Praise of Squandering

Luke 16:1-13

Through my years in ministry I have noticed that there are a couple of parables people really love. One of them is the parable of the good Samaritan and the other is the parable of the prodigal son. This parable of the dishonest manager is not one that is ever mentioned as anyone’s favorite.

As a category, the parable is an artful literary form. There is always some friction in a parable, and that is by design. We could even say that the parable is shrewd that way. You see, the point of the parable is to make you react, and then think about why you are reacting. 

So, in the parable of the prodigal son, there are some elements that cause friction. For example, many people are disturbed by the way the prodigal gets a free pass, so to speak, from the father. There are some of us who would perhaps agree with the older son – the “good” son – and say that the prodigal deserves to be punished, banished even, but not celebrated when he returns home with his tail between his legs. I know there are some “good” sons and daughters who feel that way.

But it still remains that the church loves that parable, because in the character of the father we see the immeasurable grace of God. Yes, we see the father as God, and perhaps we see something of ourselves in the son who is feeling the pain of his mistakes. In this parable we see love and grace.

You might be wondering now why I am talking about the parable of the prodigal. Is it just to avoid talking about this miserable parable we have before us today, the parable of the dishonest manager? A parable about which there is universal agreement: it is the worst. But I am actually talking about the prodigal son because there are some remarkable similarities between it and this parable of the dishonest manager.

The similarities are not immediately apparent. The subject matters are very different. One is a family setting; the other is in the context of business. In one, the father, or lord of the household, is a benevolent, loving, grace-filled figure. In the other, the lord, or the master, is a businessman, simply trying to make good, prudent business decisions.

But in both parables, there is one character who squanders wealth. This is the word we hear in both parables: the prodigal son traveled to a distant region and there he squandered his wealth in dissolute living, the wealth his father had bestowed on him. And likewise, the manager, it has been said, is squandering the rich man’s property. Whether by carelessness, ineptness, or downright thievery, we don’t know. 

And in both parables, the squanderer comes to a moment of reflection when he realizes he is in a jam. In both cases, the squanderer comes up with a plan that will, he hopes, offer him a way out. 

And in both cases, it works.

We see the similarities. Why, then, are these parables so different? Why do we tend to love one and hate the other? That really isn’t hard to see.

Take the character of the father of the prodigal son. He acts in a way that seems perfectly God-like. And while we, ourselves, might not be as forgiving and generous and loving as he is, most of the time we are glad that God is so forgiving, generous, loving. The son did not deserve to be welcomed home, but that is what grace is all about. By grace we have been saved, too, so on balance it’s a pretty good story. A comforting story.

Now take a look at the rich man in today’s parable. 

So, what do we have to say about the rich man in this parable? Does he seem God-like? Not particularly, I might say. But Luke would say, no way! You see, Luke does not have a high opinion of rich men. Again and again, we see the rich man skewered in Luke’s gospel. Not because wealth is inherently bad, but because in Luke’s telling, being rich is equivalent to loving money more than he loves God. You might argue that Luke’s rich man is actually a straw man, but Luke is making a point about choosing the values of this world over the values of God’s kingdom.

And yet, it is our instinctive response to hearing this parable, again and again: We want the most powerful character in this story to be the voice of God, and we want everything he says and does to be trustworthy. Yet, this powerful man got played by his manager. And he commended the manager for his shrewdness. 

All of this is not sitting well. It happens to me every time this parable comes up – it makes me uncomfortable and perplexed. So, we need to reassess our assumptions about it – perhaps even take a step back and reassess our assumptions about parables in general. Sometimes a master is not the Master. Sometimes a lord is not the Lord.

And sometimes a shrewd move is, well, impressive.

The manager has been caught in his squandering, and he recognizes he has limited options. And so he hatches a plan to cut a deal with every one of his master’s debtors. “How much do you owe? 100? Adjust your bill and make it 50. Again and again the manager negotiates the debts down, not by a little. We don’t actually know if he is forgoing his own commission, or if he is cutting into the master’s profits. But he is taking care of business in a way that we might assume is benefitting both his master and himself. His master, because he is getting something rather than nothing. Himself because, as he says, “when I am dismissed, people may welcome me into their homes.”

And his master, perhaps grudgingly, agrees.

So that is the story, for better or worse. You know that old saying about trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear? Let’s not try to do that. The story has some problems. I don’t like any of the characters. I don’t exactly want to be like the manager, and I don’t want God to be like the rich man. This isn’t exactly one of those “go and do likewise” situations. I’ll say it just once:  Don’t be a dishonest manager. Full stop. 

So what, then, to make of it? Well, at this point in the text Jesus weighs in with his own thoughts. So let’s go there.

The first thing he says at the end of the story is: The children of this age are more shrewd than the children of light. Jesus commends this quality called shrewdness, and he only wishes his own, the children of light, could be as shrewd as these children of the world. Yes, that’s what he said. Jesus wants us to be shrewd.

I am afraid that the word shrewd has taken on negative connotations in our times, but it doesn’t necessarily carry that meaning in the Bible. Shrewdness is not inherently good or bad. It simply means sharp judgment and practical intelligence. It can be used for harmful ends or for beneficial ends, and Jesus just wants his followers to know that he wishes they would use more of that shrewdness for God’s purposes. Be shrewd for the Lord! Amen?

Because if we did that –

We would recognize that the things of this world are finite, they are ending. The riches you pile up on earth will be worth nothing in the world to come, so be shrewd, my friends!

In other words, know that you have a choice:

You can be like the man who builds bigger barns to house his enormous and ever-growing stash of goods,

You can be like the servant who buries his talent in the ground because he is afraid to take any chances,

You can be like the rich man who never saw poor, hungry Lazarus as he stepped over him and went merrily on his way,

You can be like the man who has a neighbor thrown into debtor’s prison because he is unable to repay his debt to you – 

And I think we all need to be very honest with ourselves about when and how we have, indeed, been like these characters – 

You can be like them.

Or, you can be a shrewd child of the light and begin to understand the extraordinary beauty of squandering.

Admittedly, that word has nothing but negative meanings. It’s wasting, misusing, losing, throwing away. And we are pretty good at judging one another for squandering when we see it. But what if the stakes are higher that we realized? 

What if it’s not about losses and gains in our stock portfolios or bank accounts, but rather about the building up of God’s kingdom by populating the world with acts of compassion and healing, justice. What if it’s about being repairers of the breach.

That is a phrase we find in the book of Isaiah, chapter 58. This is what he says:

If you loose the bonds of injustice and let the oppressed go free; if you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil; if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness. Your light shall break forth like the dawn. You shall be called the repairers of the breach.

We need repairers of the breach in this world. We need children of light who can shrewdly see the difference between the values of this world and the values of God’s kingdom, where what might have seemed like wasteful squandering begins to look like grace…justice…generosity.

Where squandering becomes grace. Like the father who squandered his love on the prodigal son – no one could tell him it wasn’t a worthy pursuit.

Let us be shrewd in using the resources of this world in ways that prepare the way for the new world. Let us be faithful in the small things and the big things, knowing that as this world passes away we will have already been at work seeding the kingdom to come. Let us know the choice and choose the way that is built on the teachings of Jesus, the love of God. 

Let us dare to be squanderers for the right reasons. 

And may all of our squandering be done in service to the one who created the world and everything in it, who squanders beauty and love in breathtaking ways, the one who is our very life and being.

A New Way of Being

Philemon 1-21

Luke 14:25-33

There was a bit of weird news last week from the U.S Open. A player, after winning his match, went over to greet his fans. In the midst of signing autographs, he gave a hat to a young boy in the stands, it’s on video. But immediately, a man standing next to the boy snatched the hat out of the boy’s hand and quickly tucked it in his bag. The boy can be seen asking the man to give it back, but the man turned away, ignoring him. The tennis player had moved on and apparently didn’t see any of that.

The man who stole the hat was identified as the owner of a Polish paving firm. So the headline became “CEO steals hat from child.” It was not a good look.

It was all over the internet, TV news, and newspapers. 

The first I heard of it was an online news site that shared a statement which supposedly came from the CEO after the event. The statement said, “Yes, I took it. Yes, I did it quickly. But as I’ve always said, life is first come, first served… If you were faster, you would have it…”

My jaw dropped when I read it. This takes jerkiness to a whole new level, I thought.

The statement was shared on a couple of internet sites and the comment sections blew up with people pouring their contempt out on this man.  

But here is the interesting thing: We were all ready to believe it, even though we know there is a lot of untrue stuff out there, and this website looked kind of shady. We were ready to believe this man would say something so outrageous, because the statement reflects a way of living in the world which we have seen before. 

We know, whether or not this CEO actually said these words, this is an attitude which is not uncommon: get whatever you can by whatever means necessary and call it survival of the fittest. Give yourself a pat on the back for being a winner.

This kind of thing, which we hear every day, makes it pretty hard for us to accept the things we hear Jesus say. It just doesn’t seem possible that both ways of being can co-exist.

Here we are in this moment in the gospel where Jesus has hordes of people following him around. He is a first century rock star. And instead of handing out autographed tunics and throwing his sandal to the crowd, he turns to them with this:

“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”

We hear these words and we honestly don’t know what to do with them. How to reconcile hate for father and mother with the commandment to honor your father and mother? How to reconcile “carry the cross” with “my yoke is easy, my burden light?” How to reconcile “none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions” with “ask and it will be given to you?”

Someone asked me the other day, “where do you draw the line on this stuff?” and the only answer I have is that Jesus wasn’t really big on drawing lines. He tended more toward painting pictures.

That is to say, Jesus really did say what he meant to say. But he also intended for these things to always remain an open question for us. He wasn’t drawing lines in the sand; he was showing us a whole new way of being in the world.

And he fully realized that the things he was suggesting seemed unthinkable to his listeners. They still do. 

It is unthinkable to hate your family. It is unthinkable to give up all your possessions. It is unthinkable to willingly surrender to the cross. Nonetheless, Jesus asks us to think about these things. All for the sake of discipleship.

Jesus turns and says these things to the huge crowd of people who are following him like a bunch of groupies. He says whatever it is you think you are doing, whatever fantasies you might have about this whole venture, you need to carefully consider this decision. He is not trying to hide anything in the fine print. He wants us to go into it eyes wide open. Jesus hopes we will say yes to following him, even knowing the cost.

And all he is really asking is this: if you are going to be my disciple I will demand that you care for others in the same way I do. And whatever it is that binds you up and prevents you from caring, be ready to let go of it.

Because, honestly, from a faith perspective, it is unthinkable to allow these ties to prevent you from loving others. If you are so beholden to family that you are unable to build relationships with others, that is a problem. If you are so beholden to your stuff that it defines who you are, that is a problem.

The gospel message is a message about letting go of things that keep us bound. The passage from Paul’s letter to Philemon shines a strong light on it as well. 

In this short letter, Paul writes to his friend Philemon encouraging him to free Onesimus, a man he holds as a slave. Paul is extraordinarily artful in his approach, because he needs to be. You see, for Philemon, the idea of letting his slave go free was unthinkable.

Think about that for a moment.

If we think about this whole question, we will see that what may seem unthinkable in any particular place or time, can change. Perhaps we can open our eyes to see that the way of being we are accustomed to seeing in the world is only one option – perhaps a very sad option at that.

The CEO who stole a hat from a boy certainly fit the framework for a certain way of being in the world – a way that leads to worldly riches, no question. But, this is not the only way, is it?

A couple of days after I read the news about his statement, I saw other news articles that put the matter in a somewhat different perspective. He made a public statement expressing his regret for acting the way he did at the tennis match. He took full responsibility for his hurtful actions. He also claimed he never said those words about “first come, first served.” And he returned the hat to the boy.

And so in these words and actions he displays a different way of being in the world – accepting responsibility for the harm he did, trying to make amends. And about the vile first statement that he may or may not have said, I will take his word on that.

Jesus urges his would-be disciples to look at their possessions and their commitments from a different perspective. Don’t let the things you have define who you are. Let these things go and let Christ be your identity.

A Place at the Table

Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16

Luke 14:1, 7-14

There is a film that came out in the 90’s called Four Weddings and a Funeral. It’s about a group of young adults who are in that stage of life when all their friends are getting married, so the film is one wedding after another.  In one scene, the main character, Charles, arrives at one of these wedding receptions, and he picks up his place card. He takes note of which table he will be seated at, then scans the room to find his table. And when he sees it, there is a look of dread that comes over his face.

Pretty soon, we understand why. He takes his seat at the table and says hello to everyone, and as the conversation proceeds, we realize that Charles has been seated with a number of women he has dated in the past. The women chat, comparing notes about what kind of boyfriend Charles had been, while Charles slumps lower and lower in his seat, looking miserable, wondering when he might be able to escape.

Charles had ended up in the seat of shame. Did the hosts do this deliberately, or was it just an unlucky coincidence? We’ll never know. But clearly it was not a happy event for Charles.

Most of us do care, at least a little, about where we are seated at a dinner table. It mattered a lot when we were in high school, when perhaps you knew there were some tables where you were not welcome. And there may have been some tables where you would rather have gone hungry than sit there. There was a lot of status consciousness in high school, as I recall. 

When we grow up and mature, we get a bit more relaxed about these matters. But it is still true, no matter how mature we are, that our egos can make us a little sensitive about where we get to sit, to what events we get invited, where we are welcomed.

We don’t know why Jesus was invited to so many dinners at the homes of Pharisees. They didn’t seem to like him very much. But maybe they prescribed to the old adage, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” And that makes sense, given what Luke tells us in the first verse: They were watching him closely.

They are watching Jesus closely. Jesus is aware that they are watching him closely. And Jesus is watching them closely.

He takes notice of how these men seat themselves at the table. From what I have read, this was probably a U-shaped table, with two rectangular tables parallel to each other and a third table connecting the two at one end. 

The seats of honor would have been in the connecting piece of the table. The host or the guest of honor would be in the center seat, and the seats nearby would be the coveted seats of honor. 

And while the men are watching him, and he is watching them, he notices how they are jockeying for the best seats at the table, the seats of honor. And so, Luke says, he began to tell them a parable. Unlike many of his parables, this one was very straightforward. It is right on point, such that it would be hard for them to miss the message.

When you are invited to someone’s home – or wedding banquet – do not go directly for the seat of honor, presuming it is yours. Because what if it turns out the host wanted someone else, someone of a higher rank, to have that seat? How awkward this would be for your host. How humiliating this would be for you.

Jesus tells them it would be so much wiser for them to choose the seat of least honor. And then maybe the host will call to you and say, “Come sit closer to me!” Then you would have the utter delight of being called by name and getting up and moving to a seat of honor as all the other guests looked on. How fabulous that would be.

Such advice would have sounded pretty savvy to these guests. Practical. Yes, they would have said, quite right. In fact, it was very likely something they had heard before. Jesus was paraphrasing a proverb:

Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence or stand in the place of the great, for it is better to be told, “Come up here,” than to be put lower in the presence of a noble. (Proverbs 25:6-7)

What he had said to them, they knew already. But his next lesson probably sounded downright wacky.

He turned directly to his host: When you give a dinner do not invite your friends. Do not invite the people who will invite you back, or the ones whom you might want a favor from. Instead, invite the poor, the lame, the blind, the crippled – all the misfits. Invite the people who don’t even have a table to ask you to sit at. Do this, and my, how blessed you will be.

There used to be a famous restaurant in Birmingham Alabama called Ollie’s Barbecue. They say it was the kind of place where everyone was equal. It might have been their religious convictions that made it this way. The walls were covered with Bible verses. The owners handed out religious tracts to their employees. It was a place that felt welcoming to all. Plumbers and electricians sat side by side with bank presidents and doctors. They were all the same at Ollie’s. That is, if they were white.

If you were black, you could walk in the door and step up to the counter. You could order a meal, then stand there and wait. You had to be careful about how you waited. No looking around. Just keep your head down, and when they hand you your sandwich, get out of there.

If you were black, you could work there, too. Many of the restaurant’s servers were black. But they would not have been able to sit down at a table and be served, even on their day off.

In 1964 the federal government banned that sort of discrimination. But Ollie and his family objected, all the way to the supreme court, where they lost their case. Ollie, Jr., who worked alongside his dad, told a journalist about 50 years later that he still thinks the court got it wrong.

So Ollie’s grudgingly began serving black customers when the law told them they had to. But in the years that followed, there weren’t too many black people who took advantage of that. After all, they knew they weren’t really welcome there.

And it’s a little mystifying. Ollie and his son, Ollie Jr., were sustained by a deep and abiding Christian faith, this was clear. And their faith inspired them to create a place where all white people could feel good enough, feel truly welcome, no matter if they got up in the morning and put on a suit and tie or a pair of coveralls. They knew at Ollie’s place they would be treated with dignity.

But if the two Ollies read the words of Jesus in Luke 14, “when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed,” it’s clear they weren’t hearing their black neighbors as being included in the list. 

And to be honest, the Ollies – both father and son – weren’t very different from most of us. When it comes to welcoming people at our table, we all have a line we don’t like to cross. Most of us know there are some people we are not comfortable with, people we would be very unlikely to invite to our banquets, as Jesus suggests. I would only hope that, when we realize it, we can admit that it is our own shortcoming, not the fault of anyone else.

Getting back to Charles’ disastrous wedding reception dinner. I kind of think it might be a foretaste of the feast to come. What if, at the heavenly banquet, we pick up our place cards and discover we will be dining with all the people we have wronged somehow in our lives. It will be uncomfortable, yes, but it will be our opportunity for reconciliation. 

Because how could it be heaven otherwise?

Let this precious life we have been given on earth be our practice for the heavenly banquet.

Photo credit: Lana Foley