Take off Your Blinders

Amos 6:1a, 4-7

Alas for those who are at ease in Zion, and for those who feel secure on Mount Samaria, Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory, and lounge on their couches, and eat lambs from the flock, and calves from the stall; who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp, and like David improvise on instruments of music; who drink wine from bowls, and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph! Therefore they shall now be the first to go into exile, and the revelry of the loungers shall pass away.

Psalm 146

Hallelujah! Praise the LORD, O my soul! I will praise the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being. Put not your trust in rulers, in mortals in whom there is no help. When they breathe their last, they return to earth, and in that day their thoughts perish. Happy are they who have the God of Jacob for their help, whose hope is in the LORD their God; who made heaven and earth, the seas, and all that is in them; who keeps promises forever; who gives justice to those who are oppressed, and food to those who hunger. The LORD sets the captive free. The LORD opens the eyes of the blind; the LORD lifts up those who are bowed down; the LORD loves the righteous. The LORD opens the eyes of the blind; the LORD lifts up those who are bowed down; the LORD loves the righteous. The LORD cares for the stranger; the LORD sustains the orphan and widow, but frustrates the way of the wicked. The LORD shall reign forever, your God, O Zion, throughout all generations. Hallelujah!

1 Timothy 6:6-19

Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.

But as for you, man of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love endurance, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and to Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you to keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will bring about at the right time - he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.

As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.

Luke 16:19-31

Jesus said: There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered in sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’ He said, ‘Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house - for I have five brothers - that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.’ Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’ He said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’

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The first letter to Timothy might have come in handy for the rich man, like a little "Paul's rules for rich folks.” Or a ‘How Not to End Up in Hades for Dummies.” Paul writes at the end of this morning’s reading “take hold of the life that really is life,” and while the rich man, who spends the entire parable without a name, he probably thought he already had all the best things in life, probably thought he’d figured out what life was for, feasting sumptuously on good things. And it looks as though he might have been so consumed by his consumerism that he didn’t even notice Lazarus at the gate, but he recognized Lazarus up there in the bosom of Abraham, he knew the poor man’s name well enough to beg Abraham to push him around even further. It’s as though, even though Lazarus has a name in this story, his life is not entirely his own because the rich man has so much power over him, so much wealth, so much privilege.

Yeah, that word sure sticks out nowadays, doesn’t it? “Privilege.” Whether this rich man was born rich or worked hard for the money, his wealth afforded him a lot of privilege, even if it was mainly access to food and nice clothing, as this story goes. He has access. He had the ability to ignore what he didn’t want to deal with. Nowadays he might have had one of those “All Lives Matter” sort of responses to people struggling around him. Lazarus was laying out there at the gate, covered in sores, maybe nowadays calling out that “homeless lives matter” or “lives lived in poverty matter,” but that rich man could so easily erase Lazarus’ pain with a swift “why is it always about you? What about the lives of the rich? Can’t we just stick with all lives matter?”

And while every life is sacred, we sure have missed the mark on living like it. And because life is complicated, we might very well know this experience from both sides of it, having one part of our identity erased and another lifted up, depending on our context. What in the world do we do with that sort of complication, living only half-visible lives, feasting on the outside and starving on the inside? What happens when we live as both Lazarus and the rich man, with this gaping chasm in ourselves between who we want to be and what we’re struggling with? And once we find that in ourselves, how do we not see it all around us?

It comes out most in our ‘othering,’ in the ways we place value on attributes like class and race and gender and sexuality, and then treat or mistreat one another based on the value we assign those attributes. It’s why a child who is twelve years old can safely play cops and robbers in a public park if he is white, but will be shot on sight by police if he is black. It’s why a group of white college kids can riot in the streets after a football game and it’s just a lot of fun gotten out of control, but a football player silently taking a knee during the national anthem has become somehow threatening enough to the powerful that the public outcry has become louder than it ever was against those players who are engaged in domestic violence and sexual assault. 

We have a long history of turning a selectively blind eye to those who are different than we are. This has to stop if we are ever to truly take hold of life. The rich man tried to order Lazarus around, tried to get Abraham to play into his hand of treating Lazarus as something less-than, to protect his five siblings who still lived, presumably in the same fashion after their brother, but he never treated Lazarus as a brother, never saw him and all his sores and hunger as an equal human partner in this life that really is life. He got too caught up in his privilege, in protecting his comfort, in sealing himself off from undesirables, and while on the outside it appeared he was well-off, underneath his wealth he was isolated from the world around him, basically suffocating to death.

Moses and the prophets have long told us who we are, really, whose we are, what our worth is and how to live in light of who our God is. Love God, love your neighbor, is what it all comes down to. And while we who are Christian don’t have to worry about Leviticus, don’t have to concern ourselves with fulfilling those First Testament laws now that Christ has fulfilled them all, we do know they point to the kind of God who has come to us in love to redeem the world. Moses led Israel out of slavery and into freedom, and a whole generation of them decided they liked slavery better, so they never made it to the promised land. The prophets call out, again and again, for justice, they bear witness to a God who is on the side of the oppressed, they demand care for widows and orphans because the righteousness of God demands it. And when Moses and the prophets were made inaccessible to a people whose religious leaders had gotten it into their heads to impose a hierarchy of human worth, God stepped down in the flesh to make it plain for us.

This chasm is not so great that God cannot cross over. But this chasm is not only to be feared as a threat for the afterlife, it is only a present reality made clear once death has cleared away our distractions. We live day to day with this chasm, and it is a chasm we ourselves have dug, with bridges we have either neglected to build or have burned along the way. But while we yet live we can always live those second chances, those opportunities to reconnect, to see one another, to sit with each other and find this life that surpasses all of our fears and anxieties about worth and place and comfort. Because the life that really is life grows out of the depths of the love which will never let us go. The flesh and blood life of Jesus Christ, God incarnate, does not erase our differences, does not overlook our peculiarities of race, class, gender, or sexuality. The flesh and blood of God is given and shed for black lives and for queer lives and for lives in poverty and for lives of mental illness and for your particular and complicated life, too. God sees us as we are and loves us as we are, that we may know ourselves to be who we were created to be: Beloved.