From the Pulpit:

 
                                                                              The Parable of the Five Brothers

It’s good to be home. I’m grateful to Doug and Micah for filling in for me and to you all for being hospitable and helpful to them. They had a good time. And I have listened to the excellent sermons they gave. But I have to take issue with something Micah said, because if I had chosen vacation dates according to the lectionary lessons, surely I would have stayed gone another week.

The stewardship commission is ramping up for our annual pledge drive and so of course, right now we get some of the most prickly stories of Jesus talking about money. We’ve pointed out before that a major theme of Luke’s gospel is the inversion of social, political, and economic roles. The Magnificat, in which Mary sings eloquently about the poor being lifted up and the rich being sent away empty, sets the tone for the whole gospel. And we have also pointed out  that justice in the kingdom of God is not retributive but rather distributive. That is, it is not about punishment as expiation for sins but rather about the equitable distribution of the bounteous gifts God has given to all creation. The problem has never been that there is not enough to go around. There is more than enough. It is that some people hoard while others suffer.

There was an op-ed piece in the New York Times this week that focused on the anger of the very rich in America . They defend themselves that simply making  four or five hundred thousand dollars a year doesn’t make them rich, and that they don’t want to pay taxes because look at all they do for the economy by keeping up three or four luxury homes, sending their children to elite private schools, jetting all over the world on vacation,  and employing other people who need to work. When I’ve bragged about the diversity of our parish I’ve lamented that the only demographic we are lacking are some really rich people, but that our doors are wide open, but the truth is that in the eyes of the world, we are all rich. There’s a website called the Global Rich List (http://www.globalrichlist.com/) that will show you where you stand in the measure of wealth in the world. And an income of $25,000 puts one ahead of 90% of the world’s population.

And so, having just read this discomforting parable, the natural place to go is to conclude that Jesus is telling the Pharisees and us that rich people are going to get punished in the afterlife and poor people are going to get rewarded. I think the story means more than that. Jesus didn’t bother with parables to get across a point he could have said in a simple declarative sentence. N. T. Wright says, “a parable is picture language for something going on in Jesus’ own work.” (Luke for Everyone, p. 201) It is a deceptive story told to draw us in and trap us with a deep insight that otherwise we would not have gotten on our own. This story is not a slap in the face. It is an invitation.

Driving in my car yesterday, I heard a snippet of conversation that got my mind going in a new direction. I was listening to an interview with Deepak Chopra and he said that after the break he was going to be talking about some new ideas he has had about the future of God. I had to get out of the car, so I didn’t get to hear what he said, but I have to tell you that just the phrase, “the future of God,” was intriguing to me. I guess I hadn’t thought much about God having a future. I realize it doesn’t mean the same thing in regards to God as it does to us, but even so, why do we tend to think of God stories as in the past? As I’ve shared with many of you, one of the most amazing things my spiritual director has ever said to me is that the greatest obstacle to one’s next experience of the living God in one’s last experience of the living God. Whatever God is, whatever God has in store for us, it is not something we have already experienced. And the richness of Jesus’ parables is that whatever we got out of them the last time we wrestled with them, there’s still something new in them to grow our souls. God’s future is our future. And it is unexpected.

So we know the story of this parable. Actually, it is an ancient Egyptian folk tale. You know how those stories get adapted to other cultures, to make other points. It is worth noting that nowhere does Jesus say the rich man is evil. Nor does he say that Lazarus is particularly good. The rich man simply does not see Lazarus. I wonder why Lazarus is the only named character in all the parables. Anyway, when they die, the rich man is given an appropriate funeral and ends up in Hades, where he was tormented, while the beggar ends up in the arms of Father Abraham. But I think it is much more than a cautionary tale about what is going to happen to us when we die.

There is much more to this story than the moral: don’t be like the rich man. Jesus never says it is bad to be rich just like the letter to Timothy does not say, “Money is the root of all evil.” No, it is the love of money that is the root of all evil, and I think Jesus is suggesting, and to the Pharisees, at that, who we have just been told do indeed love money, that the rich man’s being consumed with his possessions has made him blind to the existence of Lazarus and thus to the possibility of any sort of relationship.

Have you heard about the new documentary that is coming out? It was all over Oprah’s show this week and was made by the producer of an Inconvenient Truth. It is called “Waiting for Superman,” and is about the plight of public education in America . The title comes from Geoffrey Canada, who grew up in the projects of the South Bronx believing that one day Superman was going to swoop down and make right all that he recognized, even as a very small child, as wrong and unjust and evil in his world. He talks about his hopes being dashed  the day his mother told him that Superman was not real. That Superman was not coming. Education, however, proved to be his Superman, and he has dedicated his life to the Harlem Children’s Zone, rescuing thousands of children  who had become invisible in the public education system.

Waiting for Superman has not yet been released, but it is all about invisible children, children who are motivated and optimistic  but whose fate hangs on the extremely slim chance that they might win the lotteries to admit them good schools. Bianca, Emily, Francisco, Daisy, and Anthony have big dreams, but it will take someone like Superman to give them a chance.

I imagine you have probably also heard that on Friday Mark Zuckerburg, the 26-year-old founder of Facebook, gave $100 million to the schools of Newark, New Jersey, which has been labeled the worst city in America. Only forty per cent of Newark students graduate high school. All of this is about distributive justice, and I know it is only a beginning, but it is a witness to the world that those who are blessed with riches are themselves blessed when they open their eyes to the needs of the invisible and powerless,  the oppressed and the suffering.

Jesus’ parable does not end with the arrogant rich man telling Father Abraham to send Lazarus over like a servant to give him a tall, cool one. Even in his suffering afterlife he refers to Lazarus in the third person. But he goes on to beg Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his five brothers, to give them a heads up on what will happen to them if they don’t clean up their act. The thing is that the rich man still doesn’t comprehend  what repentance is about.

Eugene Peterson suggests this should be called the Parable of the Five Brothers because the point for Jesus’ listeners is that resurrection is going on all around them. (Tell It Slant, p. 119) That is what the Kingdom is, the Kingdom the Pharisees are blind to, the Kingdom the rich man cannot see because he cannot see Lazarus as a brother. Because the rich man defines himself by what he has he cannot see who he is, and he cannot know that to repent is to find himself.

Morton Kelsey was a prophetic Episcopal priest and Jungian analyst. In his memoir he tells the story of the dream of one of his analysands. It is a dream that tells a deep truth, a truth that I believe is at the heart of this parable. In this dream the man died and went to heaven. As Jesus is showing him around he expresses surprise at some of the people he sees there. They are not the best people he knew on earth. And then he suddenly realizes that someone is missing, a man he thought would be the first person he would see in heaven, and so he asks Jesus where this person is, and Jesus takes him over to a place where they look down over the edge, and there is the man, not exactly being tormented in hell, but clearly not enjoying the blessings of heaven. The man turns to Jesus and says, “Of all the people I thought you would want in heaven, he is the one.” And Jesus says to him, “Oh, I do want him in heaven. It’s just that he can’t get here until he wants me more than he wants anything else.” (Reachings)

Amen.