Proper 21 C God Gives to Us

 Proper 21 C God Gives to Us

September 25, 1983

By Rev. Ernest F. Campbell

The rich man in today’s Gospel is presented as a figure of indolent self-indulgence. He is contrasted with a beggar named Lazarus who daily lay at the rich man’s gate; hungry, covered in sores and so helpless that he could not even ward off the street dogs which pestered him.

In telling this parable, Jesus leaves absolutely no room to rationalize away the poor man’s desperate need, and the rich man’s blind indifference. If we are tempted to think that the beggar was putting on some kind of “act” to cover the fact that he was a lazy good-for-nothing, it would be difficult to overlook the ulcerated sores and his humiliating vulnerability to dogs cruising the town for garbage. If we are tempted to think that the rich man was suffering guilt or any emotional upset over the beggars’ plight, it would be hard to explain how he could step over the starving man at his gate and then sit down to a sumptuous feast…. EVERY DAY!

As I thought about what Our Lord was doing with this story, it dawned on me that Jesus is intentionally stripping away all the comforting gray areas that we count on to justify our own insensitivity to the pain and grief of our fellow man. The stark contrast between “much” and “nothing” (that we all despise in this parable) may in the eyes of God’s justice have an embarrassing similarity to our “much” and our neighbor’s “nothing.”

I think Our Lord would add at this point, “Let those with eyes to see, see!”

In our society today there is a growing concern about what sociologists refer to as privatism. It is an attempt to protect oneself from the raw elements of our threatening environment by building a home “pleasure-center” behind electronic sentinels.

Example) We might have in a private home “pleasure-center” a hot-tub, piped in music, large-screen T.V., a bar, and blinking red lights on a closed circuit T.V. security camera system.

If this trend continues, we could all go into our “pleasure-centers”, pull the shades on the pitiful beggars at our gates, sink into our “hot-tub womb” and numb our anxieties about the atrocities on our T.V. with a well-mixed drink.

Admittedly, it is hard to see the harm in privatism until we are forced to experience the consequences when the tables are turned.

Example) Going from the driver’s seat to being the hitch-hiker.

Privatism is also an invitation for crime to run loose in our streets like wild dogs. If all the “decent” people go home and draw the shades, we make ourselves just as blind to our neighbor’s needs as the rich man in the parable was blind in his heart to the beggar at his gate.

Example) The man who build a house without windows because he didn’t like the neighborhood.

In the parable of the good Samaritan, Our Lord defines neighbor as one willing to help in response to another’s need.

If there is one message the Gospel hammers home it is that… we have a generous God.

• God so loved the world that He gave His son to save us.

• Our Lord’s final orders to His Apostles -- to love one another in the same generous way that He had loved them. 

In Matthew 5:48 we read, “Be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” God’s perfection means to be generous in our behavior to all human kind. The Christian challenge is to show to others what God has shown to us. If we never give, we have nothing in common with God.

Example) Once, when soliciting for the United Way, one neighbor’s response to me was to say, “We never give to anything. As he said this to me, I could see that his eyes betrayed a nagging fear.

God causes us to enjoy a care-free attitude about our material possessions based on our faith in His desire to care for us. Without this faith we must fearfully cling to man-made security systems, and then give these false idols the unmerited worship they demand.

Example) The super security system that a friendly neighbor “busted through” in less than fifteen minutes. Demonstrating that the system was not so “secure.” 

Contrast in your mind the rich man in today’s Gospel along with the neighbor who never gave to anything (to anybody) with Our Lord’s teaching in Luke chapter 6;

• Give to Everyone who ask you.

• Treat others as you would like them to treat you.

• Give, and there will be gifts for you: a full measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be poured into your lap, because the amount you measure out is the amount you will be given back.

We would, I think, agree that being generous with people we like is easy. When we have a natural affinity to like another person this call to “God’s generous perfection” seems like no challenge at all. That is how it is in our ‘natural’ state. However, if we ever hope to attain God’s call to perfection – we must beware of walking in our natural affinities. Some people we like, and others we dislike, but we must never let those likes and dislikes rule our Christian life. To be a disciple means that we deliberately identify ourselves with God’s interests in other people. (This is what we mean, or should mean, when we pass the Lord’s Peace in worship).

When this seems ‘beyond’ us we should be reminded by the 23rd Psalm that “God has prepared a table for us in the presence of our enemies.” Our expression of God’s generosity, or lack of it, will automatically separate the sheep from the goats at the last judgement. 

The secret of being a Christian is that the supernatural is made natural in us by the grace of God. And the experience of this works out in the practical details of life, and not in our obvious religious commitments. 

On Judgement Day our attendance here today (sitting in church), will count for nothing. Our generous behavior toward our fellow man will count for everything. The way this works itself out in God’s truth is that we cannot have one without the other.