Comments for Jim

Sunday, September 27, 1998

Rev. James A.Todhunter

"THE GREAT DIVIDE"

It could be argued that money is the most important subject in the Bible. Yes, of course, there is a lot about prayer, about spirituality, about love, about God. But around the subject of wealth there clusters a number of concerns that run all the way through the Bible, from beginning to end. These concerns include the relationship between the rich and the poor, the relationship between the rich and their money, and the relationship between the rich and their God. Sometimes the biblical words are blunt: God says through the Prophet Amos, "Woe to those who are at ease in Zion, and to those who feel secure on the mountain of Samaria,.." Jesus says simply "Woe to you who are rich." Mary says that God is overturning the mighty. The poor will be uplifted and the rich will go away empty. Jesus says to the rich young ruler, "Give away everything you have and follow me." And the man couldn’t because his wealth was great. Amos speaks from a time in which, in the Kingdom of Israel, the rich were getting richer and the poor were getting poorer. The rich lay on beds of ivory and stretched themselves out upon couches. In those days, as in places in Latin America today, the rich gobbled up the land, building magnificent estates, dislocating the poor and creating a class of the homeless destitute.

For many biblical writers, to be rich means, ipso facto, to be unjust, greedy, insensitive to the suffering of others, and immoral. The writer of I Timothy declares that the love of money is the root of all evil. It is almost as if to say that for the Bible writers, wealth equals power and power corrupts, therefore wealth corrupts. The poor are, almost by definition, victims. Jesus says "Blessed are you poor. Woe to you who are rich."

The story that Jesus tells in Luke’s Gospel embodies all this very graphically and dramatically. The scene is set in the underworld, in Hades. This is not the heaven-above, hell-below world-view. Both the rich man and the poor man are in Sheol, the place of the dead. The rich man is in a region set aside for those who are being punished. The poor man, named Lazarus, is with Father Abraham. What was the rich man’s sin? Apparently it involved being rich and enjoying it. Clothed in purple and fine linen. Feasting sumptuously each day. The text does not say, or imply, that he was crooked or even particularly avaricious. It says he lived the good life. And it says that at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus. How did Lazarus survive? By eating the bread that fell from the rich man’s table. This is trickle down theory at its worst.

Now, the rich man is in great torment. He sees Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham and cries out for help. Send him Lazarus to cool his parched tongue with a drop of water. But Abraham replies this way:

"Son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish."

You see this biblical theme again? The rich and poor have their places reversed. But Abraham continues, "And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us." In life there was a great divide, a chasm between the rich and the poor. And in death there is still this chasm.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said in conversation "The rich are very different from you and me." And Ernest Hemingway replied, "Yes, they have more money." Fitzgerald was right and Hemingway was wrong. There is a great divide between the rich and the poor, and though it may be documented in terms of per capita income, it is really a spiritual divide, a spiritual chasm between very differing world views. Look at this rich man. He wasn’t so much cruel to the poor man at his gate, as he was oblivious. He didn’t notice. The man’s pain just didn’t register. He didn’t so much give him food out of his abundance, as not bother to clean up after himself. Michael Harrington’s ground breaking study of poverty in the United States was entitled The Other America, that is, a whole culture of poverty that is invisible to the wealthy. So it was with this rich man. Poor Lazarus, on the other hand, saw the world from the bottom up. He didn’t spend much time thinking about what he would wear, because he had nothing but rags. He didn’t fret over the planning of his menu, because all he could do was scavange. The rich man’s life was filled with good things, while Lazarus’ life was filled with evil things. And the story clearly says that the way things are in this life, will be turned upside down in the next life. And there hovers over this story a sense that it is too late. Too late for this rich man to change his ways.

It goes without saying, of course, that if we apply this message to ourselves, it is a very hard message. We are the rich. Just consider the anxieties that many folks who may not consider themselves rich worry about - the ups and downs of the stock market, rising consumer debt, Senate action making bankruptcy harder, our IRAs, our pension accumulations. These are real worries and I don’t want to minimize them. But they are the worries of people with wealth, not people who are poor. They are the worries of the rich man in the story, not Lazarus.

If we accept the reality that we are among the rich of the world, it means that we must identify with the rich man in the story. Will it be too late for you and me? Are we in for a radical change, either in this life or in the next? If we want to avoid that fate, what are we to do?

This is where it is so important to understand that how you and I feel about our wealth is a very spiritual matter. And it is important to remember that we, the rich, are very clever at avoiding the subject. It is much more interesting, for example, to talk about sex in the White House. It is tempting to be morally outraged by this or that aspect of the current scandal - you can be outraged by the President, or Kenneth Starr, or Newt Gingrich, or the media, or whomever. But what does it mean that, even as we rise to great heights of moral fervor, at the same time we are oblivious to the hungry person at our gate? What if, from the standpoint of the most pressing biblical values (wealth and justice) all of this is a diversionary tactic on the part of the devil to keep our eyes off the ball? Last week, it seemed to me that, at the United Nations and elsewhere, the spokespersons for the people of the poor majority of this world might have been saying this to us. When President Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu speak, I listen carefully.

The Bible says that to be rich is to be in special danger of losing your soul. So what are we the rich to do? Because this is personal and spiritual, there is of course, no easy answer, because the answer is to be found in our hearts, our hearts that may be in need to transformation. To the rich young ruler, Jesus said "Give away everything you have and follow me." The repentant tax collector gave away half of what he had.

Another way of putting this is that the real issue always amounts to asking what needs to happen in your life so that you can become a follower of Jesus? What attitudes toward your wealth need to change so that your money is not standing between you and your soul? For, as Jesus says, you cannot serve two masters. It is not a question, even, of what seems best to you, as much as honestly facing that which is getting in the way. And when Jesus says that it is harder for a rich man to enter heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, he is saying this is very hard.

So what should a rich person do to avoid the fate of the man in the parable of Jesus? What do you and I need to do, if our souls are indeed in jeopardy because of our wealth? Well, I said there are no easy answers. This is not a set-up for the answer. So at one level we need to leave it there. Consult your own heart. Look at your wealth and think about it. Pray about it.

Last night I sat on our newly completed screen-in porch, having just finished our first dinner out there (Chinese carry-out). And I sat there on a white wicker rocker feeling what seems typical for me - a curious mixture of gratitude and guilt. This is really nice, I thought. This is really nice. I am very, very lucky. For me, nothing feels better than feeling genuine appreciation, genuine gratitude. But, for me, there is always in there, some uneasiness. Some guilt. This is no doubt very neurotic, I admit. It is sometimes hard for me just to enjoy. But somehow I think what God wants is not for us to feel guilty when good things happen to us, as to feel gratitude. And I think Jesus is saying that gratitude is the one thing that the rich man apparently didn’t feel. And if there is no gratitude, there will be no compassion.

What are we to do? While most of the Bible paints a pretty grim picture of the prospects for us rich to see the light, we must remember that Jesus himself says in this matter, "But with God, all things are possible." People do change. Things can happen. There is something you can do.

In the epistle lesson today, Paul writes to Timothy, a local church leader, advising on a number of matters effecting the life of his church. A good bit of it deals with the dangers of the love of wealth. And he includes some words I find very helpful, even moving. As you hear them again, think about the rich man in the story, and how he might have differently lived his life, even without giving up all his wealth. Paul advises:

What gentle but firm pastoral wisdom is found here for us rich. Humility, not haughtiness. The realization that what God provides blesses us so much more richly than earthly riches. The importance of doing good, to be rich in good works. To be generous and ready to share. By this we store up the greatest treasure, a true foundation for the future. There is money and there is real treasure. There is life, and there is real life. And what is real life? Call it heaven. Call it the Kingdom of God. Call it then, or call it now. But in the real life, things are upside-down in the most wonderful way. For in the life that is real, the life that is eternal, what you give away, you get back. What you lose, you gain. What you let go of, you receive. And what heals us, body and soul, is gratitude. Amen.

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