No Place Like a Bosom*

25^th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Luke 16:19-31

Three nurses appear before St. Peter at the pearly gates.

St Peter says to the first,

Tell me what you did on earth?

Nurse A replied “I was a labor and delivery nurse. 

I helped bring hundreds of precious babies into the world”

“Enter”, St. Peter said

Then he turned to Nurse B and asked the same question

“I was a trauma nurse.  I helped save hundreds of lives of people involved in horrible accidents”

“Enter” cried St. Peter

He then turned to Nurse C with again the same question.

“I worked for an HMO,” she admitted “Over the years I saved my company hundreds of thousands of dollars by refusing extended care to people who were trying to bilk the system.”

“You may enter!” said St Peter.

“You really mean it” she asked incredulously

“Yes…you have been pre-approved for three whole days.”

When each of our children reached the appropriate age

Rob or I would have to have those difficult

but important conversations with each of them

About love and human sexuality

This week I thought about those conversations

I would begin with the negative

…with what

Love and human sexuality most certainly ARE NOT

Well, for starters

It’s not an itch that you need to scratch

And it’s not recreation

Its not about cool

Its not about conquest

I was trying to erase anything in his head

that I didn’t put there

I wanted a clean slate

The story of the Rich Man and Lazarus

Is so vivid and striking and rich
That lots of ideas about its meaning form quickly

As it is heard

But it is likewise important to name  

What this story is NOT

This is NOT a story about the geography or architecture of Heaven or Hell

Jesus is using this popular folktale motif

And turns it inside out...using it for his own purposes

Jesus, especially in the Gospel of Luke

isn’t particularly concerned

With the architecture of divine punishment

He is clearly more interested in divine mercy

We can recall the Prodigal Son Story of a few Sunday’s ago

The Father runs out to meet the wayward son
     his turban unraveling...his sandals falling off...

Remember how the wayward son had practiced his contrition speech?

He’s all rehearsed…But this Merciful Father won’t hear it

He goes straight to embracing and straight to rejoicing. 

Jesus is up to something else in today’s parable…

To the ears of the first century hearers

Jesus is

Sharply and surprisingly

Demanding that the people give up their images of divine favor

A favor that, according to the ethos of their cultural world,

manifested itself in wealth and health.

The last place they would think to look for Lazarus…

Is in the intimate and comforting “Bosom of Abraham”

The joke I started with is a distant relative to this parable

The imagery and contrast

Are meant to open our eyes

But compared to St. Peter and the Pearly Gates

Today’s parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus

Is much more sharp, and bold, and exaggerated

(unless of course you work for a health insurance company and are in the business of denying claims;)

The form of this parable is apocalypse

An apocalypse text serves as a wake-up call

It is like lifting a shade that has been covering our eyes

Hiding something we’d rather not see

And there is urgency

What do I need to see now before it is too late!!!

The contrasts are sharp and many

The rich man who is important and high class

…doesn’t even have a name

Lazarus…un-noticed and barely human…

is none-the-less dignified with a name

The Rich man’s Clothes are carefully described…

Royal purple and finely woven

Lazarus’ clothing…well it isn’t really clothing…

His covering is sores

The Rich man eats sumptuously every - single - night

Lazarus is being licked clean every – single - night

At death Lazarus’ journey is described in detail

…Carried away by angels

…Settled into the bosom of Abraham

And the rich man…well…

Dead.

buried.
period.

And the most scandalous part of all

Was their constant proximity to one another

Day after day in this life

They were such close neighbors that the rich man knew Lazarus by name

What a reversal for the Rich Man

seeing Abraham and Lazarus…Far Off in the distance…

across an unbreachable chasm

The rich man remains obtuse

In the midst of his hell

he continues to be blind to Lazarus

Going straight to the big guy---His Father---Father Abraham

Talking right OVER Lazarus…

About what he wants Lazarus to do for him

Talking about him without talking to him

…As if Lazarus wasn’t there

In the bosom of Abraham

As if… Lazarus was a thing… not a person

The Rich Man is pathologically blind!

The gate or door that keeps his world off limits

…that keeps others out

also locks himself in…it seems even God can’t get in

It is a hell

And he doesn’t know it

At this point I am reminded of Ebenezer Scrooge

in Dicken’s A Christmas Carol

Are we,

getting a glimpse of the “Ghost of Christmas Future”?

(the ghost that forewarns scrooge of the things to come if he doesn’t change his ways…)

But Dicken’s lets us off the hook

Scrooge changes…he repents…he experiences conversion

And so we have a happy ending…

we sleep well knowing that we would surely do the same.

But in the parable

It is not so neat and tidy

Father Abraham is out of hope for the five brothers.

It is done.

No…not even if someone were to rise from the dead!

There is a wake-up call for all of us in this story

The Gospel is speaking to our blindnesses

They may not be as obvious or striking as The Rich Man’s

But they are there

I might think of Abraham

Holding Lazarus

Offering him a comfort he has never known

Who am I reluctant to comfort?

Why am I satisfied with letting the next person tend to a need in front of me?

Do I think in terms of worthiness?

And do I conveniently put myself in the ‘worthy’ column?

I might think of the Rich Man

Of how he was incapable of seeing Lazarus as a person

…even if he had dressed Lazarus’ sores

Or fed his hunger…

it was his blindness

That made his hell

He made a thing out of a person…Am I capable of that?

I might think of the door or the gate.

What are the barriers

That I erect around my life

So that I don’t have to see

The inconvenient or the un-lovely

I might think of those brothers

I might think of The Law and the Prophets and the Gospel

They are treasures given to me as well

Do I put them on a shelf…to collect dust?

Or Do I allow them to mold my heart and mind and soul…

Are they alive in me?

While this may be a parable

Lazarus is real

Lazarus is…

A brother who I keep at arms length because of past hurts

Lazarus is…

A father who is getting mean as he fights the limitations of his failing physical body

Lazarus is…

Any person or group of persons I am content to keep on the other side of my door.

And sometimes I am Lazarus.

The name Lazarus means “helped by God”

Lazarus moments are resurrection moments

They happen when

We care and are cared for,

We feed and are fed,

We clothe and are clothed,

We free and are set free.

And in those encounters we make visible the Kingdom of God

that is both already in our midst

and longing to be realized

We believe in the resurrection.

We believe in life from death.

We believe in it NOW

In this life

…and in the life to come

The wake up call

Is a question

“What do we need to see…

“What do we need to see…

in order to live more fully

right now

in the light of the resurrection?

May we see and believe 
so that
in the words of 1 Timothy:
...We may take hold of the life that really is life.