Luke:16: 19-31

Winners & Losers

Did you watch the Commonwealth Games? Some guys in office stayed up for the direct telecast: the usual suspects who, a month earlier, came in bleary-eyed from World Cup Soccer. And don’t you love the commentators? These are guys they pluck out from calling football matches on a Saturday afternoon in Melbourne, to describe swimming and running championships, with varying degrees of success. My favourite was the boxing commentator forced to call, on radio, a round of boxing in which neither boxer laid a glove on the other. He’s saying “no punch thrown yet..still no punch.” then at the end of the round was heard to exclaim “I get worse than that from my wife in the kitchen!” But didn’t Australia have some winners: Ian Thorpe with 6 gold medals, Cathy Freeman in the 400 metre relay. Although on closer inspection was Queen Cathy really a winner? Of the four women in her team she ran slowest. She was handed the baton with the lead, only by the time she passed it on again, she’d lost the lead for us. The truth is the other three women carried Cathy: In Kevin Sheedy’s vocabulary, she was a passenger.

Lazarus

What about Lazarus? Was he a winner or loser? According to his earthly appearance, I think most people would have pegged him to be a loser. How did Jesus portray him? At the rich man’s gate was laid this beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

Lazarus was a beggar. He had to ask people for money or some spare food. The Greek says that Lazarus literally “had been thrown” at the gate of the rich man. Perhaps he couldn’t walk – so they “threw” him there. What is worse was that Lazarus had sores all over him – ulcers or some skin disease. Not only was Lazarus crippled, but he was also not a very pretty looking man.

He couldn’t work, would have been unshaven, unsanitary, totally unacceptable. So he was left begging for money at the gate of the rich man.and there wasn’t enough support there to change a flat tyre. The only friends he had were stray street dogs. He was the fish that John West rejects. When he died, Lazarus had no proper burial. He had no mourners. In the eyes of the world, Lazarus was a waste of space, a loser. Lazurus is the derelict at Finders Street station we can’t bear to look at.

TheRichMan

On the other hand, there was the rich man, who doesn’t get a good spin from the writer Dr Luke, who cast him in a shadowy role. If the world is but a stage, the rich man wants better lighting. For in the eyes of the world – the rich man was a winner. He had achieved the Israelite dream. He dressed like a king with purple clothing. He wore soft linen, we heard in this morning’s reading. Purple was the equivalent then of mink today, & fine linen sold for six times its own weight in gold. Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase says “he dressed in the latest fashions” so this guy was a snappy dude. And he really lived it up. You could envision this man pouring top shelf drinks – having fantastic parties with drop dead gorgeous things, a personal chef, a heated pool, a corporate box at the Collesium, participating fully in all the amenities of life back then. This guy was just plain fun to be with: a success story straight out of children’s breakfast cereal swap cards. People would have loved to be friends with the rich man. He was even nice enough to allow Lazarus to sit at his gate & possibly throw him scraps now and then. He was a successful friendly businesman who supported the economy. When he died, you could imagine the Rich Man having his friends and the community testifying to what a great chap he was. Maybe they would have told stories about this fun guy – all of his parties and festivities.

Who was the winner and who was the loser? In the eyes of the world, the rich man was a winner, big time. So what made the rich man a loser in God’s sight? It wasn’t that he was rich. Abraham was rich as well, and the bible calls him “a friend of God”. Nothing wrong in Gods eyes about having a squillion or two. It’s just that his total life was consumed around how much he could get out of it. The Rich Man’s existence was about him and how he felt. He made no contribution. He was a taker, a user, a consumer. To him, Lazarus was just part of the landscape, his begging poverty just part of the status quo, as natural for Lazarus as his own wealth was natural to him. And when Lazarus dies, the rich man is so over it.

The only thing to be said of him in his lifetime is that he lived rich. And it’s worth reinterating that it was not, nor is it wrong to be rich. Jesus never condemned wealth; in His own ministry He gratefully accepted the support of such wealthy sponsors as Joanna, the wife of Chuza, King Herod’s well-paid steward. Not wealth, but losing ourselves to it, is what Jesus condemned. And in this story, the rich man’s selfish indulgence is all there is to be said of his whole life. And how he indulged it!. ‘He was,’ says Jesus, ‘merry every day splendidly.’ A millionaire play-boy! Unfortunately, there are no V.I.P’s in God’s cosmic travel arrangements. A Qantas Platinum card won’t help. It doesn’t matter who we are – we must face God’s judgement like all the rest, when our lives take turn for the hearse

Hell

This selfish man went straight to hell, Luke tells us, although not everybody is so sure. In 1996, the Church of England issued a theological report on Hell. While not suggesting that everyone would eventually wind up in heaven, the Anglican report does propose that if there is a Hell, it’s empty. The paper says: “In the past the imagery of hell-fire, eternal torment and punishment.has been used to frighten men and women..” It concludes: “Hell is not eternal torment, but is the final and irrevocable choosing of that which is opposed to God so completely that the only end is total non-being.” Hell, it would seem, has fallen on lean times. Most Australian mainline churches stopped preaching about Hell years ago. Most mainline ministers stopped believing in Hell yrs before that. Hell made people uncomfortable. Hell was unfashionable, uncool, no longer hip. The topic of Hell was bad for the bottom line-attendance & income. Hell damaged people’s all-important self-esteem. Hell has just been retained in our modern lexicon as a convenient curse word, a metaphoric description of our worst experiences- “what the hell was that”, “I’ve had a hell of a day”-but hardly anyone today believes that the word “hell” corresponds to any objective reality. You may not believe in Hell this morning. But as the old Afro- American revival preacher Cleatus McIntyre said “You not believin’ in Hell boy, it don’t lower the temperature there one degree.”

Mercy

Do you get phone calls from people asking for money? Not just the Seeing Eye Dogs who always seem to ring at dinner time. I mean down-market friends and relatives. It’s amazing some of the stories that people come up with – “someone stole my car. I lost my job. My father died. I’m on my way to Adelaide and someone I got a ride with took my clothes.” As I listen to these stories, I can’t help but be skeptical as to whether I am being told the truth. I wonder whether their problems are not due to drugs, alcohol or just laziness. Then there’s the starving millions in third world countries, still having famines, floods, wars and babies (in no particular order). You want to feel sorry for, and help people in genuine distress, but you can’t help but wonder if these are problems they have brought on themselves. Most people would judge them to just be “losers” after taking one look at their appearance.

We don’t have to be silver-tails or from the big end of town to succumb to the insensitivity of the rich man in the story. We just have to be “comfortable,” and most of us are comfortable, most of the time. We can block out the needs of others or simply become so used to passing by those less fortunate than us, regarding it is a matter of personal achievement or under-achievement. We can become so used to the status quo that we put our good fortune and the ill fortune of others down to the way it is supposed to be. They in their place and we in ours. What cud we do to alleviate human suffering anyway? (laugh) If you don’t think you can do much about world poverty, how about the poverty under our noses? Is it okay doing nothing because the problems seem too big for our comparatively meager resources? Unlike the rich man in the story, instead of passing by those in need, we could resolve not to let one day go by that we don’t do something positive, to fill an empty stomach with food or a needy heart with love. Next time a panhandler stops you for cash to buy food, tell him “Come into this takeaway and I’ll buy you a meal, but I won’t give you money.” It sorts the genuine cases, and we fill our own hearts at the same time. What we share and give away on earth will come back to us in eternal currency.

If you want to do more, how about the 2 billion people who don’t know what it’s like not to go to bed hungry? How genuine are the 60% of people in the world without drinking water. Go to Nairobi and you can see 2 million permanently homeless, kids living out of trash cans and drinking in the gutters like dogs.

You may or may not be sympathetic to the thousands of asylum seekers, some who have been here for a year in sub-standard housing. Our church gives them food parcels. Perhaps you contribute or maybe you don’t regard them as genuine. Okay, well how about the 4 million Afghan refugees living under plastic sheeting near the border with Pakistan? No potable water, food or sanitation. No Salvation Army, no Catholic sisters to take them to the British High Commission and no Australian lawyers? They’ve lived in bone-crushing poverty for five chilling years. I wonder if they’re genuine enough. Do they qualify for our help? If you’d like a ten minute video to see the food for work programs being done there, you can take a copy from the table at the door. Only don’t watch it if you’re holding hot coffee.

Money

Money is a subject we as Australians are well versed in. We have a money section in every daily newspaper, as well as the daily AFR devoted exclusively to money. All the radio and TV news have updates, with five weekly money magazines in this country, now exceeding the number of porno ones. Even Channel 9 begins our Sabbath with an 8am Business Today and Channel 2 rents Alan Kohler to present a simultaneous rival money program. just in case you aren’t sure which religion Sunday represents. Yet when there’s the panic of crashing sharemarkets, no commentator ever refers to the pitfalls of greed. The Bible does. Timothy says “People who want to get rich fall into a trap, and into many foolish, harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” If Timothy’s editor was around today, he could get that story printed verbatim in Personal Investment magazine! In a rival publication, Jesus tells us that people with money are expected to help those who have none. Even if we have trouble understanding the bible, Jesus can dumb it down for us. And He has a stinging indictment here against those who wantonly gratify themselves, while ignoring those who sit under their very noses with nothing. How many communities do we know that are adjacent to economically depressed quarters? How many Beemers and Mercs are there on our streets while at the same time there sleeps people in our shop door-fronts and under bridges?

Imagine youre God looking down today.

Who would he regard as Lazarus and who would be the rich man? Our Christian brothers and sisters in Africa, Asia and Latin America who comprise 85% of humankind, have only 12% of the churches resources. If you reduced the whole world’s population to 100 people and keep all the existing ratios for the human race the same as they currently are: 66 PEOPLE OUT OF 100 WOULD NOT BE CHRISTIANS. 2/3 of all people in the world have never heard about Jesus Christ, 70 out of 100 would be nonwhite races, and this percentage grows more nonwhite annually. 57 would be ASIAN, the largest untouched race for Jesus in the world. 21 would be Europeans, 14 from North & South America, 8 would be from Africa and 0.3 would be from Down Under. 70 out of 100 will be totally illiterate, with no reading or writing skills. If we could have the Bible in every language and in every hand of the readers, still 7/10 could not understand. 80 out of 100 would live in substandard housing. Some areas of the world would love to have enough cardboard to cover their children while they sleep. 1 out of 100 would have a tertiary education. Can you do a little more? Could you give a little more? Could you pray a little harder?

Let Lazarus go back to my brothers

When Lazarus died, what happened to this “lonesome loser?” The angels carried him to Abraham’s side. He instantly went from dogs breathing in his face to being surrounded by a heavenly escort straight to the promised land! Meanwhile the rich man takes to hell like a duck to sludge. He’s still in denial, still thinks the old order exists, asking Abraham to use him as an errand boy. It hasn’t sunk in yet that Lazurus ain’t his subject any more. Even in hell he still didn’t get it. No sign of remorse. All he wants is pity. ////Some wonder why God wouldn’t grant him his request about sending someone to warn his brothers. If God really wants people to go to heaven, it only seems logical that he would allow a messenger from beyond to communicate the path that we are to follow. Yet the rich man is not denied his request because God is unwilling to give as much opportunity as possible; he is denied it because it is useless. Because it won’t work. As Abraham points out, if they don’t hear Moses and the prophets neither will they be believe if someone should rise form the dead.

But not everybody is convinced. We want the spectacular, the dramatic, the shocking to occur. We want God to do a Stephen Spielberg: open the heavens and speak; perform a miracle or two, send an angel, then we would take it seriously. We want God to send a messenger from beyond the grave and then we will believe.//// You know, he has already done that. Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem . When he was 33 years old, even secular history books state that they crucified him on a cross. They buried him in a tomb, but three days later, he rose from the grave. Is that enough proof? And if it is, what’s stopping us.

Conclusion

So what are you, a winner or a loser? You may not be the most famous person in the world, you may not make a lot of money and you may not have the most talent. In the end – it doesn’t matter. Don’t judge your life by what you possess, have done, or how popular you are. On the other hand, everyone may think you’re a loser, but that’s not what counts. Our credentials have been given to us by God: Jesus died for us and rose from the dead. Believe in that – and you know what God will say on Judgment Day? “You’re a winner.” The opportunity to believe in Jesus is an invitation from heaven. Today we have an RSVP in the baptism of Sebastian as his parents and godparents affirm their belief in Jesus Christ. In God’s eyes, this morning Sebastian is a winner.

Kevin Gray

St Martins Sermon August 25 2002