18 Pentecost 07 Proper 21

A woman and her husband interrupted their vacation to go to the dentist. “I want a tooth pulled,” she said, “and I don’t want any Novocain or gas, because I’m in a big hurry. Just extract the tooth as quickly as possible.”

The dentist was quite impressed and said, “You certainly are a courageous woman. Which tooth is it?”

The woman turned to her husband and said, “Show him your tooth, dear.”

When we talk about evangelism and money it is much like pulling teeth. We would much rather it be someone else’s teeth.

Our gospel lesson today talks about these two very things in the form of a parable. Jesus often told parables. A parable is a lengthy story drawn from nature or human circumstances, the object of which is to set forth a spiritual lesson.

The first lesson that Jesus is teaching in this parable is the temptation to allow our money to keep us from having compassion for the poor. Jesus talked more about money than any other subject-except the love and grace of God. Perhaps it is because money does something to us in our relationships with others. Immanuel Kant once told a story about a miser who one evening was going over his accounts and fell asleep. He dreamed that the Angel of Death came for him. It was too late to add to the good he had done or subtract the evil. The time of judgment was at hand for his life. The Angel of Death carried the miser, a man named Carazan, to the heavens and there a voice spoke to him, “Carazan, your service to God is rejected. You have closed your heart to the love of man, and have clutched your treasures with an iron grip. You have lived only for yourself, and therefore you shall also live the future in eternity alone and removed from all communion with the whole of creation.”

At that very instant Carazan was plunged into eternal silence, loneliness and darkness. In desperation at the hopeless and joyless existence that would be for all eternity he threw up his hands with such force that he awoke. The impact of the dream changed Carazan for all time. “…now I have been taught to esteem mankind,” he said, “for in that terrifying solitude I would have preferred even the least of those whom in the pride of my fortune I had turned from my door to all the treasures of the world.”

It is very easy to become so caught up in our day to day existence that we forget about those less fortunate than we are. St. Paul said to Timothy in our second lesson today, “As for the rich in this world, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on uncertain riches but on God who richly furnishes us with everything to enjoy.” This says that those who are not poor should not have a haughty pride nor to place their security in money which can be here today and gone tomorrow. By the same token the things that we do have, we should recognize that God gives us the ability to have these things and to have them for our enjoyment. Those who are not poor are to do good, to be rich in good deeds, liberal and generous in the way they give their money.

There is an old saying that says, “You can’t out give God.” God gives us resources not only so that we can enjoy our lives, but also so that we can be a blessing to others. God has established one of the ways that we are to be a blessing in the form or our giving to the church. The other way of giving that God has established is to give to the poor directly, give to organizations that minister to the poor, donate your time to outreach projects, donate your gifts to help those in need. By doing so we are laying up for ourselves a good foundation for the future. This helps us to keep our money from controlling us, keeps it from becoming the foundation of our life, and helps us to keep Jesus as the center of our lives.

In our gospel lesson the Rich man probably went through his list of excuses. First, “Lazarus was a bum and doesn’t deserve assistance.” We can have a jaded view of the poor because of examples we know of those who try to use the system, who don’t want to work, who are just freeloaders.

We then begin to remember verses of Scripture which say things like, “For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: that if anyone will not work, neither shall he eat. For we hear that there are some who walk among you in a disorderly manner, not working at all, but are busy bodies. Now those who are such we command and exhort through our Lord Jesus Christ that they work in quietness and eat their own bread.”

These scriptures must be tempered with ones that encourage giving. Peter, James and John desired that St. Paul should remember the poor. He said, “All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do” (Gal. 2:10). We need to examine our attitudes towards the poor by reading passages like James 2:1-6.

Going back to our gospel lesson, perhaps the rich man thought, “If I help this man when he begs me for food outside the gate, then he will show up regularly and disturb me and my guests sitting by the pool. Also, any assistance would be counter productive, furthering the beggar’s syndrome of shiftlessness and dependency. So I am helping this beggar by not giving him anything, so he will think twice about asking me again, and he will be motivated to turn himself around and become a hard working, God fearing, deserving person.”

Perhaps he might have said to himself, “I’ve had to work for what I have. Why should I support those that won’t work?” We, like he, immediately assume that they are not working because they won’t work. There was a woman, married to a wealthy man, who confessed: “I didn’t want to marry him for his money, but how else was I going to get it?” We can view the poor like this.

We can also believe that it is the government’s job to take care of the poor. Then we hear about all of excess spending, the waste and the fraud in the government and we wonder if the poor are truly being helped by the governmental programs set up. And yet, presidential candidates are proposing even more taxes to try to take care of the poor. This is almost a move toward a socialistic government that tries to force equality on all people. That is not gospel – gospel is voluntarily helping those in need.

Gone are the days when the Church and other relief organizations were looked to as the main helpers of those in need. This is partly because we have turned our backs on those in need. We have, from time to time, turned our backs on the poor not only financially, but also physically by not seeking ways to help them escape their life of poverty. It’s giving them a hand up, not a hand out. It is very likely that we don’t even know anyone who is poor.

Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat for Humanity, tells a story featuring an attitude similar to that of the Rich man and Lazarus. It seems a wealthy, prominent, church-going woman in Americus, GA (the home of Habitat for Humanity), had a maid named Dorothy. Dorothy had six children and lived in a shack along with several other relatives. On what she was paid, she couldn’t afford anything more. News about a Habitat house, based on an interest-free loan, excited Dorothy, so she applied.

Since Habitat has many more applicants than it has houses, the waiting list is very long, and Dorothy, began to wonder if her application had been lost. Her employer, full of a sense of her own authority, said she would “get something going on it down there” for Dorothy. A couple of days later, the woman called Habitat and demanded, “I am Mrs. So-and-So, and my maid Dorothy, who has been with me for fifteen years, applied for a house weeks ago and has not heard a thing. Now, are you people for real or not? Besides, I don’t think it very Christian, as you people say you are, to keep her dangling like this.”

The Habitat volunteer replied, “We are sorry Mrs. So-and-So for the delay, but we are swamped and understaffed, but I will look into her application immediately. Now, what is Dorothy’s last name so I can look up her application?” There was silence on the other end. Then an indignant, “You know, Dorothy!” “No, Mrs. So-and-So, we don’t know, since we have hundreds of applications and several have a first name of Dorothy, so we need more than just ‘Dorothy’ to find her file.” “Well, that’s all I can tell you. You’ll have to make do with that.” The volunteer suggested to the incensed employer that Dorothy herself call back the next day before the angry employer hung up.”

Jesus said, “The poor you will always have with you.” But that doesn’t mean we can’t seek to get to know them and their needs. Granted, some poor don’t want to work, or want to just mooch off of others. We certainly need the wisdom of the Spirit to know what to do with them, but that should not deter us from seeking to help those who truly are in need.

The story in our reading from the gospel goes on to tell a second lesson. It tells of the Rich man dying and going to Hades (the holding place for the unrighteous dead before Christ) and he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus in his bosom (Lazarus was in the holding place for the righteous dead before Christ). And he called out, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in anguish in this flame.” But Abraham said, “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. 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.”

This parable is a vivid illustration of the separation between those who are saved (those who are made righteous by having a relationship with Jesus Christ) and those who are not saved (and have not been made righteous by Jesus Christ). This is one of the clearest illustrations of heaven and hell. The everlasting reality of this separation is seen in the word fixed. The chasm between the righteous and the unrighteous is fixed. Once a person dies they are either in that terrible place of tormenting separation from the Loving God and in the presence of an unloving Satan and his minions, or they are in that place of eternal bliss and joy with Jesus.

Because we cannot make a doctrine out of one place of Scripture we must avoid the temptation to think that just because we help the poor, we are guaranteed a place in heaven. The rest of Scripture makes it clear that heaven is gained only by accepting the free gift of grace and forgiveness which Jesus Christ offers and by inviting him to be the ruler of our lives. Jesus does make it clear elsewhere that the evidence of those who know him is seen in their giving spirit. “Whenever you have fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the sick or someone in prison IN MY NAME, you have done it unto me.” To those who did not do those things because they did not have a relationship with him, he says, “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

This is why the Rich man in the parable immediately said, “Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.”

This parable was meant to convey the awfulness of separation from God in hell. It was meant to motivate the Church to evangelism by being so concerned about the souls of the lost that they would go to rich and poor and all in between to warn them of the consequences of their sinful condition and to tell them that Jesus has paid the price for sin and has provided a way to enter into the joy, peace and love he has prepared for those who love him.

Abraham’s response is interesting. He says, “They (the five brothers) have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.” And the Rich man said, “No, father Abraham; but if some one goes to them from they dead they will repent.” Abraham said to him (actually this is Jesus speaking truth here) “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead.”

Some of the Jews did not believe what Moses and the prophets said about the coming Messiah and the salvation he would offer. Now that Jesus the Messiah had come, since they wouldn’t even believe the writings of Moses, they certainly would not believe even when Jesus rose from the dead.

Some people are so hard-hearted that they would not believe the gospel no matter how much evidence you present them. They don’t realize the chasm that exists between them and the God who loved them and the Savior who died for them. They simply won’t turn to Jesus and be saved.

I hope none of you are amongst that group of people. If you are, I pray that the Holy Spirit will soften your heart and enlighten your mind so that you will not spend eternity tormented by the thought, “Why didn’t I respond to Jesus when I had a chance?”

If you want to make sure that you are on God’s side of that chasm I talked about then simply follow this formula: Sorry, Please, Thanks. Admit the things you have done wrong and say “Sorry.” Maybe you have been focused solely on money or possessions as your goal in life. Maybe you recognize your tendency to be self-centered. Turn away from anything or any attitude that is not in line with what Jesus would want. Next, ask Jesus to come into your life, to be your Savior, to cleanse you of your sins, and to give you new life. “Lord Jesus, please come into my life.” Finally, say thanks. “Thank you Lord Jesus for dying for me on the cross, for rising from the dead, and for promising to give me eternal life with you. I ask you to fill me with Your Holy Spirit now, and I thank you for doing that now. In your name, Lord Jesus, I pray. Amen.”