Un-Normalizing Indifference--February 12, 2020

Un-Normalizing Indifference--February 12, 2020

[Jesus said:] "There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man's table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.' But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.' He said, 'Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father's house--for I have five brothers--that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.' Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.' He said, 'No, father Abraha; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead'." [Luke 16:19-31]

It's not about being rich--it's about being indifferent.  

And maybe it's about how easy it is for us to use our abundance to insulate ourselves from the needs of the neighbor on the other side of the walls we set up so that we can reinforce our apathy.  There's the real tragedy of this story: the nameless rich man has normalized his indifference, and because of that, he's dead inside already even before his heart stops beating.  He has made it ok (with himself) simply not to even notice the man outside his gate, sick and dying and hungry.  And because he won't let himself see Lazarus, he has let himself off the hook for doing what Moses and the prophets all said to do for the neighbor in need.  Because the rich man has given himself permission not to care for the neighbor God has sent across his pathway, he has hardened his heart from ever being able to see Lazarus' face... or to dare to invite him to dinner and to share a table.

I've got to tell you, I used to get upset by this story for all the wrong reasons.  The Lutheran in me would get nervous because it sounded like this was a story about earning your way into heaven, whether by good deeds or somehow through suffering in poverty in life (I was never quite clear on how that would have worked when I thought that's what this parable was about).  The respectable member of the American middle-class in me got uncomfortable at the idea that Jesus could so casually talk about a rich man being tormented in hell, when so many other voices around told me that being rich was what I was supposed to aspire to.  And some other part of me was just confused about whether Jesus was actually describing the literal geography of the afterlife, with its chasms, flames, and the presence of Abraham (who somehow seems to be a giant in this story, if Lazarus is curled up at his bosom).  There were lots of reasons for me to be unsettled by this story over the years.

But I'm not sure that any of those were the right reason to be unsettled.

The more I spend time with this story, the more I see that Jesus tells this story to un-normalize our collective indifference.  We have all become numb, both to the needs of our neighbor and to our unavoidable calling to love those neighbors, and Jesus has come to make our apathy wrong again--or rather, to remind us that it was never God's will for us in the first place.  He tells this story to wake us up, to shake us up, and to see the ways we have told ourselves it's OK not to care about the faces outside the gates, simply because they are on the other side of the fence.  And as Jesus tells this story, he is fully aware that he is simply repeating what the law of Moses and the oracles of the prophets had been saying all along.  What the Torah gave in commandments like, "You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself... you shall not oppress the poor... you shall care for the widow, the orphan, and the alien..." and such, and what the prophets declared in poetry and visions, Jesus just tells in a story.  But the driving point is the same: we have allowed ourselves to become dead inside by normalizing indifference.  And that is not ok.  This story, then, is less a roadmap of the underworld, like Dante's Divine Comedy with its curious pathways through limbo, hell, purgatory, and paradise, and more like a rhetorical defibrillator meant to shock our stilled hearts back to beating again.

And this, I believe, is the correct reason to be unsettled by Jesus' story.  He means to unsettle us--that is his point.  Not to offend for the sake of causing offense, or to be crude for the purpose of riling up anger.  But to unsettled and provoke us in places we have allowed our souls to become deadened, and our hearts to become hardened.  He tells this story, like Dickens told Scrooge's story in A Christmas Carol, for the purpose of shaking us out of our catatonic state of self-centeredness to see that God has always intended for us to care for one another, especially when the "other" is right at your doorstep.  Jesus wants us to see that God's command all along (indeed, from the beginnings of Israel's story in the books of Moses) has been that we cannot turn away from the neighbor outside our gate, because all are beloved of God.  And yet somehow, we, like the unnamed rich man, have all simply grown accustomed to the idea that "those people" don't matter because, well, they're outside my fenced-in area.  We have somehow convinced ourselves that being indifferent is acceptable, that everybody does it, and that we cannot be obligated to care for others if it would mean losing some of our precious first-quarter profits.  We have deluded ourselves--and deadened ourselves--into thinking that Lazarus is to blame for his poverty and sickness, and that the rich man can't be blamed for stepping around his sore-covered body without a second thought as he goes out his front door to work in the morning.

And, as I say, Jesus has come--both in this story and in his entire ministry--to say that we have normalized something terrible by allowing that indifference.  We have eroded the old expectations that we would take care of one another, and we have given ourselves permission simply not to think about the Lazaruses of the world as people who matter.  As long as we don't have to see their faces, we don't really have to think of them as human... or neighbors... or children of God made in God's own image.  And Jesus has come to tell us that normalizing what was unconscionable is not ok.  He isn't here to threaten us with hell if we make too much money, or to tell us that if we don't do enough good deeds we'll be on the wrong side of some postmortem chasm.  He simply intends to bring us to life where we have let our hearts become dead inside.  

This is a story, then, about two resurrections: Lazarus' and ours.  As far as Jesus is concerned, you don't have to worry about Lazarus.  God's got him covered.  Even though the indifferent rich man wouldn't give him the time of day, God never forgot about him or his name.  (The rich man, ironically, never even has his name remembered--for all of his attempts to be "great," his big name in gold letters on his properties is ultimately forgettable in the final analysis.)  So, at one level, this is a story about how God reserves the right to raise up from death those who are most stepped on and stepped around.  This is a story about God's commitment to raise up those who are regarded as unimportant, negligible, and forgettable by the world and to remember their names, to honor them, and to give them life.  But this is also a story that is told for the purpose of bringing us to life where we--who are probably a lot more like the unnamed rich man than Lazarus, if we are honest with ourselves--have let our hearts become dead inside.  This is a story that speaks hope for us, not unlike the visit of the Ghost of Christmas-Yet-To-Come creates a new possibility for Ebenezer Scrooge, that our deadened souls, insulated behind walls of our own creation, might be quickened back to life right now.  This is about the God who raises what is dead in us--and about our need to admit how much of our hearts we have allowed to die of spiritual gangrene.

So today, may we have the courage to hear these words once again, and not to be upset or concerned about them for the wrong reasons.  But instead, let's allow Jesus to unsettle us, as he always does, to see the faces of our neighbors, to welcome them to our tables (yes, maybe even into our very homes or churches or neighborhoods!) because at last we see that our life is bound up in theirs, and that God just might use those neighbors brought to our doors to resurrect our dead hearts to new life again.

Let's allow Jesus to make apathy wrong again... and to make our deadened, numb hearts alive again.

Lord Jesus, quicken what is dead in us as you open our eyes to recognize the faces of those we have been ignoring on the other side of the gate, and to see how deeply you love them... so that we may see anew how your love resurrects us, too.