Two things came to mind as I reflected on today’s Gospel. Some years ago, I had to move my uncle from his home in East Orange, New Jersey, where he had lived since being discharged from World War II, to a nursing home in Pennsylvania where he had grown up. There were final appointments with his doctors, meetings with his attorney and some trips to his bank, and some final farewells with friends, as I drove him all around the Oranges, North, South, East and West. I found the area to be quite disconcerting. We would pass blocks of large well kept brick homes, mansions really, with beautiful lawns and gardens, usually behind high iron fences, with surveillance cameras and security signs prominently displaced. Then, just two or three blocks later we would pass a derelict wasteland of shells of burned out structures, vacant lots full of rubbish with an occasional shack or tent indicating a precarious and haphazard human habitation. Talk about signs of poor Lazarus lying at the gates of the mansion of rich man. There was very little physical distance separating the blocks of fine homes and the dumps of desolation, but obviously the psychological distance and separation were tremendous.
I also thought about my life here in Ithaca, especially during the years our children grew up here. It depends somewhat where you live, but when you have children, especially teenage children, you are continually driving them all around. You are going to the grocery store in one direction because they are always hungry, the high school is in another direction, their friends inevitably live across town, never in your neighborhood, doctor’s offices are way up by the hospital, and wherever you go in Ithaca, you are going up and down hills, and trying to avoid the Cornell Campus right smack in the middle. Of course, geography has a lot to do with this, but in thinking how much time we have spent in transit just going from one place to another, it made me very aware of how segmented and separated in so many ways our lives often become.
It is this dangerous tendency of separateness and lack of connectedness that’s the main lesson for us in Jesus’ story about the rich man and Lazarus. Jesus is not implying that abundance and availability of resources are bad. The story is not a put down on having wealth, it is about the responsibility to use our gifts wisely and to share, and to understand the innate connections we have to each other. Yes, one of the psalms says,
Praise the Lord! Happy are those who fear the Lord,
who greatly delight in his commandments.
2. Their descendants will be mighty in the land;
the generation of the upright will be blessed.
3. Wealth and riches are in their houses,
and their righteousness endures forever.
However the psalm goes on to say,
4. [Those who honor the Lord] rise in the darkness as a light for the upright;
they are gracious, merciful, and righteous.
5. It is well with those who deal generously and lend,
who conduct their affairs with justice. (Psalm 112:1-6)
Jesus would also remind us of the words of the prophets:
Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? (Is. 58:6-7).
Jesus’ story warns about the terrible consequences of not recognizing the connectedness in our lives. Lazarus dies and then the rich man shortly afterwards. In agony the rich man spies Lazarus and acknowledges for the first time Lazarus’ existence. He cries out for Lazarus’ help, but it is too late. That opportunity to help each other ended with death. Then the rich man, in a desperate venture of kindness, begs that the resurrected Lazarus go and warn his brothers. Yet it must be assumed that his brothers are just like him. They, too, ignore and spur the Biblical teachings on the importance of recognizing others and sharing their gifts. In a climax of bitter irony, the rich man is reminded that even if Lazarus in all his heavenly glory and clothed in a grand banquet garment worn by the saints complied with the request to visit the rich man’s brothers, Lazarus would only appear to those brothers as Lazarus had appeared to the rich man on earth. His brothers would never recognize a resurrected saint from the dead; they would only see a beggar in tattered rags, filthy and full of sores.
May those who have ears, understand. And those who have eyes, perceive.
