SPEAKER_00: This Sunday we're presented with an in-your face type of challenge.
SPEAKER_00: All of us are engaged in a common struggle, not a battle fought with swords or armies, but one that takes place within the hidden depths of our souls.
SPEAKER_00: It is a struggle that we all have between two spirits, the spirit of generosity, the spirit of self-sacrifice and love.
SPEAKER_00: And then we fight with the spirit of complacency, self-satisfaction, selfish indifference.
SPEAKER_00: This conflict is subtle.
SPEAKER_00: Does not flash across the sky in dramatic signs, but is hidden behind rationalism and sometimes can sound harmless or even comforting.
SPEAKER_00: Yet the stakes could not be any higher, nothing less than life or death for our souls.
SPEAKER_00: The parable of the rich man in Lazarus makes us uneasy.
SPEAKER_00: And it should.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus here isn't telling some quaint, nice little story.
SPEAKER_00: He is confronting us with a truth that's pressing us to act before it is too late.
SPEAKER_00: Our desire to be masters of our own lives collides with this call to always depend on God.
SPEAKER_00: And once we hear the hard teachings of Jesus, if we ignore them, they remain lodged in our they remain lodged in us like a stone in our shoe, nagging our conscience until we act.
SPEAKER_00: This parable is unique.
SPEAKER_00: It is the only time Jesus gives a poor man a name.
SPEAKER_00: Lazarus is remembered.
SPEAKER_00: The rich man is forgotten.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Well, because Jesus wants us to understand that the poor are not faceless, but individuals, each one a person with a name, a history, a dignity stamped with the image of God.
SPEAKER_00: Poverty is not merely about lacking possessions, just as wealth is not always about money.
SPEAKER_00: The position of selfishness can lodge itself in any heart.
SPEAKER_00: The rich man's sin was not his wealth, but his indifference.
SPEAKER_00: He knew Lazarus by name.
SPEAKER_00: He saw him daily, starving and covered in sores just outside of his gate, and yet he did nothing.
SPEAKER_00: His indifference hardened into a permanent chasm that separated him from God.
SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, Lazarus was not saved simply because he was poor, but because he trusted in God in the midst of his suffering.
SPEAKER_00: Here Jesus tears down the false gospel of prosperity.
SPEAKER_00: The lie that material success is proof of God's favor.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, he insists that what matters is how we respond to those who are physically or spiritually poor.
SPEAKER_00: This parable is about values.
SPEAKER_00: The rich man's failure was not ignorance.
SPEAKER_00: He had Moses, he had the prophets, he had the teachings of God, he had the law.
SPEAKER_00: His failure was neglect, deliberate, a deliberate choice to close his eyes and to do nothing.
SPEAKER_00: That's why the question presses on us today.
SPEAKER_00: Do we allow the gospel to challenge us, to shape the way that we respond to the people that are on our gate?
SPEAKER_00: Are we willing to move from the abstract idea of the poor to the concrete realities of faces and names and stories, and then demand compassion, our compassion.
SPEAKER_00: Notice how complacency crept into this rich man's life.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't suddenly one day, one morning, wake up and ignore Lazarus.
SPEAKER_00: His heart grew numb little by little, dulled by comfort, distracted by pleasure, until he never, until he no longer even saw him, Lazarus, lying at his gate.
SPEAKER_00: That's a real tragedy.
SPEAKER_00: Not that he had wealth, but he was blinded by his wealth.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus sounds the alarm.
SPEAKER_00: He says very clearly, beware.
SPEAKER_00: Be very careful of complacency.
SPEAKER_00: Beware of the narcotic that says, I'm fine, I've got everything I need.
SPEAKER_00: I don't bother anyone.
SPEAKER_00: I live in my own bubble.
SPEAKER_00: Life is good.
SPEAKER_00: Beware of that.
SPEAKER_00: Beware of the sleep that numbs us into people who do not see those around us who are starving for hope, who are starving for a kind word, who are starving for love.
SPEAKER_00: Because rich in this parable is not only about bank accounts.
SPEAKER_00: It is about what we cling to for security.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us are rich in comfort, rich in the routines that we have, rich in the thought that I'm already done, I've done enough, I'm good, I'm comfortable.
SPEAKER_00: That's false wealth.
SPEAKER_00: It's the most dangerous of all.
SPEAKER_00: Because it blinds us to the needs of those who are around us and slowly starves our souls.
SPEAKER_00: Think about it.
SPEAKER_00: Who was really the poorest man in the parable?
SPEAKER_00: Not Lazarus.
SPEAKER_00: Though he suffered and in the end was carried to the bosom of Abraham by angels.
SPEAKER_00: The truly poor man was the rich man because his soul was empty, hollow, complacent.
SPEAKER_00: He had everything the world could give them, but nothing that he could take with him.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the danger for us too.
SPEAKER_00: Evil does not triumph because we suddenly, all of a sudden, one day wake up and turn against God in some dramatic rebellion.
SPEAKER_00: No, that's not how it works.
SPEAKER_00: Evil triumphs when good people do nothing.
SPEAKER_00: It triumphs when we let complacency law us to sleep, when we get so busy festing at our own tables that we fail to notice that Lazarus is lying at our gate.
SPEAKER_00: And Lazarus is closer than we think.
SPEAKER_00: He may not be a homeless stranger at our gate, but he may be a teenager at home longing for words of affirmation.
SPEAKER_00: He may be the spouse that's aching for you to hear for you for to hear the words, I love you, words that they haven't heard in years.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe the coworker who feels invisible, or the elderly parent who waits for your call, the neglected friend who wonders if you've forgotten them.
SPEAKER_00: Each of these Lazarus, waiting for crumbs, not crumbs of food, but crumbs of attention, of compassion, of love.
SPEAKER_00: This is where the gospel strikes at home.
SPEAKER_00: Faith is not a cushion for comfort, it is a call to conversion where we wake up every single day and commit our lives to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: God's salvation is a free gift, but we have to respond.
SPEAKER_00: We have to cooperate with grace, cultivating virtue and resisting the inertia of complacency.
SPEAKER_00: Salvation is never a private affair.
SPEAKER_00: It is bound up in how we treat those who God places at our gate.
SPEAKER_00: God will place people at our gate and we'll see how we react to it.
SPEAKER_00: Edmund Burke once said, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for men to do nothing, good men to do nothing.
SPEAKER_00: That it's not just a political or a historical fact, it's about our souls.
SPEAKER_00: Evil triumphs when we fail to notice, when we fail to love, when we do absolutely nothing.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the good news.
SPEAKER_00: The good news is that God has given everything we need to win this struggle.
SPEAKER_00: The people in our lives who need us are not interruptions to our holiness, they are a path to it.
SPEAKER_00: No one is too busy and no one is too important.
SPEAKER_00: God has built what I call the economy of salvation.
SPEAKER_00: In that economy, no one is saved alone.
SPEAKER_00: We are saved by belonging to a community, walking with our brothers and sisters in love.
SPEAKER_00: The poor need the rich, yes, that is true.
SPEAKER_00: But the rich, those of us who have been given much, desperately need the poor, because they are a reminder that without them we cannot be saved.
SPEAKER_00: So ask yourself today, who is at my gate?
SPEAKER_00: Who is God placing before me?
SPEAKER_00: Who is waiting for a word, a gesture, a crumb of kindness?
SPEAKER_00: This gospel is not meant to frighten us, it's meant to wake awaken us.
SPEAKER_00: And when we wake up, everything changes because we're able to then shake off complacency and start seeing and responding to the Lazaruses in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: We see ourselves come alive, just generosity can set us free, love enlarges our hearts, and mercy always prevails.
SPEAKER_00: So, my brothers and sisters, today don't just walk past your gate.
SPEAKER_00: Open it.
SPEAKER_00: Open your eyes, see the person waiting there, see the person that God has placed in that moment.
SPEAKER_00: Offer what you have, your time, your compassion, your prayer, your presence.
SPEAKER_00: Do it not only for their sake, but because you love Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And he's asking you to take attention.
SPEAKER_00: Because in the end, the only wealth that matters is the wealth of love.
SPEAKER_00: And that is a treasure.
SPEAKER_00: That is the only treasure that we will carry with ourselves to eternity.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.