The Gospel at the Gate

Luke 16:19–31 tells of a rich man feasting behind his gate while Lazarus starves outside. In death, the gate becomes a chasm too wide to cross. In this sermon, we face the danger of indifference and the gospel that calls us to crumble gates, widen tables, and discover that the kingdom of God is already breaking through in love.

Transcript

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You're listening to The Word on Baker Street, a podcast from Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Bakersfield, California. Each week we share the good news of God's love through the sermons from our Sunday worship. Wherever you are in your journey, you are welcome here.

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The Holy Gospel according to Luke 16, 19 through 31. There was a rich man dressed in purple and fine linen, who feasted scrumptuously 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 angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried in Hades, where he was being tormented. He lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. And he called out, Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in the 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 is a great chasm that has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so. And so no one can cross from there to us. And he said, I beg you, Father, send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers, that they may warn them, so that they may not also come to this place of torment. And Abraham replied, They have Moses and the prophets, they should listen to them. And he said, No, Father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent. And he said to him, If they have not listened to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced, even if someone raises from the dead, the gospel of the Lord. Let us pray. Loving God, may these words of my mouth and all of our meditations draw us closer to you today. Amen. Our last few Sundays we've been listening to Jesus respond to a group of religious leaders who've been complaining that he spends all of his time with tax collectors and other sinners, you know, eating and drinking with all of the wrong people. And in response, Jesus tells three different, well, actually, five different stories. He tells these stories of the shepherd finding a lost sheep and a woman finding a lost coin, and then a father finding this prodigal son, and then two parables that begin with, there was a rich man. These five stories that are in response to this criticism that Jesus is somehow associating with sinners. And ultimately in telling these stories, Jesus is letting these people know how dismayed he is by their indifference. As he wonders, how can you put so little value on human life? Last night at the the Quasi Fundraiser, Dolores Werta, she she she said these inspiring words, and and then former detainees they shared these experiences that they had at ICE detention centers. And as they spoke and they told their stories, I swear I could hear Jesus saying the same thing, the same criticisms. You know, how can you put so little value on human life? Yeah, we we can find joy in finding those who are lost and bringing them back into the fold and back into community. But you know, as we learned from the the first rich man, our outreach, it's it's gotta be more than merely finding who is lost and bringing them back, because otherwise we just risk turning people into a commodity. That's never what the kingdom of God is about. The kingdom of God is all about relationship and being in relationship. And being in relationship, maybe especially with those people who we can't imagine being in relationship with. And to drive that point home, Jesus tells that story that he tells today about a rich man. There was a rich man. He's clearly very rich. The purple robes, that's a sign of great wealth. And there is no indication that this guy works at all. He uh he simply eats and drinks his fill every single day. We also know he has a gate. And that's where poor Lazarus he waits. And all Lazarus does is longs to get some crumbs that might drop from the rich man's table. A little side note here, this is not the same Lazarus that Jesus raises from the dead in another story that's completely different. Lazarus, this is different, this is poor Lazarus, and he's he's covered in sores. Something else I noticed right off from the beginning is you know, there's dogs here, and uh the dogs come and they're they're licking his sores, and then you know, personally I think, oh, you know, at least he's at least the dogs like him. But the Jesus' listeners, they they would have thought this was disgusting. Uh it would be kind of like them, they would have thought it would be kind of like he was being eaten alive by magots. So anyone listening to this, they would be like, oh no, this guy, oh. So yeah, there he is, day after day. Eventually both guys die. And Lazarus, he's carried up by the angels to Abraham's side while the rich man ends up in Hades and he's in hell and he's parched and he's desperate, and there's like this great reversal now. And he looks up and he sees Lazarus up there being comforted, and he begs Abraham to send Lazarus down with some water. Or, you know, at least warn my brothers here. And Abraham refuses. You know, this chasm, it is fixed. The brothers, they've already got Moses, they've already got the prophets. They're not gonna listen to them. Not even the resurrection is gonna change their mind. In our parable today, the only thing the rich man and Lazarus share is the gate. And in life, it is like this very thin line of separation. But in death it becomes a vast chasm. Both end up in the place of the dead. But Lazarus is carried to comfort while the rich man suffers in torment. It's a grim story. But more than that, it's urgent. It tells us that the time is running out, that our choices they matter, and our excuses are not going to save us. Something that I found particularly personally disturbing about this story is that even in death, the rich man failed to see Lazarus as his worth. His only concern was about protecting his brothers. About a year into my time here at Emmanuel, I had an experience that really brings this parable very close to home. The service was over. Almost everybody had gone home. There were two women who were still inside the fellowship hall, they're cleaning up, you know, after the coffee hour. I was outside, I was over there contemplating the dirt section in our next to our parking lot. It eventually would become our community garden, but at the time it was just this empty bare patch of ground that seriously was like the bane of my pastorate. Those of you who were here at the time, you know what I'm talking about. A man came and he sat outside the fellowship hall and cropped himself against the railing there. And uh he was one of the tougher looking homeless men I've seen. And you know, I'm I'm there and and I uh I know the women are inside. And you know, I carry with me all of my experience for years in Hollywood, and I'm thinking, you know, I'll just go over there and I will uh you know, I've got all of this in my wheelhouse. I'll go over there and I'll sit down next to him and I'll just uh wait with him until they're done and you know take care of this. I wish that my first thought was how to help him, but honestly, I I think my first thought was concern about the women inside. You know, so I you know I did. I walked my I walked over, I introduced myself to him, and and uh, you know, told him, you know, you know, there's still people in the building and they might be they might be a little bit startled when they came out, and immediately he stood up and he started to walk away. And I'm like, no, no, we haven't need here to go. You know, we can just sit here, we can just chat. And he's like, shook me off, and he just kept rolling, and you know, I felt bad. But you know, I I tell myself that I I wanted him to stay, but you know, maybe that's just me still trying to justify. But anyway, so I sit up and I'm thinking, well, I'll just go inside and I'll at least try to help them clean up and get them on their way. So I turn to the fellowship door and uh walk in, and two women inside are fixing him a plate. That day was the last time I underestimated the people of Emmanuel. I thought I was guarding the gate. But what I was really doing was building a chasm. No wonder Abraham tells the rich man that the chasm separating the two realms is too great to cross. Let's be clear. God is not the one who builds the chasm. We do that all by ourselves. That's the danger of gates. They don't just keep others out, they blind us, they harden our hearts, they calcify our compassion until one day the barrier we thought we controlled becomes the canyon we can't cross. Barbara Brown Taylor puts it this way. What started as just a gate, just a wall, just a boundary to keep his life neat and contained, safe and secure, became a fixed chasm. A chasm so deep and so permanent that not even Father Abraham himself could cross it. That's what happens when small refusals stack up, when our indifference becomes habitual, when our excuses become our creed, when gates become chasms. The real tragedy in this story isn't that the rich man spends eternity in hell. The tragedy is his blindness. He doesn't really see Lazarus. He notices him enough to know his name, but he never acknowledges him as a human being with dignity. He's indifferent to Lazarus. Even in death, the rich man sees Lazarus only as a servant. Bring me water, mourn my brothers. He never says, My brother Lazarus. That's the danger of indifference. Eli Weasel, who survived the Holocaust, once wrote, the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. The opposite of life is not death, it's indifference. The rich man is not condemned because he hated Lazarus. He's condemned because he ignored him. His indifference built the chasm. I get it. It's hard not to be indifferent when there are days when grief is so relentless it feels easier to shut down than keep caring. When I scroll past reports of another school shooting, another migrant child turned away at the border, another black life lost to police brutality, another trans teenager told their existence is a crime, another mother in Gaza wailing for her children, another family in Sudan or Ukraine or the Congo driven from their home, another wildfire following a town, another storm submerging whole neighborhoods, another election twisted by lies and fear, another community poisoned by the air that they breathe, or the water that they drink, another species disappearing forever, another woman denied healthcare, another pipeline forced to sacred land, another indigenous community stripped of sovereignty, another child going to bed hungry, another elder left alone in their grief, another prisoner locked in solitary, another rotest rushed by force, another neighbor sleeping in a tent in the alley behind our church, another new cycle of corruption, another cruelty, an endless war, and all of it together canumb us into silence that looks like safety, but is in reality indifference. And as Eli Weasel warned us, the opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference. And yes, we feel the weight of it. But we are not called to despair or to hide behind the gates of indifference because, yes, we are the people who know what it is to be overwhelmed and to choose mercy. And yes, we are the church who once fixed a plate when I hesitated at the door. And yes, we are the ones who believe Christ still crosses chasms, and we are called right here, right now, to stand with Lazarus at the gate to see the names and the faces of the vulnerable in our own time to cross with them instead of a way to turn plates into tables and tables into community, until the gates that divide us crumble into the presence of God's justice and love. Because when the gates crumble, when the tables stretch wide, when Lazarus is welcome by name, it is then that the kingdom of God has drawn near. Amen.

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