All Saints Lutheran Church
Pastor Raita Neely
November 9, 2003
I Timothy 6:6-19; Luke 16: 19-31

Let us pray: Merciful God, help us to hear the Scripture for today in a new way. Open our eyes and our hearts to the neighbors you have given us. Jar our complacency, expose our excuses, and give us integrity in our words and actions. Create in us a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within us. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. For the next two Sundays we will spend time thinking about what it means to be a Christian in a world where there is war, hunger, homelessness, and poverty. Yes, on the local level there is much we can do as individuals, at All Saints we have many opportunities to give and contribute through ICA, Our Savior's, Families in Need and the Love Fund. But when it comes to caring for our neighbor in other parts of our country and other parts of the world - pooling our resources greatly increases our ability to care. I would like to say just a few words about the ELCA World Hunger Appeal. 72% of the money received goes outside our country into hunger relief and in helping people help themselves through long-term sustainable development by finding solutions based on assets, resources and labor already present in the community. 11% is spent right here in the US on the same kinds of programs. 10% of the funds is spent on education and advocacy. Finally, only 7% is spent on administration, fund raising and communication. The hope and dream of the ELCA is to see the day when every member will give $5 per year to world hunger. I think the dream should be much bigger, for our resources are much more. But right now, the giving is at $3.24 per person per year. The ELCA World Hunger Program is not a budget line item for us at All Saints. Two or three times a year we ask you to give - sometimes because of a particular crisis, other times to keep the Hunger Programs going. There are World Hunger envelopes in your pews or you can check off World Hunger as you include a special offering in your regular envelope. Please be generous, please take your bulletin insert home and read it. The need is so great, and your dollars will make a huge difference in the lives of many. Today we have a crisis, especially in southeastern Africa. A year of flooding has been followed by a year of drought. Farmers haven't been able to produce any food. It is outrageous, it is an abomination and a shame that children anywhere in our world should have do dig up tree roots in order to fill their stomachs. Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, one-third of the entire population is chronically malnourished. And the AIDS epidemic is killing more than 6,000 African people every day. How do you and I fit in? Let's take a look at our Scripture for this morning and see what it has to say about poverty and wealth. How are they connected? Jesus was always alert to and concerned for the terrible inequities that exist in the human community. He told the story of Lazarus and the rich man in order to help his hearers think again, about how our treasure impacts our living in community. What is more important to us, our wealth and maintaining it, or the life and well-being of our neighbor? There was a rich man. There always is. He is the first mentioned in our story. He will claim our major attention for he is the main character. But always in the shadow of the rich man there is his counterpart, the poor man. They belong together, for they live in the same community, the same world. Great wealth is always shadowed by great poverty. The first scene is predictable, it is their life together on earth. The rich man is dressed in designer clothes, drives a luxury car and feasts at every meal. Life is good. God has crowned him with wealth, mercy and loving kindness. He doesn't have a care in the world. The poor man is dressed in sores, probably has no health insurance. Can't afford to see a doctor. His only food is the crumbs from the rich man's table. He is so weak, defenseless and available that the neighborhood dogs lick his sores. Jesus the storyteller draws the contrast sharply. A locked gate stands between the rich man and Lazarus. At first glance, they seem to have nothing in common and no contact, except the crumbs from the rich man's table - perhaps the rich man's servant shakes out the table cloth over Lazarus' head. In an instant, however, they have everything in common, for they both die. Funny how that works. No matter how good the medical care, no matter how healthy the diet, no matter how much exercise, no matter how rich or how poor, death still comes to each person. The poor man dies first. Maybe it was the only time in his life he had been first. He is assigned to the bosom of father Abraham, a part of the faith of the OT. Even though the people of Jesus' day would have thought that that place was reserved for the rich man. Riches were thought to be a sign of God's blessing, poverty, on the other hand, a sign of great sin. Nevertheless, there is Lazarus, dirty, with open sores, but welcomed and deeply loved in the embrace of father Abraham. As you know, the rich man also dies. We find him quickly, without pause or comment, in the torment of Hades. Please note that in this story Jesus is not giving us "A Traveler's Guide to Heaven and Hell." Hades was believed to be a place where all the dead, both righteous and wicked, go to await final judgment.

The poor man is silent, the poor often are. The rich man is stunned, he is accustomed to better reservations, first class, not steerage. He cries out for mercy. In life, he did not ask for mercy, nor did he grant any. He asks for a small thing - a drop of water for his parched lips. He asks for Lazarus to be his water boy. He assumes that the old roles and old patterns of power and domination would continue. But death is a break with the old, and in Jesus' story the gate of earthly life is replaced by an unbridgeable chasm between Lazarus and the rich man. Father Abraham tells the rich man about the change in circumstances and the new truth of his life. The rich man used his advantage in life carelessly, insensitively. Lazarus, never received the good stuff to which he was entitled, so he has begun on it now. There is an abyss between the rich man's agony and the poor man's comfort, just as there was a gate between the rich man's wealth and the poor man's need. In our hearing of the story, you and I are closest to the role of the brothers. For us, like the brothers, it is not too late, if only we can be adequately warned. The rich man proposes that Lazarus go speak to the brothers. But Abraham says No! No more messengers, the messengers have already been sent. The message was and is "Brothers and sisters in Christ - Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind and your neighbor as yourself." The word from Jesus is that you and I already know whom to love and how to live. Jesus refries our economic life in a world of haves and have-nots and tells us that decisions about our wealth and poverty are of eternal significance. Indifference to our neighbor matters to God. We are haunted by this terribly sad story that Jesus told. It turns out that the compassionate Jesus we prefer, is also the one who judges. And those of us who have been baptized in the name of Jesus have agreed to and claimed this story and every other story in Scripture. We know that Jesus' stories matter and show us God's will for our lives. We have agreed to pass on and teach and preach this haunting story. The Church, you and I are the body of Christ in the world. We are called to act as Christ would act. We ask God to empower us to see and feel with the eyes and heart of Christ. As a result, we have a ministry of compassion. It is God's love and care for the whole world that gives us the understanding that we are to be a "public church," engaged in healing the wounds of a world that has many locked gates. Are we willing to listen to the word of the Apostle Paul when he tells us that the abundance of one is for the need of another? But this is not a matter of command or duty. It is a matter of love. Love is eager to touch and transform the waiting and need of those who have little.

We know the words that Christ was willing to speak to those who held both power and privilege. We know he not only fed the crowds, healed many, and taught God's ways to all who would listen, but He also gave his life for you and me. What are we, his children, willing to risk for a world that still hurts? What are we as church willing to say in his name when we see the powers of this world fail in both justice and mercy? What are we, Christ's body, willing to offer, to give, no to shower on to a suffering people who hunger for bread, for justice, and for the Word of God? Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian, wrote, "To allow the hungry to remain hungry would be blasphemy against God and one's neighbor, for what is nearest to God is precisely the need of one's neighbor. It is for the love of Christ, which belongs as much to the hungry as to myself, that I share my bread with them and that I share my dwelling with the homeless. If the hungry do not attain to faith, then the fault falls on those who refused them bread. To provide the hungry with bread is to prepare the way for the coming of grace." Nourished with Christ's love - his body given for us and for all, his blood shed for us and for all, let us lovingly share our bread with all in need. Pray that there is no need for a resurrected Lazarus to walk among us.

Amen.