SIXTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
Prayer of the Day: O God, rich in mercy, you look with compassion on this troubled world. Feed us with your grace, and grant us the treasure that comes only from you, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
“If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” Luke 16:31.
To understand this parable of Lazarus and the rich man, you have to rewind to the first chapter of Luke in which Mary the mother of our Lord declares:
“[God] has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things
and sent the rich away empty.” Luke 1:51-53.
The great reversal, the casting down of the wealthy and powerful with the exaltation of the poor and oppressed foretold by Mary is graphically portrayed in this parable. The rich man who feasted sumptuously every day and lived his life in luxury is cast down to hades. Lazarus, the poor man who lay sick, hungry and ignored at the rich man’s gate is in the company of Abraham. Nevertheless, the rich man still does not understand what has happened. Even in hades, he still imagines he is a big shot. He still thinks he can hobnob with Father Abraham. He imagines Lazarus is still his “boy” who can be ordered to fetch him a drink or run errands for him. Not that he deigns to speak directly to Lazarus. That would be beneath him. Instead, he tells Abraham to communicate his orders. The great reversal has come, but this dolt didn’t get the memo. The rich man in this parable is dumb as a bag of hammers.
The rich man’s particular kind of stupidity is known as “privilege.” He assumed that he was entitled to all that he had. Perhaps, like many of us, he worked hard to amass the wealth he enjoyed throughout his life. He probably supposed feasting sumptuously every day was his right. In his view, he was under no obligation to share his hard earned wealth with anyone. He could, of course, choose to be charitable. So whatever scraps he threw from his table were more than was required of him and more than Lazarus deserved. Lazarus owed the rich man a debt of gratitude for whatever he was given, but the rich man owed Lazarus nothing.
But that is not the way it works, according to Abraham. The disparity reflected in the relationship between the rich man and Lazarus was destined to be reversed. Now that it has occurred, there is no going back. Abraham tells the rich man that “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.” Luke 16:26. To be clear, God is not responsible for that “great chasm.” The rich man dug that trench all on his own. It began the first time the rich man set eyes on Lazarus-and quickly averted his gaze. It got deeper every time the rich man’s limo passed Lazarus without so much as slowing down as he sat at the entrance of his gated community. In the new age, the chasm he built is still there, but the rich man is now on the other side of it.
I do not believe this parable invites metaphysical speculation about the afterlife. It is not really about the afterlife. It is very much about here and now. Jesus’ prophecy has come true with a vengeance. Just as the words of Moses and the prophets demanding justice for the poor failed to move the hearts of the rich man and his family, so too those words have failed to close the gaping chasm between the few wealthy and the many impoverished around the globe today. Lazarus still lies at our southern border, in the wreckage of Gaza and in overcrowded refugee camps the world over. He can be found sleeping in public parks, begging for food in front of our shopping centers and sleeping under a cardboard box-all for which he could well be arrested in many of our cities. Privilege, however, blinds us to their presence and hardens our hearts to their pain. It enables us to feast sumptuously in blissful disregard for those longing for our plate scrapings.
Most of us do not think of ourselves as privileged and probably take offense at the very notion that we might be. On one level, I don’t view myself as privileged. I was one of four children born to a blue collar worker with only a high school degree. I was able to attend college largely because my parents made it a priority in their financial planning. For that reason, we never saw Disney World. We drove used cars and had a black and white TV that could be seen only at night when it was dark outside and we turned out the lights. When the clothes dryer broke down, we didn’t replace it. Mom used the clothesline when weather permitted and packed us kids into the car and drove down to the laundromat when it didn’t.
With support from Mom and Dad supplemented by on campus jobs, I completed college and seminary. When I resigned from my first parish to attend law school, I attended a state school because that is what we could afford. When I graduated and began interviewing, I had no relatives in the practice of law or any connections that many of my classmates had. I had to get interviews on the strength of my resume and my law school record. I was hired by a firm for a summer position only and worked my tail off to earn an offer to become an associate. I worked my way into partnership during my eighteen years before leaving the practice of law to return to ministry. So am I not rightly insulted by any suggestion that I am privileged?
Actually, no. The truth is, I have benefited from many layers of privilege. In the first place, I had the good fortune to be born at a time when the economy was much kinder to men like my father. Dad was able to get a job at the Puget Sound Naval Ship Yard where he began as a shop worker. There he gained a number of skills that enabled him to advance to higher levels of pay. By the time he reached retirement age, he was a competent draftsperson able to secure a higher paying job in the private sector. Though his salary at the Ship Yard was modest, it was sufficient to support his family and allow my mother to stay at home with us kids during our formative years. Mom went to work during my teenage years, thereby supplementing the family income and enabling my parents to finance college for all four of us kids. Opportunities for unskilled high school graduates today are far less plentiful. For the most part, it is unrealistic to expect that such a person will land a job with a salary capable of supporting a family.
Second, I am white. The opportunities available for my parents were scarce to non-existent for people of color in the 50s and 60s. Consequently, their children, my contemporaries, were at a severe disadvantage when it came to employment, home ownership and opportunities for higher education. For those who were able to overcome these obstacles, the professional terrain was anything but friendly. When I interviewed, I never had to worry about what my potential employer might be thinking about my skin color, accent or background. I never had to worry that an interviewer might assume that I was a “DEI” law school student or that I was somehow less capable. When I was practicing law, I did not have to worry that a corporate client might not want me on the case due to “demographic” concerns or because I did not “fit in with the rest of the team.”[1]
Third, I am male. I did not have to worry that my clothing might be “too provocative,” my demeanor too meek for the practice of law or too “bitchy” for the tastes of a male dominated firm. I never had to worry about what I would do if valuable clients or senior partners tried to “hit on” me. I did not have to negotiate pregnancy or balance infant care with job responsibilities. I did not have to work overtime to prove that I was just as capable as any man to practice law and just as tough as any male litigator. I entered into what was, and to a large extent still is, a man’s world as a man.
Finally, I am straight. Though society has become increasingly accepting of same sex couples and even transgender folk, it was less so during my professional life. We still have a long way to go today and, I might add, a good deal further than I once hoped. In the corporate world, image is important. Companies fear ramifications of being represented LGBTQ+ folk and law firms are therefore reluctant to hire them. In sum, I have benefited enormously from my status as a white, straight male. Yes, I ran the race hard and steadily to arrive where I am. But there is no denying that I had a gigantic head start. For that reason, I cannot deny that I am privileged.
I hope that the church is finally coming to the conclusion that, if we are to make meaningful progress bridging the gap between ourselves and Lazarus, we need to dismantle privilege in all its forms. If there is any good news in this parable, it is that things need not be as they are. We are the ones who dug that horrible chasm plunging so many into misery and we are also capable of filling it, redistributing the world’s bounty in an equitable fashion and ending the curse of poverty. We are in the position of the rich man’s brothers. There is still time for us to hear the words of Moses and the prophets. Unlike them, we have been warned by One who rose from the dead.
Before we can call the world to repentance on this score, however, we need to address privilege within our own ecclesiastical ranks. Like the rest of the United States, our churches are infected with the belief, sometimes subconscious and sometimes overt, in white supremacy. People of color entering our churches face awkward stares, inept efforts at welcoming and microaggressions that strike like a metal fork on a chalk board. We (and I include myself in this “we”) need to come to grips with the mythology of the white man’s “discovery” of this land, his “civilization” of the wild frontier and “exceptionalism” attributed to the United States has shaped our teaching, preaching and practice.
Our churches have made numerous attempts to address racism, including extensive anti-racism training events, educational initiatives and discussion forums. While I don’t fault these programs, I am not convinced they are as effective as we might have hoped. For one thing, they tend to draw mainly those already converted. For another, they produce little in the way of action. I would propose that, rather than hoping for radical change through a gradual process of education, let us educate by proposing concrete action. I made a modest proposal for such action some time ago in my Open Letter to the ELCA Presiding Bishop and Synodical Bishops: A Modest Proposal for Reparational Tithe. With the notable exception of one of our synods, the proposal was ignored. I am hopeful that, with the election of a new presiding bishop, our ELCA will take a fresh look at the potential for making meaningful reparations for what we have publicly confessed to be complicity in our nation’s racial injustice.
I believe that systemic changes are essential. These involve more than just moving around the bureaucratic furniture. Perhaps the most urgent need for change is in the way we train and prepare pastoral leaders. If we really want the inclusive church we keep talking about, then I believe we must find a better model than the standard four years of college followed by three years of seminary training with a year of internship thrown in. College has been put cruelly out of reach for all but well-heeled families of the upper middle class. Adding three years of seminary on top of that along with the prospect that there may be few churches able to employ a pastor full time makes the call to ministry a strain even for these families. Just what shape future training for ministry should take is beyond the scope of any article such as this. Suffice to say, the present system is a roadblock for all but the privileged and ultimately unsustainable in any event.
Needless to say, Jesus’ parable confronts us with the stark reality of our privileged life and forces us to confront the price our neighbors on the other side of the divide must pay for us to enjoy it. There are those who would tell us that wealth and poverty have characterized our existence from the beginning of time and there is nothing we can do to change it. Moses, the prophets and, most importantly, Jesus tell us otherwise. Seeing Lazarus is perhaps the first step toward the kind of compassion capable of bridging the chasm dividing him from us. Here is a poem in which poet Denise Levertov truly sees the poor and the difficulty of their lives.
The Wealth of the Destitute
How gray and hard the brown feet of the wretched of the earth.
How confidently the crippled from birth
push themselves through the streets, deep in their lives.
How seamed with lines of fate the hands
of women who sit at streetcorners
offering seeds and flowers.
How lively their conversation together.
How much of death they know.
I am tired of ‘the fine art of unhappiness.’
Source: Poems 1972-1982 (c. 1975 by Denise Levertov, pub. By New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2002) Denise Levertov (1923–1997) never received a formal education. Nevertheless, she created a highly regarded body of poetry that earned her recognition as one of America’s most respected poets. Her father, Paul Philip Levertov, was a Russian Jew who converted to Christianity and subsequently moved to England where he became an Anglican minister. Levertov grew up in a household surrounded by books and people talking about them in many languages. During World War II, Levertov pursued nurse’s training and spent three years as a civilian nurse at several hospitals in London. Levertov came to the United States in 1948, after marrying American writer Mitchell Goodman. During the 1960s Levertov became a staunch critic of the Vietnam war, a topic addressed in many of her poems of that era. Levertov died of lymphoma at the age of seventy-four. You can read more about Denise Levertov and sample more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation Website.
[1] In the corporate world, nobody ever explicitly discriminates on the basis of race. But when terms like these are used, we all knew what they meant.
Peter's Outer Cape Portico 