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From The First Baptist Church in America pulpit
Providence, Rhode Island – November 16, 2008
“The Other Side of the Gate” (Luke 16:19-31)
Dr. Dan Ivins, preaching

Each of us, I believe, has things we tell ourselves to protect ourselves from the pain we see around us. It’s human nature to look for excuses to explain why people are the way they are, so we can be the way we are, without too much drag on our consciences. Lest we think we have it hard, I received a you tube video of a guy born without any limbs. Just a torso and head. I know firsthand how hard it is having had both hips replaced to get up off the floor when I drop things. But try getting up from a supine position, without arms or legs, like this guy did! He’s invited to speak to high school kids because he’s such an inspiration of not letting what life does to us keep us down.

The toughest cases are people born with handicaps or inherited poverty. They have to try harder than the rest of us in life. Lesser people mock them or think of them as losers. It’s been going on so long that a lousy theology of “divine retribution” has developed around it, to explain why “bad things happen to good people.” Like their plight has something to do with God, as punishment for their sins. By the same token, as the theory goes, those who have more, have it because God likes them better. “Triumphalist theology” even has biblical support, “To those who have, more will be given; and from those who don’t have, even what they have will be taken away” (Lk 8:18).

But Jesus, like his Daddy, was for the underdog. If not, Goliath would win every time. But sound biblical theology says that sooner or later, in this world or the next, handicapped and healthy, happy and sad, rich and poor are going to change places. So Jesus didn’t cotton to the well-off, linking their wealth with God’s favor; which is why he castigated the misuse of money more than any other topic, including: lying, murder, or even sex. But the concept worked out well on two counts: it allowed the rich to enjoy their riches and it permitted them to step over the beggars, outside the gate, curled-up next to their garbage cans, without batting an eye. And you don’t need me to tell you it’s still with us. You see it all the time in TV ads, at the bank, football stadiums, exit polls, and sometimes even in church.

Jesus made his point by telling this awful story about oozing sores, slobbering dogs, torment by fire, and no going back. The only good thing about it is there’s very little guilt in it. The rich man doesn’t feel bad about anything, except where he landed after he died. The distance between him and Lazarus didn’t bother him at all, when it was his own doing. But now that the worm’s turned and they’ve changed places, Lazarus has something he wants. Two men, as different as heaven and hell, separated only by a gate outside the rich man’s house, and mercifully, the poor man dies. No surprise here, he’s already half-dead when the story began. But now the story really starts to turn. As justice would have it, Lazarus is the one carried by angels to the bosom of Abraham. It messes with our world view, about how things are supposed to work. What on earth did Lazarus do to end up the way he did?

When Dives dies there’s no ride on angel’s wings. Since all the good things to him have already happened, it’s the “grim reaper” from here on out, and permanent separation from Abraham’s bosom. No matter how you color it, it’s not a pretty picture. But he’s still barking-out orders: “Hey Father Abraham, send that water boy over here! I’m about to die of thirst!” Even on the other side of the grave Dives looked down on Lazarus. He thinks of him as a shoe-shine boy; Abe’s go-fer. “No-no-no!” Abraham won’t be pushed around by somebody on the other side of the gate, that segregated poor Lazarus from the good life, which once could’ve been easily opened, has now become an inaccessible abyss. And Abraham says an amazing thing: “Son, remember in your life, you received your good things.” (And you wouldn’t share a single penny of it), I might add.

“OK but at least send him back to tell my brothers what’s in store for them if they don’t wise up!” “They have Moses and the Prophets.” They have the scriptures. “Ah the Bible won’t cut it. But a resurrection will get their attention!” But Abe sticks to his guns, “If they won’t listen to the Bible, neither will they be convinced if someone rises from the dead.” I told you it’s an awful story. Most everybody in it’s dead. The only ones we have anything in common with are the five brothers. At least they’re alive, but still won’t be convinced, even “if somebody rises from the grave.”

But here’s where the story turns for us. We too have the Bible. And even somebody who rose from the dead! But even with all that, it doesn’t appear that we’ve believed any more than the five back-home brothers. Still preferring to stay safely behind our gates, wearing purple linen, feasting sumptuously. Will the gate become for us, a forbidden gulf?

I understand why most folks stay away from church. Because church is the one place we come to contemplate how our way of life now, could be determinative for where we’ll end up someday. Dr. Fosdick preached once about a man who wanted to go to Detroit. But after buying a ticket, he got on the wrong bus in New York, and wound up in Cleveland. To arrive at your intended destination, you’ve got to get on the bus that goes there. Is this not the point of Jesus’ story: are you living now the way you hope to finish? Lately we’ve seen a lot of folks like Dives’ brothers--victimized by our way of life, while God wants to give us eternal life. If we refuse to see how our lives are quilted together with every other life -- then like Dives, we’re the losers. Not because of what God does to us, but what we do to ourselves.

This story teaches a terrible truth: God will give us what we live for. The best thing about it is, it’s not over yet. For the rich man, it’s over, and Father Abraham wouldn’t permit Lazarus to come back from hades to tell about it. But Jesus sneaked it out on Easter, to give us time to make our own course corrections. We too have the benefit of retrospect, along with Easter and the scriptures, Moses and the Prophets. All that remains is how we spend whatever time we have left.

One way to look at this story is just another example of how the poor will be rewarded and the rich punished. Fr. Abe stands between ‘em to prevent any blurring of the boundaries at the end. Although the parable makes it clear that just warning folks won’t work. They’ve got to want it. Moses and the prophets told them a long time ago, the same way Jesus told us. But we never seem to get the message. We just keep letting power and money divide us. When the division eventually turns out to be permanent, they whine like nobody ever told them.

Jesus’ story at the end of Matthew’s Gospel about “the sheep and goats” is our final exam. And the answer to what determines our destiny is given ahead of time: how we treat others. Neither the sheep nor goats realized in their treatment of others, they were doing it to Jesus. The goats said: “When did we see thee hungry, thirsty, a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in jail?” They didn’t know. We know. We live on this side of Easter. We have the Bible. We know money can’t save us. But we don’t believe it. Back in September the Iraq war took a back seat to the Wall St. crash. Money divides. And it’s our favorite way of distinguishing who’s saved and lost.

But I don’t think money was Dives’ biggest problem. An even bigger problem was the gate he bought with it. If the gate had just kept Lazarus off his property that would have been one thing. But it was really there to keep Lazarus off his hands, out of his heart, and away from his pockets. Dives made the same mistake we do: thinking that money could fix any problem. Just throw a little money at it!

There are only two kinds of people who worry about money: those who have it and those who don’t. I think those who have it worry more, because they have more to lose. Once Dives had enough cash to buy a gate, it protected him from all the ugliness on the other side of it, where people are so desperate that they have to live off somebody’s leftovers. There are people around here like that, on the other side of the gate. They’re the dickens to deal with. No matter what you try to do, it’s never going to be enough. Their needs by far outweigh our ability to meet them.

Churches properly try though. You know how we give out Thanksgiving turkeys this time of year. I remember taking one to a poor family in my socially activist days, down in Alabama. A woman and her kids were glad to get it but she said something I never forgot: “Thank you for the turkey. But just once, I’d like to sit where you sit, and be the one giving, instead of the one taking.” And I went away with Jesus’ words ringing in my ears: “It’s more blessed to give than to receive.”

Wherever you sit, Luke’s story reminds us how most of us are afraid of the wrong things. We’re afraid of what’s on the other side of the gate, when the gate itself is a whole lot scarier. Because it separates us from our kin; it deceives us about who’s safe and lost; it shuts out those who might bring us cool water. And even a warning ahead of time won’t do any good. And we’ll continue to resent each other for being there and reminding us of unpleasant things we’d rather not think about and thus, miss out on some good theology: namely, that we’re all God’s children, different only by degree and circumstance. Money can’t change that. Unless we insist on it. And if we persist in our greedy materialism, God won’t argue. The gate between us will remain where it is, and stay closed, even when our lives depend on going through it.

There’s no way to change the way this story ends: Dives is hot and Lazarus is not. God knows the rich can be as imprisoned by their wealth as the poor are by their poverty. But there’s so much more to us than what we have. So many better ways to measure our worth. Like can we be depended upon? Do we know how to laugh? Are we a giver or a taker? Do we berate those who are different from us, who have less than us?
Learn a lesson from geography. The mouth of the mighty Mississippi River is way up north in Minnesota, where it’s no more than a trickle in a tiny branch. No bridge is needed because it can easily be crossed in one step. But try that in Baton Rouge and you’ll go no place but down, because there the river is too deep and wide to cross on foot.

But there’s still some good news in this story for everyone involved. If we can open the gate between us while there’s still time, the message is hard to miss. Our true value lies in who loves us, and who keeps hoping-against-hope that we’ll learn to love each other too.

Pastoral Prayer (11/16/08)
There are times Lord, when all that keeps our faith afloat is our gratitude toward Thee. We are too much aware of the evil within us and about us that lays us open to paralyzing doubt. Then we recall in corporate worship, Thy gifts of nature and grace, and in that “recalling” find power to go on. We thank Thee for friendships of long standing that multiply our joys and temper our disappointments. Guard us against wasteful rivalries and unwarranted divisions to the end that each may rejoice in the gifts and talents of the other.

In a gathering like this, some of us will be troubled, in need of the consolation of the gospel. Some will be living in a dream world of relative ease and tranquility and need to be called to attention by a disconcerting word from beyond. Fashion Thy presence among us according to the status of our hearts. Renew our appreciation for the scriptures, our hunger for meaningful relationships, our discontent with mediocrity, our willingness to contend for what we believe to be right, and our readiness to claim our limitations. We came to the Meeting House today, in hopes of making our years count by advancing Thy truth throughout the earth. All of which we dare to pray, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.