Blogging Towards Sunday
September 30, 2007
At our church community we're both using the Lectionary (Luke) and adding another for theological reasons (1 Corinthians).
The Luke passage is problematic. The rich guy is a loser, judgmental, the bad guy...the ultimate sinner who thought of himself highly in life and didn't think of other - in particular the poor - at all. It's interesting how extreme his wealth is contrasting with the poverty of Lazarus. The rich man is buried, Lazarus not at all (quite a shameful thing in the ancient Israelite society). The rich man not only doesn't notice or care for Lazarus, he's not just out of luck, Lazarus is so overlooked, excluded, downtrodden that the neighborhood dogs (a dirty, unclean, nasty animal for the Israelites - maybe like Cockroaches for us today) come and lick the sores on his skin (probably leprousy or some other sort of skin disease).
Jesus is telling a story to push the envelope, to shock us with an extreme contrast is to grasping the extreme and radical truth experienced in the good news gospel he's trying to teach.
The rich man goes to hell and sees Lazarus partying it up in heaven while he suffers in the fires. So he asks for mercy not for him, but for his descendants who still have a chance. Shockingly Jesus' teaching says that no warning will be given....for if they can't hear the invitations to new ways of living that they've already heard in the prophets (like Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Micah) why would they listen? Odds are even if someone rose from the dead they wouldn't listen.
Did Jesus really say this while he was alive, knowing that he would die and rise from the dead? I'm not sure...maybe he did, maybe it's Luke going back and tweaking the original story with edits empowered by his hindsight? But that's not the point. The man seems to be concerned with salvation, the end of the road...where he ended up and where his descendants will end up. I think Jesus is more concerened with the here and now...how are we treating others around us...not just those that are in our social-class or ethnic group, or even those that can scratch our back and network us to a better quality of life. Jesus is saying to have compassion, to notice and to be in relationship with others.....even if they're like Lazarus and they might not have anything to give in return. It's not just some sort materialistic communist pc dogma...but Jesus' radical affirmation of the promise and mysterious truth of the Creation Stories in Genesis 1 & 2 - in which God says that we are created in God's image....God's beloved children and creation. It's not based on our net worth, if our mortgage is sub-prime or not, or on our racial/ethnic background....we are the beloved creation and children of God just because we are. So we need to recognize the "me" of each of us in the "we" of all of us.
Paul in 1 Corinthians is telling a similar thing. He's writing to the trouble-plagued, gossip-loving church community of Corinth in all its alienating in-fightin, exclusivistic practices, and privelge-based worship styles. They are a community. They are a community because God loves them, they've experienced that in a revolutionary participatistic way in Jesus the Christ. They need to recognized that God loves them as individuals and as a community - the body of Christ. In fact it's in their life together that they embody and represent the Body of Christ, the purpose of Christ, the Gospel incarnate in the world.
I think that the story of Luke 16 goes over our head. Most of the people in the communit in which I practice my faith aren't like the rich man. I don't think most of us our, besides Hitler, Stalin - or other politicians, but I digress. The point is that we deal more in the grey areas of life than the black and white extremes of Jesus' parable. I think we're more likely to mistrust other people than to treat them like dogs. We're more likely to not respond to their needs, to treat them badly, not because we're that clueless, compassionless, or un-human...it's more about mistrusting each other out of fear, competition, jealousy, past hurts, personal history, or baggage. We would walk over someone more because we've been hurt by them, distrust them, don't like them, or fear them as opposed to being completely unconscious of them, their needs and their situation.
I unpacked a printer toner cartridge in the office today that was wrapped in that fabulous bubble wrap stuff. The toner was completely protected in that bubble warp bag...so I wonder if that's not what we wouldn't want to wrap our entire bodies and lives in to protect ourselves in the dangers, chaos and risks of every day in urban life. Wouldn't that be great? We wouldn't have to worry about who we can and shouldn't trust. We wouldn't have to fear who could or couldn't hurt us. We would have to be anxious about having our hand bit by those we try to feed out of generosity and solidarity.
But the problem is, that really isn't living. I had lunch on Tuesday @ Sparky's - one of the places I escape to for a momentary respite of an avocado burger, fries and a killer shake, all with a view of Oakland. At the table next to me two women were talking, quite loudly, so I wasn't exactly listening in. One woman explained that she just bought a house with her husband and made sure that both of their names is on the deed and mortgage, because she's not sure she wants to stay with him. She did it to ensure that she'd get her part. What? I wondered, almost aloud, why she'd even buy the house with the man that she doesn't even trust, let alone maybe even love.
I wonder if we approach most of our relationships like that - wether it's the Lazarus on the street or the members of our family. Maybe that's what Jesus is talking about.....maybe that's what Paul is talking about in terms of understanding the body of Christ and who we are in it and by it. That's what new life in Christ is about....not having to live in the bubble wrap so that we might live with all the depth of our humanity and our freedom as God created us to be and Christ saves us to become by grace. Could it really be that easy? Or is that just trite and cliche?
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