Holding Up a Mirror: A Sermon for Proper 21

 Today marks the fifth straight week we’ve heard a parable from Jesus in our Gospel lesson. Last week, I mentioned that when we hear a parable, we must be careful not to treat them allegorically, where we assign a direct one-to-one correlation to each character in the story. The danger in approaching parables this way is that we can hear one and conclude that it doesn’t apply to us. Given their ancient context, and Jesus’ tendency to use hyperbole to make a point, sometimes it can be difficult to find their relevance for us here and now.

Martin Luther wrote that “the entire Christian life is one of repentance and humility.” Today’s parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus is a good example of this. On the surface, I cannot directly relate to the experiences of the Rich Man or Lazarus. I am not nearly as wealthy as the Rich Man or as poor as Lazarus. Like Jesus alludes to in the parable, they are both “other” to me. The risk we run when we discover that “we” are not in the story, is that we then use the story as a means for self-righteously telling other people how they should live and act. And this lack of self-examination is exactly what Jesus condemns in most of his parables. So how might this parable be a call for you and me towards repentance and humility?

Most of the commentaries and sermons I have read and heard about this parable focus on how we should be more hospitable and generous to the poor in our midst. And this is especially the case when it is paired with today’s lessons from Amos and 1 Timothy. But we must be careful not to fall into the trap of letting today’s lessons steer us into a works-righteousness understanding of salvation. Our first call is to repentance, not works.

The prophet Amos was writing to his people in the southern kingdom of Judah. Today he would be accused of being unpatriotic because he was calling his own people to task. Rather than focusing on the sins of their enemies in the Northern Kingdom if Israel, Amos was holding up the mirror to his own flock. The sin Amos was drawing attention to in today’s passage was the sense of denial in which the people of Judah were living. While their country was headed towards ruin, the people in power were living the good life, lounging around on beds of ivory, eating the finest foods and drinking the finest wine out of bowls.

The call of the prophets was to hold a mirror up to their own people. It was to make the blind people see their need to repent – to turn back towards God. In this case, Amos was calling the people of Judah to not worry so much about what was wrong with their enemies to the North, but rather, what was wrong with them. The first word of today’s lesson is “alas,” but a better translation would be “woe,” meaning great sorrow or distress. As was the case with all the prophets, Amos was executed for telling the uncomfortable truth to his people. When he held the mirror up to them, they could not bear to face the truth of their sinful ways. So, they silenced him forever.

Both Amos and Jesus warn us about putting people into the categories of righteous vs. unrighteous. The people of Judah had fallen into the trap of believing that they were the righteous ones, not Israel. They had come to believe that they were all good and Israel was all bad. They had come to believe that God favored them and because of that, God couldn’t possibly have room in God’s kingdom for the Northern kingdom too.

On the surface, it appears that Jesus is drawing a clear distinction between the righteous and the unrighteous. But, as with most of his parables, the target audience is those who believe that they are the righteous ones. And as we have learned about the parables of Jesus, there is oftentimes if not always the element of surprise. Just prior to this parable, Jesus said to the Pharisees, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others; but God knows your hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God.”

But we must be careful not to sit back and think to ourselves, “Thanks be to God I’m not a Pharisee.” Then we become just that – a Pharisee. We become like the Pharisee who prayed, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector…”.  

What stirred Jesus up so much about the Pharisees wasn’t that they lived holy lives by adhering strictly to the Law. What angered Jesus was that they believed that by observing the Law so faithfully, they were righteous and deserving of God’s favor. And with their sense of righteousness came their belief that others were not. And so, they drew attention to what they believed were other peoples’ lack of right standing with God. And that is what angered Jesus, as well as the prophets like Amos who preceded him.  

What is interesting about the Rich Man once he ends up in Hades is that when he calls out to Abraham, saying “Have mercy on me,” he still hasn’t reached a point of true repentance. It seems to me that his cry for mercy isn’t an admission of his wrongdoing, but rather, a cry for a drink of water.

The bottom line is that, as Abraham mentions to the Rich Man, there is a great chasm between the righteous and the unrighteous. And that chasm has existed ever since the Fall of humankind. And no amount of righteous deeds, no amount of good behavior, and no amount of religious piety can bridge that gap between God and God’s people. We are all the people of Judah in our Old Testament lesson today. And we are all the Rich Man in desperate need of a cool drink of water. Our scripture lessons today have boldly held up a mirror to us. It is not about those other people. It is about us, and our desperate need for God’s mercy and grace. Thanks be to God that we are given that grace in Jesus Christ, who has bridged that chasm between God and humankind. The Righteous One came to die for the unrighteous. The Godly One came to die for the ungodly. Jesus Christ came to die for you and me so that we might have life, and have it abundantly. Thanks be to God!