17th Sunday after Pentecost

"If they will not listen Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead."

Well, of course, someone did rise from the dead. Or so some of us say we believe, as we gather here this morning to celebrate that Resurrection.

But here in the midst of our celebration of the Resurrection come these disturbing guests:

-- Here comes Amos, that unpleasant and grumpy old prophet: "Woe to those who are at ease in Zion. Woe to those who feel secure on the mountain of Samaria. Woe to those who lie on their beds inlaid with ivory and lounge on their couches, and who dine on choice lambs and fattened calves. They shall be the first to go into exile, and their relaxations and pleasant feasts shall pass away."

--And here comes St. Paul, who reminds us that those who are rich in the world's goods are foolish if we put our faith in them. St. Paul, who reminds us that taking hold of the only life that is truly life lies in putting our trust in God, and in being generous, and in sharing what we have.

--And here comes Jesus. Jesus, who is like a peach, a little fuzzy on the outside, but when you bite into him he's not quite as sweet as you were led to believe, and in the middle he's a hard nut to crack! Here comes Jesus with his troubling story of the rich man dressed in purple and fine linen, a man who feasted magnificently every day, while the poor man Lazarus lay hungry and covered with sores at his gate.

It's a story Jesus tells to those who "were lovers of money," Luke says, a story Jesus tells to those who scoffed at him when he rebuked them for counting themselves righteous while they ignored the poor.

It's a story, however, not meant just for the Pharisees, because St. Luke included it in his Gospel, which was written not for the Jews, but for the gentiles, for us. It's a story like all those other stories we've been hearing in Luke this summer. Like the story of the rich fool who built bigger barns to hold all his wealth, only to lose it when he died that night. And like the story of the Great Banquet where only the poor and the lame, not the rich and powerful, got a seat at the table. All stories that point to the truth made explicit in last week's story about the dishonest steward -- that one cannot serve both God and money.

Today's story is a story of resurrection. But it's not a story of resurrection with an ending that's all that fuzzy and sweet. It's a story that has at its center a hard nut to crack, a story of resurrection as a warning, a story of the resurrection of a rich man who dies and then rises to find himself not in heaven but in torment in hell, and who even in hell has not accepted the fact that all his wealth and power have not served him well, the story of a man who rises to find that in hell his wealth and power are impotent, dead. But he tries, even there, to use the kind of power and influence he used to have in the world by telling Abraham what to do: "Abraham, send that boy Lazarus to fetch a glass of water for me." And by telling Abraham what will work and what won't work in the world he used to live in: "Father Abraham, if someone comes to my rich brothers from the dead, they will listen to him."

But Jesus ends the story with Abraham's ominous punch line, a line heavy with irony for the rich man's rich living brothers: "If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead."

It's a story, in other words, which presents resurrection not as a fun party, but as a warning, a warning meant to convince us, just as the warning of Amos is meant to convince us, and the warning of Paul, and, indeed, the warnings of Moses and hundreds of prophets and saints and preachers before and since.

But who wants to listen to Moses and the prophets? Who wants to think of resurrection as a warning?

A friend's young daughter came home from Sunday School one day and reported what she had learned about the Resurrection that morning: "Jesus died," she said, "but it was all okay, because he popped up again."

Now there's a resurrection we can celebrate. There's a resurrection we can live with: not a warning, but a pop-up, make-it-all-okay resurrection.

And it's this pop-up resurrection, not the Resurrection of Jesus, which has been convincing middle-class Americans like ourselves. It has been convincing us that the Christian life is a pop-up, everything-okay miracle for the middle class, where the fun is clean and the feelings are good and the future holds no threats.

Several years ago, for example, there was something on television called "Praise-r-cise." Praise-r-cise, they said, was "[a] Christian aerobic program that allows participants to get down and get sweaty in a non-sinful, spiritually uplifting sort of way," with sessions that started off with a quasi-liturgical salutation like, "I plan to win, so in the name of Jesus, let us begin." And then they moved into "Glory Jacks," the "Jesus Jog," the "Hallelujah Hop," and the "Heavenly Stretch." "We're glorifying the Lord in all that we do while exercising," said the person who franchised this bit of pop-up resurrection nationwide. "Weight loss is just a by-product of this ministry."

But there are other, more subtle forms of pop-up resurrection that also tempt us, things like thinking that if we have "given our lives to the Lord," then we can just sit in our suburban homes and churches, clothed more or less in purple and fine linen, feasting sumptuously every day by world standards, while we wait for the Lord to call us -- if He should ever feel He really could use us in some way.

Jesus does not say that the rich man was an evil man, or even that he tried to run Lazarus off the property. The only sin the rich man committed in Jesus' story was that he was dressed in purple and fine linen, and ate sumptuously, and ignored Lazarus. Well, in the rich man's defense, perhaps he just never saw Lazarus sitting there by his gate, outside his fence.

The eye, you know, is an organ that does not discriminate. Like a window, the eye receives the images of everything in front of it. It is up to the brain to enable us to focus and to see selectively, to focus on the things we really want to attend to. So we human beings are peculiarly able to see, and yet not see. We can see, and yet not attend to. We can see, in other words, and yet attend only to those things our brains and hearts call to our attention.

Reinhold Niebuhr says that "grace is seeing ourselves as God sees us." And I would add that grace is seeing others as God sees them. And that grace is seeing God as God is and where God is. Grace is just being able to see, to really see.

The sin of the rich man in Jesus' story seems to have been nothing more than that he did not see. He was simply blind to the sad relationship between himself and Lazarus and between himself and God. There was a wide chasm between them, and he did not see it. And therefore he did nothing to change it. So he got to live with that relationship forever.

To begin with, the rich man didn't see the poor man Lazarus who was begging for the scraps from his table as he rode out the gate in his limo every day. He did not see him as a man, as a child of God, as his brother in need. To the rich man, Lazarus was what Ralph Elison said the black man in America is to the white, "The Invisible Man."

It is the first sin, the original sin, says William Temple, to see but not to see, to see the world and ourselves not as God sees us, but to see the world as if I am the center of all things, with everything else, and everyone else, there to serve me.

"When I was born," Archbishop Temple says, "I opened my eyes and saw the world, and I measured the world and everyone in it from where I lay in my crib. The world's horizon depended upon where I was, and everyone in the world was important only insofar as he happened to come into my field of vision."

Every one of us does this when he is born, says Temple. "Each of us takes his place at the center of the world on the day he is born."

"But I am not the center of the world," Temple reminds us. "I am not, and God is. In other words, from even before I could speak I have been putting myself in God's place. This is my original sin. I am not 'guilty' on that account," says Temple, "because, as an infant, I could not help it. But I am in a state, from birth, in which I shall bring disaster on myself and on everyone affected by my conduct, unless I can escape from it."

Education can help a little, Temple allows. Education can help us by raising us higher so that our horizons are enlarged and widened. With education, our horizons can stretch to Asia and Africa and the Middle East. But even then I am still seeing the world not as God sees it, but as if I am the center. "But I am not the center. I am not, and God is." What we need is grace. "My escape from my disastrous state can, finally, be accomplished only by my surrender to the One who is at the center," so that I can see the world and myself and others as God sees me and the world and others. (Christianity and Social Order)

The rich man did not see himself as God sees him, and he did not see Lazarus as God sees him. Nor did the rich man see God himself sitting at the gate with Lazarus. Lazarus, "God is my Helper." That's the meaning of the name. Lazarus and God, his Helper, sitting together outside the fence of the rich at the end of our driveways, sitting as he has always sat outside the gates of the rich, with God his Helper. But the driveways are long and winding, so it's as easy not to see God there as it is not to see Lazarus there, even though everywhere in the Scriptures Moses and the prophets tell us that that is where we should look for God.

Isn't that what Moses tells us? Moses, who assures us that God is with those in slavery. Isn't that what Amos told us just this morning? Amos, who warns us to give special attention to the poor, to those who live at the mercy of the rich and powerful. Isn't that what Mary tells us? Mary, who reminds us that we'll find God throwing the mighty down from their thrones, and sending the rich away empty, and raising up the lowly. Isn't that what Jesus tells us? Jesus, who sits outside the fence with Lazarus just as he sits with those in prison, waiting with them for the cup of water we can offer, waiting for our visit.

Finally, the rich man did not see the fence itself. He did not see the chasm that separated him from Lazarus and from God, until it was too late.

Jewish belief, at the time Jesus told his story, was that immediately after death the unrighteous go to a place of torment, and from there the tormented can see the righteous in Paradise with God, but they cannot join them. That the unrighteous can see those in Paradise after they have died, but not join them, is part of their torment.

But before death, they could have joined them then. They could have crossed the chasm then, if only they had seen, and wanted to, and decided to.

The great chasm between the rich and the poor is dug in this life, not in the next. The fence between the rich and poor is built in this life, not in the next. The lines between rich and poor are drawn in this life, not in the next. The great chasm is dug by us, not by God. But only after death is it permanent.

Lazarus "longed to eat what fell from the rich man's table," but he knew that a line was drawn by the fence. He knew that a chasm existed which prevented him from walking up to the rich man's door. But the fence did not prevent the rich man from inviting Lazarus to dinner, or from stopping to help Lazarus any time he wanted to.

Is it possible that, like the rich man in Jesus' story, we middle-class types have not really come to grips with the Resurrection of Christ, that we have not accepted the Resurrection of Christ, which calls us to die to self in the confidence that there, in our deaths to self, we will find the true life God has promised? Is it possible that, instead, we have embraced pop-up resurrection, with its comforting assurance that God will make it all okay for us just the way we are now? So that it doesn't matter, we think, that our driveways are long and winding and that our beds are inlaid with ivory and that the center of our world is our sumptuous table. It doesn't matter that Lazarus, lying there at our gates today at the end of our long and winding driveways, as he has always lain at the gates of the rich, it doesn't matter -- do we think this? -- it doesn't matter that Lazarus is lying there at our gates, or somewhere on the other side of the world, too far away for us to see.

Is it possible that when one has given his life to a pop-up-miracle-Jesus, then it's hard to notice that the real Christ, whose Resurrection was a warning as well as a promise, is down there at the gate with Lazarus, or over there somewhere on a distant horizon? Is it possible, in fact, that Lazarus himself may even be the real Christ?

The Resurrection we celebrate here at this Eucharist is no pop-up resurrection. It is a resurrection of promise, but also of warning. It is a resurrection that requires the offering up of our lives, along with this bread and this wine that will be offered as the life of the resurrected Jesus.

It is a resurrection that requires thanksgiving, that literally requires the giving of thankfulness through the sacrifice and breaking of bread and of lives. It is a resurrection that requires the distribution of ourselves and our food and our lives to the world as Christ distributed himself to the world. It is a resurrection that extends forgiveness, but that requires confession of sin, that requires the confession of the sin of our indifference to Lazarus, that requires the confession of the sin of our indifference to the world beyond our gates and therefore of our indifference to the true Christ, that requires a confession of sin that can lead us to the true life St. Paul talks about, but only if we examine our lives in the light of God's warning and put our trust in Him and share what we have.

What will it take to make us see? That someone should rise from the dead? That the barns of our wealth and the temples of our power are turned to dust? Yes, someone has risen from the dead. But have we seen?

Have we seen, have we noticed, in Jesus' story, that the only one who is living the resurrected life in the bosom of Abraham is the poor man, Lazarus? Have we noticed that the only sin the rich man committed in his life on earth was that he did not see Lazarus? Or, if he saw him, that he ignored him?

The story of the rich man and Lazarus is a hard nut to crack -- chilling, really -- because nowhere in it does Jesus offer us a moral. He does not offer the rich any guidelines at all about what to do. He offers only Moses and the prophets. It is simply a story about the way life is, a story about the rich man who did not see, until it was too late.

The Bible, you know, is carefully silent about exactly what happened back there on Easter morning. We are given no miracle of popping up. We are given only the empty tomb. There is no assurance that we're okay just the way we are now. That, it seems to me, is the hard nut to crack in Jesus' story about the rich man and Lazarus.

Nothing in the Bible suggests that the Resurrection made death unreal or took away our moral obligation to live lives that count in this world. What the Resurrection did do was invite us to live and die in faith. The Resurrection the Bible offers is an invitation for us to die to those securities of the world we tend to put our faith in, and to join Jesus at the Cross, and, in faith, to live the life of Christ by joining Lazarus at the end of our driveways, confident that it is there that we will find the life that is truly life.

For in all the stories Jesus tells, it is always and only Lazarus, and those who are with him, who are raised to life with Abraham and all the saints.

What the Resurrection did do, by its warning sign of the ways of God, was convince a tiny group of frightened and defeated men and women that God was with them, calling them forth beyond their gates and security systems to a world that is sick and hungry and dying, calling them to live there with Lazarus the life which is life indeed, the Resurrection life of Christ in the world.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.