The Call to Neighborliness

[Today, I gave this message (and led worship) at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio. After the service, the congregation met and voted to call me to become their next pastor. So, after seventeen years as pastor of Friendship Lutheran Church in Amelia, Ohio, I'll become Saint Matthew's pastor on November 1. It will be hard to say goodbye to all the wonderful people of Friendship. But both my wife and I feel certain that God is calling us to Saint Matthew and we're looking forward to this new adventure!]

Luke 16:19-31
In the story Jesus tells in today's Gospel lesson, we see a wealthy man who willfully separated himself from the poor, diseased man at his gates. Jesus says that by walling himself off from Lazarus, the wealthy man also walled himself off from God. And from God’s grace. That's because God’s forgiveness and new life cannot penetrate hearts hardened to the needs of neighbors.

The story ends with both Lazarus, who is the poor man, and the rich man, whose name is never given, dead, but experiencing different fates. The wealthy man is in torment in Hades. Meanwhile Lazarus, the one who in this life had craved crumbs from the rich man’s table, who was so helpless that he couldn’t fend off the wild dogs that licked his sores, and whose name means ironically, God helps, enjoys a feast in heaven reclining next to Abraham, the father of Biblical faith.

Anybody who studies Luke, the New Testament book from which Jesus’ parable is taken today, can tell you that Luke loves to underscore Jesus’ teaching that God commands the haves to share with the have-nots. Caring for the poor and the hungry is part of what it means to fulfill God’s command to love our neighbor.

But there are, I think, two big mistakes that people make when interpreting this parable. The first big mistake is to think that Jesus is only talking about caring for the poor here. It’s about much more than that!

At the end of the tour of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., which presents a history of Adolf Hitler’s campaign to exterminate the Jews of Europe, there’s an amphitheater. There, on a large screen, you can see Holocaust survivors talk about what happened at the ends of their internments in the Nazi camps. One woman featured in the amphitheater video tells of receiving word that the Americans were nearing their camp. She and the other internees had no idea what to expect of these new conquerors. But they were terrified. After all, to their Nazi guards, they had, for years, been nothing but cattle. They were throwaway people. They suspected that they always would be. Fearful, she and the other prisoners huddled in their barracks. Soon, an American captain walked into her barrack. She and the other women there stepped back from him, like animals who expected abuse. “It’s alright,” he explained in their language. “We’ve come to set you free.” They were skeptical. But the captain was insistent. Finally, this young woman, emaciated and filthy from her years of deprivation, decided to trust the captain’s words. She stepped forward. And then he did something unexpected: He opened the door for her. “Nobody had opened a door for me in years,” she remembers. She began to weep.

In Jesus’ parable, He says, literally, that Lazarus had been thrown onto the doorstep of the rich man. We don’t know who threw Lazarus there. But we can guess it wasn’t anyone who wanted to help him. Likely it was somebody tired of seeing him cluttering their streets and their lives. They probably thought that they could not and certainly would not help this nobody. So, like the Jews thrown into Hitler’s death camps, Lazarus became a throwaway person. He was someone no one else wanted.

There are lots of throwaway people, people no one else wants. And not all of them are in death camps. Not all live in places like Darfur or Burma. Some of them are people we live with, work with, go to school with. They may be people we try to avoid every day.

Father Andrew Greeley presents the story of a new girl who came to the seventh grade at a school far from her hometown. Blair had come to live with her aunt and uncle after her parents, brother, and sister were killed in a car accident. Blair had managed to roll out from under the car and was not physically damaged. But the trauma of the event caused her to withdraw into a protective shell when dealing with others. Most of the seventh grade girls thought she was weird. Some of them laughed when she misspelled a word or left her book at home or did anything that they considered “uncool.” They, of course, considered themselves to be really cool. But, Katie, one of the “cool” girls felt sorry for Blair and befriended her. She told her friends that they should be ashamed of themselves for the way they were treating Blair. “After all,” she said, “how would you feel if your family all died in an accident?"

At its deepest level, Jesus’ parable calls you and me to treat others with simple neighborliness. This is what Katie did for Blair. This is what the American captain did when he opened the barracks door for the Holocaust internee. It’s what the rich man in Jesus’ parable could have done for Lazarus.

Simple neighborliness is what Jesus calls all of us who are blessed to be God’s children to give to life’s throwaway people. We must avoid the mistake of thinking that Jesus is only talking about giving money to the poor here. He’s talking, in part, about being neighborly to all who have needs, including the poor.

I love what Pastor Brian Stoffregen says about this parable. Everybody expresses concern about the poor and needy and we should. But shouldn't we also talk about helping those who are "rich and needy"? And, how about those who are middle class and needy? The fact is that everybody in this sanctuary this morning and everybody we know has needs which God may be calling us to fill. Neighborliness does that!

But there's a second big mistake people make in translating Jesus’ parable to their everyday lives. This one does involve money and the poor. The second big mistake is for us to think that Jesus is only telling wealthy people to share their money or possessions with others. We can say to ourselves, “This parable doesn’t apply to me. I'm not Bill Gates!”

But the fact is that Christian neighborliness does call all of us to share what we have with the poor. Often, we’ll be able to do this through our offerings to the hunger relief efforts of the Lutheran Church. Or through contributions of food to local food banks. But sometimes, we’ll be confronted with needy people who, like Lazarus in Jesus’ parable, are right in front of us.

Last year, my wife, my mother-in-law, our son, and I visited Cleveland to see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It was a beautiful Labor Day morning as we walked to the Hall from our hotel. The streets were fairly deserted. On the way, we encountered a woman. “Do you have change for a ten?” I thought I heard her ask. It wasn’t Christian of me, but I was relieved. I never carry more than a few bucks and I knew that all I had was a five. I wouldn’t have to stop and fork over any cash. "Sorry," I said, "I can't help you."

"Wait a minute," the woman told us, "I'm no bum, I'm a nurse." The phrase was repeated three times as though part of a well-rehearsed routine. "My car broke down and I need to get to work. Buses don't run as often today and I need to get a taxi." I was ready to move on. But my wife asked the woman how much she needed. "Ten dollars." My wife opened her purse and handed the woman the money. As we walked on, my wife explained, "She may well have taken me. But if so, she'll have to answer for it. I don't want to have to answer for not giving to somebody who might really have a need." (She's the real theologian in the family.)

The needs of Lazarus would have been obvious to the rich man in Jesus’ parable had he looked up from his sumptuous dinner and beyond his gates long enough.

If we take the time, we too can see needs right here in Logan and in Hocking County, needs that God might want to use us to fill.

The New Testament tells us that “every good and perfect gift” comes from God. When we give to those in need, we tell God thanks for all His gifts. Most especially, we express thanks for the gift of Jesus Christ, God-in-the-flesh, Whose death and resurrection give all with faith in Him life forever with God. That's a lot for which to be thankful!

Jesus’ call to simple neighborliness does call us to care for the needy.

Sometimes their neediness is financial.

Sometimes it’s spiritual.

Sometimes it’s nothing more than the need we all have of listening ears, compassionate hearts, or strong shoulders.

From what I’ve learned about Saint Matthew Lutheran Church over the past few months, I know that this sermon, in some ways, falls into the category of “preaching to the choir.” This already is a neighborly church. You care about each other. I was moved to hear about your prayers for young Sarah, facing leukemia, as well as for her family last Sunday. And I know that you care about the community. I was interested, for example, to see in the online version of The Logan Daily News the other day that you hosted a flower show here. I see that you care enough about your neighbors to broadcast the worship service each week. Caring Christians show that kind of hospitality and neighborliness!

In the Gospel of Saint Matthew, Jesus says, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

If you call me to be your pastor, I want to work with you to build on Saint Matthew’s past in order to grow, spiritually and numerically, in the future. That growth won’t happen overnight. But I believe that if we take the lesson of Jesus’ parable to heart and ask God to show us how, in new times with new challenges, we can let Christ’s light shine in us, good things will happen.

We can build on Saint Matthew’s tradition of simple, Christian neighborliness and see not only more people in this sanctuary for worship, but also more people who can affirm that, as Lazarus’ very name testifies, God helps!

One day, when you and I sit at the great heavenly banquet that all of God’s people will enjoy with Abraham and all who have trusted God, I want to be able look back in gratitude on our time together here at Saint Matthew, thankful that we took God’s blessings and shared them with our neighbors and let our lives show others how wonderful the God we know through Jesus Christ truly is!

I want to work with you, worship with you, witness with you, learn with you, teach with you, laugh with you, cry with you, and serve with you so that this community will see and experience the light of Christ blazing in our souls and have their lives changed forever. Amen!