Proper 21C; Amos
6:1-7; Luke 16:19-31; St. Paul’s, Smithfield, NC 9/29/2019
Jim Melnyk, “Open Eyes
– Open Hearts”
Have you ever found yourself seated
in a restaurant, needing something at your table – a clean fork, some more tea,
the chance to order your meal – and found yourself completely unable to catch
the attention of the wait staff? Your server may be walking straight toward
your table – you raise your head just a bit – raise your hand just a bit – not
too much as to make a show of yourself – and smile. The waiter turns aside one
table away – or reverses direction – or passes by, head turned just a bit to
the side away from you. With apologies to anyone who works or has worked as
part of a wait staff, have you ever wondered if waiters and waitresses are
specifically trained to not notice someone – or at least not
notice you in particular?
I suspect
rather than intentional training – the ability to not see someone is a survival
function of some sort. There’s a table over there that has been waiting longer
– or someone over here who has been overly demanding and on the verge of
causing a disruption – someone didn’t show up that night and the waiter is
handling a couple more tables than anyone ought to be expected to handle. Sometimes
being able to not see can help keep a person sane in the midst of too much
going on at one time.
But
sometimes it can also mean the person just doesn’t want to be bothered. And it
doesn’t take any stretch of the imagination to admit that human beings long ago
learned the art of looking the other way – of focusing beyond the present
moment – of seeing without seeing – of seeing without taking notice. Because
seeing can be costly. Seeing can capture our imaginations. Seeing can make us
pay attention and feel a sense of responsibility for whatever it is we allow
ourselves to see. Seeing is the beginning of relationship.
Think of the times you’ve been
stopped at a street light and how we see or don’t see the person standing in
the median with a cardboard sign. Because sometimes there’s just too
much to see – too much to feel responsible for – too much for our
hearts and minds to handle – because living with opened eyes challenges our
hearts to feel compassion. And compassion – feeling with someone – though
freely given, can cost us a lot.
Living with our eyes wide open
entails the risk of losing what we have – if only because it opens us to a
broader picture of the whole human condition. Living with our eyes wide open
challenges us to live with open hearts and open hands – because it is only when
our hearts are open that we can make room for others, and it is only when our
hands are open that we can receive the fullness of God’s blessings – and allow
ourselves to share those blessings as well.
All four of our lessons this
morning deal with the need to move through life with our eyes wide open. All
four lessons deal with the challenge to look within ourselves – to acknowledge
the richness of our lives – and to pay attention to the struggle faced by those
around us whose lives have played out differently from ours. The lessons
challenge us to live our lives with our eyes wide open – to live our lives with
compassion and grace. All four lessons teach us that God doesn’t give us the
option of seeing past or seeing through the suffering this world knows – the
option of turning a blind eye toward poverty, oppression, and social injustice.
Amos gives voice to God’s judgment
on those who are at ease in Zion – the Southern Kingdom – who live lives of
lavish consumption and feel so secure because of their wealth while ignoring
the need of their neighbor. They live with closed eyes and closed hearts much
like Israel – their Northern neighbor we read about last week – who “sell the
righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals.”[1]
The Psalmist reminds us that even
our most trusted rulers will breathe their last and return to earth – but that
God “gives justice to those who are oppressed, and food to those who hunger…. [That]
the Lord loves righteousness; the Lord cares for the stranger, [God] sustains
the orphan and widow….”
The author of the First Letter to
Timothy is every bit as challenging today. “Pursue righteousness,” he writes,
“pursue godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness…do good…be rich in good
works, generous, and ready to share...take hold of the life that really is
life!” Go through life with your eyes wide open. Go through life with your
heart wide open as well. Don’t let what we have, or what
we want, or what we think we need, get in the way of the compassion and
love of God we are called to experience, feel, and share with one another. There
is
enough to go around.
Last week our youth Sunday School
class talked a bit about the increasing confusion that exists among people
between what we need in life and what we want. We agreed that we need stuff
like family and friends, trusting relationships with each other and God, a
house over our heads and enough food to eat. Those items differ greatly from
items we wanted such as a Tesla, our I-Phones, or a mansion. For those of us who
do not live life on the edge much of our anxiety about money and stuff has to
do with the risk of that which we want in our lives rather than that which we
need, and the call to faithful stewardship becomes anxiety provoking rather
than freeing.
In today’s parable the rich man can
only focus on what he wants in life. If the rich man were to make a list with
two columns – one heading being “Things I Need,” and the other
heading being “Things I want” – I’m willing to guess most of what he had would
be under the “want” heading. And I suspect one of the things that would be most
obviously missing from the “need” column would be something like, “I need to check
out what’s going on with that guy Lazarus who’s hanging out by my gate.” You
see, beyond things like a roof over our head and food in our pantry “living
with our eyes wide open” is something we desperately need to do.
In the parable it’s Lazarus the
poor beggar, not the unseeing rich man who passes by Lazarus every day, who
finally finds himself in Abraham’s presence.[2] The
rich man finds himself separated from God through the blindness of his own
choosing. He isn’t able to recognize that as people created in the image and
likeness of God, we are people created to be in relationship with one another. In
fact the rich man in death, as the story goes, still only sees Lazarus as
someone who can serve his needs – have Lazarus dip his finger in water to cool
my tongue – tell Lazarus to serve me by going to warn my brothers. But in the
end, one can only wonder if a significant part of the rich man’s torment comes
from the knowledge that he could have made a difference in Lazarus’ life –
because as much as this parable is about God’s vindication in the next life, it’s
also about being fully present to one another and each other’s needs in this
life.
The parable reminds me of our
baptismal covenant – especially the final couple of promises. Seeking Christ in
all persons, loving our neighbor as our own selves, striving for justice and peace
among all people, and respecting the dignity of every human being[3] is
living with our eyes wide open – and I recall an earlier time when such
promises seemed more hopeful and perhaps more mainstream than they may seem to
some today.
In the coming weeks we will all be
hearing a lot about Stewardship at St. Paul’s for the coming year. Today’s
parable challenges us to face that call with our eyes wide open. Together we
can make a difference in the life of this parish and in our community. Each of
us, joined together as the household of God at St. Paul’s, can change people’s
lives – can help repair people’s lives and make people whole.
Being stewards of all God has given
us means finding ways to balance our needs and our wants, and recognizing where
the anxiety about the difference between the two grabs us. It means recognizing
that we are created to go through life in relationship with the whole of
creation. Being good stewards means going through life with our eyes wide open
– and with our hearts and our hands wide open as well. And if we can do that,
my friends, if we can do that – God has promised it will be enough.
