This sermon is based in large part on a sermon by Rev. Tom Long given in 2016 called "The Open Window"
“Don’t Miss It”
Luke 16:19-31
What are we to make of this parable?
What do you think Jesus wants us to get out of it?
The word “parable” is kind of hard to define.
It means a lot of different things.
But one of the best definitions of “parable” is “riddle.”
A parable is a riddle.
Think about it.
There is some puzzle to be solved and the thing about Jesus’ parables is that just when you think that you’ve got it a trap door opens…
…and you fall down to a deeper level of mystery.
Jesus spoke in parables a lot.
The great theologian C.H. Dodd once said, “A parable is a metaphor or simile drawn from everyday life…
…the meaning of which is sufficiently in doubt to tease the imagination into thought.”
Did you get that?
“The meaning of which is sufficiently in doubt to tease the imagination into thought.”
Well, even in the strange world of parables the one we are looking at today is particularly odd, wouldn’t you say?
What I mean is, most of Jesus’ parables are about things that we know about…
…a farmer sows seed in a field…
…a woman mixes yeast with flour to make bread…
…a young man says to his father, “I’m sick of this farm.
Give me my share of the inheritance. I want to go to the city and make a life for myself.”
We can understand that, right?
That’s life.
That’s human life.
In fact, one of the definitions of a parable is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning.
Well, not the parable we are looking at this morning.
In fact, most of what takes place in this parable takes place not in THIS WORLD but the next world.
You might even say the instead of being an earthly story with a heavenly meaning…
…it’s a heavenly story…
…no…
…it’s actually a hellish story.
The action in this parable comes from the bowels of Hades!
(pause)
What happens in this story is that there is a rich man…
We don’t know his name but we know how he lives.
He wears designer clothes and he eats whatever he wants to eat every day.
And right at his door—right at his gate is a desperately homeless man.
He is so desperately hungry that he would love to have pawed through the Hefty Garbage Bags that go out the back door of the rich guy’s mansion every day.
But, no.
There is no indication that the rich man ever noticed this guy, ever saw him, ever paid any attention to him.
They live only a few feet apart, but they are in different worlds.
But then, as is so often the way it goes in Jesus’ parables—there is a sudden reversal.
Lazarus dies and is taken by the angels into—what a number of translations call—"the bosom of Father Abraham.”
That’s an old Jewish phrase meaning “right into the family of God—right next to the heart of God.”
The rich man also dies but he heads in the other direction.
He goes to hades, the Jewish land of the dead…
…and in torment there he looks up and what does he see?
He sees that beggar Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom!
And so he cries out: “Father Abraham, please.
I’m in agony here.
Send Lazarus with some water to cool my tongue.”
And Abraham says, “Oh, my child. Oh, my child.
No.
You’ve had your good things in life and what is more a great chasm has been fixed between us.
You can’t come to us now and those of us who would love to come to you…we can’t.
It’s too late. It’s too late. It’s too late.”
(pause)
What do you think Jesus wants us to get out of this riddle…this parable?
Well, a good many New Testament Scholars agree that this story fits beautifully into a major them in Luke’s Gospel.
And that theme is the age-old battle between “the haves” and “the have nots”—the rich and the poor.
God stands on the side of the poor.
They have no none else to stand with them and God stands with them.
And this is true.
If we read through the Gospel of Luke with open eyes there is more stuff in this Gospel on economic justice than almost anywhere else in the Bible.
This theme is so strong that you get the feeling that every time Luke uses the word “rich” he snorts “psssh”!
Right at the beginning of the Gospel when the Angel Gabriel come to the little peasant girl Mary to tell her she’s going to be the mother of the Christ Child she breaks into song.
We call it the Magnificat.
We sing it at Christmas.
But it is not a gentle mother’s lullaby.
It’s more like a political protest song!
“My soul magnifies the Lord”—why?
“Because He has brought down the powerful and mighty and lifted up the lowly and meek.
The hungry God has filled with good things and the rich?”---pssshhh!!!---
“God has sent away empty.”
Right before Jesus tells our story He has a disagreement with the local religious leaders.
He says to them, “Let me tell you what’s wrong with you.
You think you can serve two gods—God and Money.
Well, you can’t!!!
They are rival gods and they both want your soul!
So, what’s it gonna be? God or Money?”
So…maybe this parable is the tragic story of a man who made the wrong decision.
If that is what Jesus wants us to get out of this, there is something about that –that many of us might find personally satisfying!
Maybe you saw the same story as I did several years ago.
There’s a professional athlete who owes the city of Philadelphia several thousands of dollars in unpaid parking fines because he parks his luxury cars wherever he wants.
One of his tickets was for parking his Rolls Royce at the Philadelphia Airport for 2 weeks in a handicapped spot!
And if what Jesus is saying is that one day rich and greedy and self-centered people like that are gonna stand before the bar of God’s justice and hear God say to them, “Alright Buster, You’ve had all the good things in life you are ever gonna have…”
…there might just be something in many of us that says: “Yeah!”
There are only two things that keep me from stopping there.
The first is the chill of recognition.
I mean, I don’t think of myself as a rich man, but if you pull the camera back and look at me in relation to the population of the earth—I’m right near the top of the pyramid.
To put it in terms of the parable for this morning, I have a closet full of clothes and I eat pretty much whatever I want.
So, whatever this parable has to say to the rich it has to say to me.
The other thing that keeps me from stopping there is that Jesus doesn’t stop there.
No sooner has Jesus told this parable than He gets back on the road to Jerusalem and it soon takes Him into the town of Jericho where He meets are really, really rich man.
His name is Zacchaeus and he is muscle for the IRS!
Or as Luke puts it: “He was the Chief tax collector and he was ‘PSSSH!’ rich!”
But he wanted to see Jesus so he climbed a sycamore tree and when Jesus passed under the sycamore tree He looked up and He didn’t say: “Okay Buster you’ve had all the good things in life you are ever gonna have!”
What Jesus said was: “Come down Zacchaeus.
I want to stay at your house.”
And before that day was over Zacchaeus was jumping for joy and Jesus was saying, “Today, salvation has come—even to this man!
For this man, too, is in the bosom of Abraham.”
You see, the trap door opens…
It suddenly becomes more complex.
What is this parable about?
Wealth and poverty?
Yes.
But something even deeper.
The key to it comes in what Father Abraham said to the rich man.
“Oh, my child.”
That’s not the voice of an angry judge.
That’s the voice of a heartbroken parent!
“Oh, my child a great chasm has been fixed between us.
Those of us who would love to come to you—we can’t.”
I think one other thing this parable is about is that every now and then God opens a window…
…a window of blessing—a KINGDOM WINDOW…
…an opportunity to be a part of what God is doing in the world and sometimes we take the opportunity and sometimes we don’t.
And when we don’t the window closes and it’s too late!
Reverend Tom Long shares the following story: “I cannot believe that when I was a young father I actually got on a plane and few somewhere to give a speech to people who no longer remember me or what I said…
…instead of going to the Father-Daughter Campfire Girl Banquet that my little girl Melany was begging me to go to with her.
I can’t believe that I did that!
Now that I’m older and a little bit wiser I know I made the wrong choice and I am now ready to go to the Father-Daughter Campfire Girl Banquet.
To which Melany would say, ‘Uh oh, Dad I’m all grown up now.
I’m not that little girl anymore who needed her father so desperately that night you missed it.
It’s too late.”
(pause)
When Jesus was a boy I think He heard a lot of sermons like this.
The old Rabbis used to love to preach on this theme—how God would open up a window of blessing and then it would close if you didn’t act.
They even had their favorite sermon illustration.
They were called Eleazar of Damascus stories.
Who in the world is Eleazar of Damascus?
He’s an obscure biblical character mentioned by name only once in the Book of Genesis.
But he was Abraham’s kinsman—Abraham’s right-hand man and the rabbis made up stories about him…
…how when God wanted to bless the earth He’d say to Father Abraham: “Send your servant Eleazar of Damascus to earth as a blessing.”
And Abraham would do it and Eleazar would always come incognito.
He was the goat-huner…
…or the tailor…
…or the guy next to you on the Delta flight.
You have to keep your eyes open if you are going to see Eleazar of Damascus.
By the way, if you translate Eleazar from Hebrew into Greek it’s LAZARUS!
Lazarus--The blessing of God disguised as a beggar.
The rich man needed Lazarus a lot more than Lazarus needed the rich man and he missed it!
Why did he miss it?
It’s the same reason we do.
He was too rich.
He was too self-sufficient.
He was too pre-occupied…too turned in on himself...
…too numb to the possibility that God might be trying to break through in an unexpected way with a blessing for his life.
Too late!
What is God ready to bless you with?
An opportunity to feed people a the Community Kitchen or a chance to change your life by becoming involved with the food pantry or some other ministry?
What is it?
Don’t miss it.
Don’t miss it.
Let us pray:
Lord God, we thank you for the opportunities to be blessed by blessing others that You send our way.
May we keep our eyes and ears open for them.
We don’t want to miss it.
In Jesus’ name.
Amen.
