Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Sermons 

Title: "Signs of God’s Favor?"

Text: Luke 16:19-31

Reading this story,

nearly always reminds me of the few times I’ve been to New York City.

Like Lazarus at the rich man’s gate,

there are street people

begging out in front of Tiffany’s,

and homeless men and women sleeping on park benches

just across the street from the Plaza Hotel.

I’m well aware that you can find much the same in downtown Dallas;

it’s just that New York’s downtown is much more alive,

and offers much more to people,

and if I’m honest about it,

I have to say that I have spent more days of my life

enjoying the streets of Manhattan

than the streets of downtown Dallas.

Sad, but true.

At any rate, the contrasts of what you see on the streets

are both obvious, and striking.

And it seems to me perhaps that they are perhaps especially problematic

for those of us who find ourselves

somewhere between the two extremes.

We’re not living in the streets,

carrying our few possessions around in a shopping bag or two …

nor, however, do we buy our whole wardrobe

off-the-rack at Needless Markups – I mean, Neiman-Marcus.

We fall in the wide middle,

often pitying the poor and envying the rich,

thanking God that we aren’t the one,

and perhaps occasionally asking why we couldn’t be the other.

Which strikes me as strange,

because the longer I live and the more I see,

the more convinced I am that God has little or nothing to do with it.

I know, that flies in the face of

at least some of the things that we have been taught.

And I do believe that God has ultimate control

over how things are in the world.

But I also believe that God

has given humankind free rein

to mess with an awful lot of things,

and some of it, we’ve messed up pretty badly.

And it seems to me that

the wide extremes of poverty and wealth –

which, by the way, are continuing to become more and more extreme –

have to be one of humankind’s most spectacular failures.

Yet how often, and from how many sources,

have we heard it said that God is the one responsible?

That God rewards people by giving us riches,

and punishes us by keeping us poor?

There was something about it in this morning’s paper:

the whole "prosperity gospel" thing.

In one sense, it’s an easy and attractive thing to believe:

it’s so simple!

In the first place, it’s logical;

it makes sense to human reason

and fits pretty well with human experience.

After all, when we were children,

if we behaved well and were good,

our parents and teachers rewarded us.

And we had privileges taken away if we were bad.

It’s how our jobs work:

if we do well, we can expect commendation,

and maybe a raise as well;

if we don’t do right, we can expect

we may lose the job and its income.

("You’re fired," says Mr. Trump.)

So at one level,

it seems perfectly sensible to believe that

God might send financial rewards to those who have been faithful,

and cause some financial difficulties for those who have not!

But not only is this belief attractive because it’s kind of logical …

it also has a certain appeal because, if true,

it lets us off the hook.

That is, if we believe that people are poor

because God is unhappy with them in some way,

then their poverty is none of our business.

It’s a private matter between them and God.

In fact, if all of the above is true,

then we had better not help out someone who is poor,

because we will only be standing in the way

of their getting it right with God.

We wouldn’t want to be responsible for that …

Jesus’ story of Lazarus and the rich man

makes it clear that that isn’t how God sees it.

As far as God is concerned,

any time we see someone in genuine need,

and pass him or her by,

we will some day have to answer to God for it.

Even though we here are not incredibly wealthy,

we are mostly assuredly numbered among the "haves,"

not among the "have-nots."

Even those of us who remember living through the Great Depression,

and who know a lot more about having to do without

than just about any of us born after 1940 …

even when your family was at its worst moment, and struggling the hardest,

you still had more than the vast majority of people in the world.

We are the lucky ones.

And as such,

we have the tremendous responsibility and privilege (and it is both)

of caring for the poor at our gate,

or on our park benches,

or in the downtown library,

or wherever we find them.

Now, if our individual lives were all that mattered,

we could end this sermon now,

sing a hymn, shake hands, head out the door,

and get to Tejano’s before the Baptists!

But we aren’t just separate individuals,

living out our own life and doing our own thing.

We are connected,

to one another, and to the world.

And since we are preparing to celebrate World Communion Sunday next week,

this is perhaps an especially important perspective for us to keep.

Although we as individuals are not fabulously wealthy,

we as a nation are.

And we live in a world where the gap between wealthy nations and poor nations

is growing every day,

as we were reminded in the Letter from Accra

that Van shared with us last week.

Not only are rich people getting richer

in comparison with the poor,

but the same is true of rich nations

compared to those who have much less.

And contrary to some of our most cherished national mythology,

America’s comparative wealth does not mean

that we are any more blessed by God

than is Mexico, or India, or the Sudan, or Ethiopia,

or any other third-world nation you can mention,

where you know people are starving.

Scripture makes it clear that

God’s blessing and favor are for everyone …

God’s rain falls upon the just and the unjust.

And while that may sometimes seem unfair,

it is nevertheless God’s way of doing things.

We don’t dare assume

that our national prosperity has come about

because God likes Americans, or America,

better than God likes anyone else.

It could have happened because we’re intelligent,

or because we were careful,

it could have happened because we got really good at capitalism

before anyone else did …

It could also have happened because we were selfish and didn’t share,

or because we started from the first with so many more resources

than most nations have to opportunity to work with.

America is like the rich man of Jesus’ story.

We have the poor of the world at our gate,

needing our assistance.

And we have the choice

of stopping to help heal their wounds and meet their needs,

or, of walking past them

until we’ve grown so used to their presence

that we scarcely see them any more.

Now, I know there are many who believe

that the ethics taught by Jesus and by the scriptures as a whole

are meant to apply only to individuals

and not to nations.

That religion is a matter that’s purely personal,

and not political.

But I don’t think you can find

much defense for that position in the Bible itself.

Read, or re-read, the prophets like Amos,

where entire nations are condemned

because of their injustice.

When he gets on a roll declaring "woes"

and Amos does! –

it’s not simply, "Woe to the wicked judge who makes bad decisions,"

but also, "woe to the nation that puts up with it."

And it’s never just "woe to you that are rich,"

it’s also "woe to the whole system

that lets you grow wealthy while others starve."

So, while we always have to be careful about

how we let our faith influence our national life,

there is no way we can or even should

attempt to keep the two separate.

Just we as comfortable-though-not-wealthy individuals

have a responsibility to look after the poor at our gates,

so we as a very-wealthy nation

have a similar calling to the poor of our world.

Of course that includes those who are poor within our own country,

but it is not limited to them.

At heart, I suppose

it is a matter of peacemaking.

although, not just in the sense of preventing war,

though certainly it is true that wars are often fought

because some folks have too much,

and others, not enough.

"Making peace" in the biblical sense

includes restoring justice,

showing compassion,

attempting to set the world up according to God’s plan and God’s vision.

In our world, there cannot be anything resembling true peace

while half are starving

and the other half dieting.

If Jesus Christ is not the Lord of all,

then he is not Lord at all.

We need to figure out how to let him in,

to be Lord of our wealth and our poverty …

to be Lord of our lives as individuals and as a congregation working together,

and as a nation.

During our lifetimes, we have, like the rich man in the story,

received good things.

What are we doing with and for

those who have not?

Amen.

© 2004 Julie Adkins (e-mail: DrJAdkins@trinitypresdallas.org)