The Rev. Paul B. Raushenbush As a group of Columbia students and I waited for a flight that was to take us to a Mexican border town for a mission trip, I busied myself with some reading. At one point I said aloud and to nobody in particular: “What an amazing word: – ignore ance – do you all know that word?” When I looked up, my students had a familiar facial expression of sympathy and patience, as if with a grandparent who was obviously approaching senility but whose ramblings were worth listening to, if only out of politeness – a look that I recognize on many of your faces this morning. Ignore-ance. Ignorance. I was embarrassed of course, but honestly, it was as if I hadn’t heard or read the word ever before. Ignorance had always seemed to me to be a passive condition – oh well, it’s just ignorance, it’s not my fault – I just haven’t had a chance to learn that. And knowledge, if it is to come at all, is something to be bequeathed by one to another always eagerly given and graciously accepted. However, what if ignorance is not so neutral? What if ignore – ance is an active and intentional stance towards the world which censors that which is inconvenient or uncomfortable? Ignor-ance, in that case judges what is, or is not, worth knowing and acts accordingly. At a university, and in this chapel, most of us are willing to admit that we are ignorant - meaning that we lack knowledge - to varying degrees on different subjects. Curing our ignorance is the reason we come to university – to seek, to share and to create knowledge. We come with curiosity – a desire to know. So ignore ance as I described it earlier, is the enemy of the university. Ignor ance decides a priori that some things simply aren’t worth knowing and well, ignores them – even avoids them and perhaps, distains them. We have small words for this such as anti-intellectual, but I would say that the consequences are greater than that. Ignore ance makes us poor humans as it separates us from knowledge of the human experience that extends beyond our own. And, as our scripture today warns, ignore-ance makes us failures in our attempts to be Christians. Our Gospel lesson today takes place at a gate. On one side of the gate we have the lavish life of the rich man. We don’t know his name but we know he has a beautiful home, feasts on extravagant banquets, and wears fine purple linens – a sign of the upper classes. Directly on the other side of the gate we have a desperately poor man. If the rich man notices the poor man at all, it is perhaps to be disgusted by his grubbing for scraps that normally would go to the dogs, or repulsed by the sores on the poor man’s body that the dogs lick. We can imagine the rich man passing by the poor man at the gate several times a day, never once addressing him. It is not that the rich man wishes the poor man harm in particular; he probably doesn’t feel anything for him at all. To the rich man’s point of view they live in two entirely different worlds with a huge divide between them - one has nothing to do with the other. There is a gate between them that is used to keep them apart. Eventually, of course, both men die. And the parable describes how the poor man is taken to heaven and is at Abraham’s side while the rich man is tormented in hell. The rich man begs Abraham to send the poor man to give him water, even just a drop from the tip of his finger, yet Abraham informs him that the chasm between them is fixed across which no one can pass. The rich man’s fate is sealed. The gate is shut. This parable is meant to startle us and it succeeds brilliantly. It fulfills what Jesus preached earlier in Luke in the sermon on the plain – that the hierarchical stations lived in life will be radically reversed. This is especially stark because the picture we have of the rich man is not particularly villainess. He was assuredly respected and given honor in his own circles, and the text does not say that he was a sinner or evil, he probably considered himself a righteous man – yet he ended up being tormented in the afterlife. So what is the sin for which he is being punished? The rich man ignored the poor man in life and therefore he is being punished in death. His sin was ignore-ance, especially because his ignorance caused the continuation of such visible and avoidable suffering. What must be difficult for the rich man in hell is the memory of how many times he passed by the poor man in life without realizing that the poor man at the gate was crucial to his own salvation. The poor man has a name – Lazarus. Lazarus is the only named person in any of the parables of Jesus. All the other parables reference “a man who”, or “there were two sons who”. But Jesus names Lazarus in this parable and the name is significant. The name Lazarus comes from the word Elexar – which means God helps. God helps Lazarus in death when the angels come and take him to heaven. But the name also indicates that Lazarus - that God helps - was there for the rich man – but he couldn’t see it on account of his ignore-ance. Lazarus sits at the rich man’s gate. Most towns and important buildings were surrounded by walls that kept intruders out – yet gates were the places where these walls were permeable. Gates are points where entrance can be gained, or denied, and gates hold a deep spiritual significance in the bible. The image of gates is used in psalm 24 which exhorts the people to: Lift up your heads o gates so that the king of glory may come in”; and in Matthew Jesus used the imagery of the narrow or wide gate as an entrance into either heaven or destruction; and Jesus is the gate himself in John. In this parable God’s help is at the gate – this help is in the form of the most poor and desperate beggar whom God loves. In the afterlife, Abraham informs the rich man that the gulf between him and Lazarus is now set forever and cannot be bridged. Yet this only serves as a reminder that while on earth the gate was open as Lazarus waited for some recognition from the rich man. It is too late for the rich man in the story, but not too late for you and I. Our place in this parable can be understood as the brothers who are still alive back at home, perhaps unaware or ignorant of the serious nature of their predicament. The rich man, understanding that his fate is sealed, seeks to help his brothers to avoid a similar one. He begs Abraham to send back Lazarus to warn them that their ignore- ance has consequences. Abraham shrugs and says if they did not listen to the prophets, they will not listen to one who has come back from the dead – referring to Lazarus and also, of course to Jesus. But there remains a question mark in the story. In expressing his dismay, Abraham also leaves a lingering hope that in fact the brothers, and you and I, will listen and move towards the gateway of knowledge represented by Lazarus in order to stave off the fate that awaits those who dwell in ignore-ance. In this parable Jesus is teaching us the interconnection between our eternal spiritual life and our ethical behavior. The reference of the prophets is important because they were messengers of God who understood and proclaimed God’s demand for justice. They did not ignore the poor and the oppressed, just the opposite, they knew that we cannot be right with God and oppress our neighbor and leave the poor in misery. We cannot claim knowledge of God while being ignore-ant of our neighbor. We hear this in the words of the prophets Jeremiah, Amos and of Isaiah who tells us of God’s will for our piety: The Lord asks: Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? One of the members of the class of 2011 is named Sitraka who joins us from Madagascar. He spent the last two years in Africa working with a aid group called SOS, and before that he was a big brother in Canada with the organization Big brothers/Big sisters. I had a chance to have lunch with him the other day and we talked about his experiences being in service to others whom he has met at the gate. He told me the story of when he asked Ben, the boy whom he had been paired, - what he had learned after their year together. Ben responded: “I learned to never give up.” When hearing that Sitraka told me (quote) “my soul had a victorious smile.” Sitraka gave Ben the tools he needed to survive in the world and Ben gave Sitaka the experience of God’s grace. Ben and Sitraka met at the gate and together, through their encounter, entered into the kingdom of God. Like the rich man, we are told so often that what matters is how much we have or the kind of clothes we wear, or the car we drive or the people we know, that we become hypnotized by the material world and ignore the world around us that is calling out for our attention. The Gospel lesson this morning wakes us up and reminds us that there is another way to be in the world that is present if we have eyes to see it and ears to hear of it. It is the kingdom of God and the Gate is open for you and for me to enter and make God’s realm our home. A famous woman evangelist of the early 20th century named Aimee Semple McPherson was profiled in the New Yorker recently. McPherson was known for her dynamic Pentecostal – style preaching and her flamboyant personal life which, as happens, was not without its scandals. Later in her life, after she was somewhat disgraced she found herself at a dance club surrounded by the rich and the powerful. A journalist somewhat snidely asked her to preach to the assembled boozy and self satisfied crowd and this is what she told them: “Behind all these beautiful clothes, behind these good times, in the midst of your lovely buildings, and shops and pleasures there is another life. There is something on the other side. What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” With all your getting and playing and good times, do not forget you have a Lord. Take him into your hearts.” Let us repent of our ignore – ance of God and of our fellow human being. And pass through the gate today into the kingdom of God and know the Lord, and to know one another and be saved.
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