(Note: This blog entry is based on the text “The Meaning Life”, originally shared on September 21, 2022. It was the 235th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
You’ve seen the homeless on the streets.
Have you been conflicted over how to help? Maybe you’ve seen the signs that
say, “Don’t help the homeless. Help the organizations that help the homeless,” and
wondered if you should just walk by. Today, we’re going to find out, and we’re
going to find out in the context of the meaning of life.
In Douglas Adams’ future fiction book, A
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, he explains that the most useful object
for people hitchhiking around outer space is a towel. Now you know.
He
also explains the meaning of life, the universe and everything.
A
supercomputer is built to discover the meaning of life, the universe, and
everything. It takes 7½ million years, and then reveals the answer to be “42”.
Unfortunately, by then, everyone has forgotten the question so a super-duper
computer, made of organic parts is built to discover the ultimate question. The
name of this super-duper computer is, “Earth”.
What
is the meaning of life? Jesus answers it, and the answer was just as shocking
to people in Jesus’ physical time on earth as it is now.
The answer begins with
Luke 16:19-20,
19“There was a rich man
who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every
day. 20And at his gate lay a
poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, 21who longed to satisfy
his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come
and lick his sores.
We see homeless people all over, and the
numbers seem to be increasing. People running for office all have plans to end
homelessness. We’ve passed propositions to increase our taxes to end
homelessness. Funds have been set aside in city, state, and federal budgets.
Non-profits seek grants and create bureaucracies to deal with the problem. As
the saying goes, “There’s a lot of money in poverty.” Yet, homelessness
persists.
We are also concerned about the decline of
the middle class and the growing gap between the rich and the poor. Things were
even worse in Jesus’ time on earth.
Lazarus was homeless.
The “rich man” in Jesus’ parable was
super-rich and important. Purple cloth was very expensive and only the
aristocrats and well-connected in the Romans Empire were allowed to wear it. He
“feasted” every day, not only at milestone events, like the other 99.99%, if
even then. His house had a gate and the dogs at his gate were likely there for
security.
The poor, hungry, sick and disabled homeless
man at the rich man’s gate, whose only medical attention seems to come from
dogs, who is given the name Lazarus, the same name as Jesus best friend, and which
means “God helps”, is the only person who is named in any of Jesus parables.
The rich man is not.
This is significant because we’re going to
see an example of a great reversal in this parable. The story continues with verse
22,
22The poor man died and
was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and
was buried.
Both men die, and we learn that the poor man
is carried by angels to be with Abraham, the patriarch whose faith was accounted
to him as righteousness long before Moses received the 10 commandments and the
Covenant based on the Law with God.
We also learn that the rich man gets a
funeral, probably a nice one, but he goes to a bad place, and there is no
mention of being carried anywhere by angels.
Remember that this is a parable, it’s not an
allegory. It only has one meaning, and its’s not about heaven and hell. The
parable is one of a string of parables to which some Pharisees who were lovers
of money were listening. They, along with many others in the crowds would have
believed that Lazarus’ afflictions were justly deserved punishments for being a
sinner, while the Pharisees were going to be rewarded with good things in this
life because they had obeyed the letter of the religious law, if not its spirit.
Jesus is saying in this parable that it doesn’t work that way at all. He will
soon demonstrate it on the cross. It’s an example of this great reversal
The rich man is in Hades, he knows things
are bad, but he doesn’t seem to have figured out that he’s no longer rich, or
well connected, or in charge. Or that Lazarus isn’t his go-fer.
We see it in verses 23-26,
23In Hades, where he
was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his
side. 24He called out,
‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his
finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.’ 25But Abraham said,
‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and
Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are
in agony. 26Besides all this,
between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want
to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’
Lazarus had longed for the scraps from the
rich man’s table. Now the rich man longs for a drop of cool water from Lazarus’
finger.
Time’s up for the rich man. A great division
has taken place, and he’s receiving the consequences of his actions, while
Lazarus is being compensated for the rich man’s lack of actions.
So, we seem to be getting a lot of
information about something that looks like heaven and hell. If this parable
isn’t about them, what’s it about?
We get the answer in the remaining verses of
this parable, Luke 16:27-31,
27He said, ‘Then, father,
I beg you to send him to my father’s house— 28for I have five
brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place
of torment.’ 29Abraham replied,
‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’ 30He said, ‘No, father
Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ 31He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither
will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”
The Reticular Activating System occupies the
space at the base of our brains and helps us focus. It is the means by which we
filter out things that are not unusual, or of immediate value or of concern to
us from things that require our full attention. Beyond the fight or flight
instinct, we train this filter based on what we value, in the formation of our
conscience or of our character.
The rich man did allow Lazarus to sprawl
near the gate where his guests arrived and left his gated home but, other than
that, he had filtered out Lazarus from his normal consciousness.
He did have some compassion for his
brothers, though, who were apparently just as tuned out to the needs of those
around him as he was.
He asks to be raised from the dead to visit
them with a warning.
It worked in the book/movie/play “A
Christmas Carol”, which I saw summarized in a three-panel cartoon once: 1.)
Scrooge says, “Christmas is humbug.” 2.) Three ghosts say to him “You’re
humbug.” 3.) Scrooge says, “Yay, Christmas!”
Maybe he hoped for that. But that wasn’t
going to happen. It couldn’t happen. No special favors for the rich man’s
brothers
Besides, says Abraham, they have what we
would call the Bible.
Nope, says the rich man, but if someone were
to go to them from the dead, then they would repent. They would turn away from
their selfish lives and turn toward doing God’s will.
Then comes the point of the parable. Abraham
says, “‘If they do not
listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if
someone rises from the dead.”
Jesus raised another guy named Lazarus, his
best friend, from the dead and you notice that believers didn’t just come
streaming in.
Jesus had taken his life back again when he came
back from the dead, and the church was under persecution by the time the Gospel
of Luke was written.
If someone can talk you into something,
someone can come around the next day and talk you out of it.
If you hear a claim that Jesus rose from the
dead, you might search for naturalistic explanations to deny it.
Tim Keller, the Christian author and pastor of a large Presbyterian
church in Manhattan, once said, “When people tell me that they once were believing Christians
but now have rejected it all-I often ask them (after long, close listening) why
they originally believed Jesus rose from the dead and how they came to decide
that he now didn't. They usually say it's a helpful question.”
Belief isn’t
the same as faith. Faith is a gift from God and, as a gift from God, nothing
can take it away from us. It comes through encountering the presence of God,
revealed to us through the Bible.
The authority
of the Bible doesn’t come from the words on its pages. It comes from the Holy
Spirit. The same Holy Spirit, the third person of the Holy Trinity, one God,
that inspired the writers of the Bible to write it also inspires
us to understand it.
We come to life, to faith, to relationship
with the one true living God when we encounter God through the Bible.
Prayer is the primary way we speak to God,
and the Bible is the primary way that God speaks to us, as in prayer, through
the transformational presence of God that makes of us a new Creation, persons
who are born again, the people of God.
So, as in all relationships, we need to
spend time with God regularly for that relationship to be healthy and grow, and
for us to be transformed and renewed.
Our conscience, our character, our sense of
justice and social action all come from that relationship. We act in accord
with who we are. Who we are comes from our acknowledgment of whose we are.
There is only being in the Christian life, but it’s that being that guides us
into action.
I heard a story many years ago about a man
who died and went to heaven.
Just before he entered the pearly gates,
however, he turned to St. Peter and said, “I’m really looking forward to what I
know is on the other side of these gates but, I also know that once I get
inside, I’ll be changed. I don’t know if it will happen, but I think that I
might always wonder what life in the other place was like. So, I’d like to ask
if it would be possible to visit the other place, just briefly, to see for
myself.”
“Granted,” said St. Peter, and the man found
himself at the gates of hell.
He walked through and was greeted by a
horrible sight.
Inside, he saw rows and rows of tables
stretching to the horizon. Each table was piled high with delicious food and drink,
but the people sitting at the tables were starving.
The reason they were starving was three-foot
long forks and spoons had been fixed to their arms, and while they could put food
in the utensils, the ends were too long to reach their months, so they were
starving.
“I’ve seen enough,” he said, and he was
transported back to the gates of heaven.
When he walked through, however, he saw
people sitting at the same kinds of tables stretching to the horizon, piled
high with the same food and drink. And the people also had three-foot long
forks and spoons fixed to their arms.
But, here, people were laughing and healthy
and singing praises to God.
The difference was that, here, people were
using their utensils to feed each other.
That idea had never occurred to the people
in hell and that, in part, was why they were there.
The meaning of life is not in what we keep,
but in what we share, how we use what we have as means for our ministry, our
calling.
Not all of us will give equal gifts, but we
can all make equal sacrifices.
All of us do what we do as an expression of
who we are before God, repentant sinners, redeemed by a loving and gracious God
on the cross, living out our daily vocation, our calling, using all that we
have and all that we are as means for ministry to the glory of God.
This is the world’s hope and the Good News
that we have to share, not “support my church”, “serve on my committee” or
“maintain my traditions”. The Church belongs to God, and we have been redeemed
by the blood of Jesus Christ.
Our good news is “come and encounter Jesus
and be saved,” “eternity starts right now,” and “serve others as you have first
been served by God.”
The Bible is the primary means by which God
makes God’s self known to us. It is fully sufficient to do that. Read it every day
and open your heart to receive God’s transformational presence through an
encounter with the living God in it.
Homelessness enters the world through human
rebellion against God. How we help the homeless is a matter of what comes from
our relationship with God, how it has transformed us, and what the Holy Spirit
leads us to do.
The meaning of life is to receive the gift
of faith, the living relationship with the living God for which we were created
from the beginning and to live accordingly.
Use everything you are called, equipped, and
sent into the world to do to live that life. Live in God’s joy to glorify God
and to make this world more like the world God intended it to be.
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