The Choice is Yours
David Orendorff · Luke 16:19-31 · September 30th, 2007
Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus is very effective and has scared many with its threat of “torment in Hades.” We all know churches that base their passion for being Christian and bringing others to Christ on the threat of eternal damnation.
The contrast between the nameless rich man and the named poor man, Lazarus, is stark. Lazarus is covered not with rich purple garments but with sores. Lazarus does not fight to keep his waistline manageable, but is starving and would be happy if he could only have the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table.
The parable calls the rich to a choice and the parable puts the consequences of the choice pretty severely. I don’t really know how to pretty it up. We are the rich, even the poorest of us. Lazarus sits just outside our door begging for the crumbs from our tables. We can choose to ignore his cries and be stingy with our wealth and when we die be “tormented in Hades.” Or we can be generous with all they have and be “carried away by the angels to be with Abraham.”
Now whether “Hades” or hell is an actual place after death, or a state of mind that can make this life and the next unbearable, this parable ought to scare the stingy right out of us. No one wants to suffer any kind of “Hades,” especially not in eternity.
As you know I don’t generally approve of scaring folks into heavenly choices, but sometimes fear is the first glimpse of wisdom. There are things we should be afraid of and having a hellish life and afterlife is one of those things. Fear can make us consider carefully the choices we must make, and almost daily remake, with the generosity of our lives.
I say daily remake because the rich culture in which we live preaches something quite contrary to the teaching of Jesus in this parable. Our place and time teaches us to take care of ourselves, to even indulge ourselves, in search of our own joy. Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus turns this common wisdom on its head and teaches that our real joy, our eternal joy, comes not in self indulgence but in a generous heart for the starving. To be a follower of Jesus we will have to daily resist its influence.
The choice to be self-indulgent or generous is at the heart of what United Methodists understand to be Christian. At the center of John Wesley’s call to be in a relationship with the love of God and the joy of life was his call “to choose” to be a follower of Jesus. In his writings he often refers to Jesus’ call to the disciples to choose between how their lives are now or to follow him into a new life which serves the poor, the outcast, the abused, the stranger and the enemy.
And Jesus, in this parable, indicates that the rich man and his brothers have from Moses and the prophets all the information they need to make their choice. The choice to serve or not to serve the poor is at their doorstep and its consequences are clear from the earliest writings of law and the prophets. We, of course, have the added advantage of having Jesus return from the dead to further clarify the choice before us and encourage us with life forever.
Most of you have made the choice to follow Jesus or you wouldn’t be here. Some of you may be still seeking and remain undecided as to discipleship. I have made my choice to follow Jesus and serve those in need. But I must confess I am not very good at following my choice.
Mike Yaconelli says it well for he writes, “I have been trying to follow Christ most of my life, and the best I can do is a stumbling, bumbling, clumsy kind of following. I wake up most days with the humiliating awareness that I have no clue where Jesus is. Even though I am a minister, even though I think about Jesus every day, my following is…uh…meandering.
“So I’ve decided to write a book about the spiritual life.
“I know what you’re thinking. Based on what I’ve just said about my walk with God, having me write about spirituality is like having Bozo the Clown explain the meaning of the universe, like playing Handel’s Messiah on the kazoo.”1 Michael Yaconelli, Messy Spirituality: God’s Annoying Love for Imperfect People, (Zondervan Press: Grand Rapids, 2002), 11
It often seems to me that I am Bozo trying to play something profound on a kazoo. You don’t have to know me very well to know that I am not a perfect follower of Jesus. And even though you don’t know how imperfect I really am, you do know that I not perfect as pastor, as husband, as father, friend or disciple.
But here is the great thing about this choice to follow Jesus, to love God, neighbor and self; we are not called to be perfect at it, but only to try it as best we can. The rich man was not called to be perfect in his compassion for Lazarus, only to help as best he could. No disciple is called to be perfect, for in this case there would be no disciples. We are all, as Yaconelli writes “messy” in our discipleship.
But we need not worry over our messiness. One of graces many meanings is that when we choose to follow Jesus what really happens is that Jesus turns to us and pursues us. In the messiness of our following Jesus comes to us, teaches us, forgives our failures and heals our broken places. It turns out that Jesus is much more interested in coming into our lives than we are in coming to him. And once invited in Jesus clings to us by word and spirit to, mess by mess, clean us up.
I return to Mike Yaconelli who cites the case of Anne Lamott.
Anne Lamott, a fellow messy Christian, describes perfectly what happens when Jesus pursues us. In her book Traveling Mercies, Anne recounts her conversion to Jesus. Things are not going well in her life: addicted to cocaine and alcohol, involved in an affair that produced a child whom she aborted, helplessly watching her best friend die of cancer. During this time, Anne visited a small church periodically. She would sit in the back to listen to the singing and then leave before the sermon. During the week of her abortion, she spiraled downward. Disgusted with herself, she drowned her sorrows in alcohol and drugs. She had been bleeding for many hours from the abortion and finally fell into bed, shaky and sad, smoked a cigarette, and turned off the light.2 ibid., 17-18
Anne Lamott now picks up her own story:
After a while, as I lay there, I became aware of someone with me, hunkered down in the corner, and I just assumed it was my father, whose presence I had felt over the years when I was frightened and alone. The feeling was so strong that I actually turned on the light for a moment to make sure no one was there – of course, there wasn’t. But after a while, in the dark again, I knew beyond any doubt that it was Jesus. I felt him as surely as I feel my dog lying nearby as I write this.
And I was appalled….I thought about what everyone would think of me if I became a Christian, and it seemed an utterly impossible thing that simply could not be allowed to happen. I turned to the wall and said out loud, “I would rather die.”
I felt him just sitting there on his haunches in the corner of my sleeping loft, watching me with patience and love, and I squinched my eyes shut, but that didn’t help because that’s not what I was seeing him with.
Finally I fell asleep, and in the morning, he was gone.
This experience spooked me badly, but I thought it was just an apparition, born of fear and self-loathing and booze and loss of blood. But then everywhere I went, I had the feeling that a little cat was following me, wanting me to reach down and pick it up, wanting me to open the door and let it in. But I knew what would happen: you let a cat in one time, give it a little milk, and then it stays forever….
And one week later, when I went back to church, I was so hungover that I couldn’t stand up for the songs, and this time I stayed for the sermon, which I just thought was so ridiculous, like someone trying to convince me of the existence of extraterrestrials, but the last song was so deep and raw and pure that I could not escape. It was as if the people were singing in between the notes, weeping and joyful at the same time, and I felt like their voices or something was rocking me in its bosom, holding me like a scared kid, and I opened up to that feeling – and it washed over me.
I began to cry and left before the benediction, and I raced home and felt the little cat running along at my heels, and I walked down the dock past dozens of potted flowers, under a sky as blue as one of God’s own dreams, and I opened the door to my houseboat, and I stood there a minute, and then I hung my head and said,…”I quit.” I took a long deep breath and said out loud, “All right. You can come in.”3 ibid., 17-19, quoted from Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith, (New York: Pantheon, 1999), 49-50
Jesus pursues us as Lazarus, begging us to open our doors to let him come in and be served. Our choice is to say, “All right. You can come on in” and receive the joy of heaven, or to leave the door closed and suffer Hades. Our choice is to be either stingy or generous. And because it is our choice, the consequences, heaven or hell, will be ours as well.
Shalom and Amen.