Creekside Church Sermon of September 30, 2001 "Learning to See" Luke 16:19-31	Rev. David Bibbee
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When I was a boy a playmate of mine was blinded in one eye by an exploding firecracker. I wondered if Bobby would ever be able to play football and baseball with us again. I wondered how I would get along if I lost an eye, or worse, became blind in both. I close my eyes and feel my way around the house and back yard imagining I was blind and thinking about how difficult life would be if I lost my sight. Some in our church family don't have to imagine it. They know all about the challenges of negotiating the daily round with diminished sight.

Our text from Luke is about blindness, not the sort that steals one's physical eyes, but the blindness that afflicts us even though we see 20/20. None are as blind as those who no longer see what is most precious in life. Nothing is wrong with their eyes. Their problem is selective seeing…seeing what they want to see, not seeing what they do not want to see.

Jesus' parable is about a rich man and a poor man, but it is not primarily the poor to whom Jesus is speaking. It reveals far more about the wealthy. There was no point in Jesus telling it if not primarily addressed to the rich in hopes of helping them see their need which prevented them from seeing the needs of the poor. It's a parable addressed to rich people…like us. I hear the protests already. "We're not rich!" I hear you because I hear myself. We will admit to being comfortable, but not rich. Compared to Bill Gates and Donald Trump, we are not. Compared to most people of the world and many in Elkhart, we are.

Poor man's name was Lazarus. It is the only parable of Jesus where someone was given a name. We don't know the rich man. He was nameless, which tells us something already. Name recognition comes with wealth. Rockefeller, Getty, Perot. Names with lots of initials or numbers after them. Who knows the names of the poor? But in Jesus' economy, things are reversed. The poor are known by name. Lazarus' name meant, "One whom God helps."

The rich man wore Armani suits. He had the best of everything. He feasted sumptuously. We feast sumptuously on occasion. He did it every day. He was probably a good man. Jesus didn't say he was evil, wicked, mean, or nasty. Being a good man he did things in response to needs that were dropped at the threshold of his heart. He lent his name and money to numerous charitable causes. He supported his church and lived by his version of the Golden Rule… "Don't do unto others what you don't want them doing to you." All was "sumptuously well" behind the walls of his gated estate.

Just outside the gate was a man with a far different life.

Jesus couldn't have painted a more pathetic picture. Leaning against the wall was poor Lazarus. Skin and bones. Dressed in rags. Covered with sores. Dogs that scavenged in garbage licked his sores as he watched delivery men go though the gates with sides of beef, legs of lamb, and baskets of fresh produce. There is a scene in the movie Hook where Peter Pan sits with the children to eat. There is no food on the table but they pass imaginary bowls from which they dish imaginary food on imaginary plates and with imaginary spoons shovel it into their mouths. Lazarus "imagined" eating. If he could only gnaw on a discarded steak bone or eat a crust of bread with which the rich man wiped his mouth.

No one could live long like that. Lazarus died. His corpse was drug away and given an ignoble burial. It wasn't long until Mr. Rich also died. The best preacher in town did his funeral. Litanies of praise were spoken by heads of charitable societies and hundreds who mourned his loss. Then came the rude awakening. Lazarus was united with Abraham, the father of the Jewish faith. His poverty was exchanged for the blessings of heaven, while the rich man, stripped of all riches, was in torment in hell. Heaven and hell were separated by a great divide, but not too great for the rich man's pleas to be heard. He saw Lazarus with Abraham. Think of it. He had walked by Lazarus every day, but was blind to his presence. Now he could see him. He even knew Lazarus' name.

As Lazarus enjoyed himself, the rich man cried, "Hell is hot as hell! Tell Lazarus to come over here to put just a little drop of water on my tongue." Lazarus wished for crumbs from the rich man's table. Now the rich man begs for a drop of water from Lazarus. The man who bathed in Perrier and had fountains throughout his estate only wanted to wet the tip of his tongue. "Sorry. You had your chance," Abraham said. And the rich man replied, "If he won't come to me, will you please send him to my wealthy brothers so they will open their eyes and hearts to people like Lazarus?" "It's a little late for that now," Abraham said. "Besides they have their Bibles. They know what the prophets said about caring for the poor and widows and orphans. They've been told. If they still won't see the needy, not even someone come back from the dead will change them."

Jesus was hard on the religious authorities for their failure to see what God wanted them to see. They could see with great clarity every jot and tittle of religious law. But they refused to see miracles of healing Jesus performed before their very eyes because he did it on the Sabbath. They saw splinters in other's eyes. not logs in their own.

While in Paris last year my hotel was three blocks from the Notre Dame Cathedral. Thousands go through this magnificent, ancient cathedral each day. I was in absolute awe of the architecture and history of the place, trying to absorb all the detail, and then I saw her. Sitting on a little stool by the door where tour groups enter the church was an old woman bundled in heavy, worn clothing. Her head was so covered with scarves you couldn't see her face. She was hunched over, looking to the ground and the cup for coins at her feet. She had been there all along, and I didn't see her. Most people walked by as if they didn't see her either. A priest walked by, then several feet later stopped, turned around and went back to put something in her cup. He saw her.

This parable isn't for the poor. They are in a better position to hear Jesus. Statistics tell us that those without wealth give proportionately far more to help others than those with wealth. "Blessed are the poor," Jesus said, not because they are poor, but because they are wise enough to understand that you will never have what truly matters by writing a check for it, or by adding one more thing to the materialistic stockpile. No mistake about it…this parable is for us.

If you haven't read the book, Tuesdays with Morrie, you should. It's by a sports writer who learned that a beloved professor of 20 years past was dying of Lou Gherig's disease. They reunited and the professor and student met each Tuesday to discuss the stuff of life that matters. On the fourth Tuesday, the subject was death. Morrie said:

When you realize you're going to die, you see everything much differently…let me tell you something you might not like. If you accept that you can die at any time, you might not be as ambitious. All the work you do might not seem as important. You might have to make room for spiritual things. We are deficient. Too involved in things that don't satisfy. Loving relationships, the universe around us. We take it all for granted.

He nodded out the window. "You see that? You can go out there anytime. Run up and down the block. I can't do that. I can't go out without the fear of getting sick. But you know what? I appreciate that window more than you do."

Morrie saw something that changed everything.

Albert Schweitzer read Jesus' parable, left everything and headed for Africa. Millard Fuller made millions, but the parable grabbed him and he left all that to follow Jesus and found Habitat for Humanity. But we are not them, are we? We know just enough about Jesus to realize that following him will cost us in more ways than one. It means seeing things we would rather not see. We would see that we have too much more than enough while many more never have enough. "Let Lazarus go back to warn my brothers so they will see." Like them, we have the Bible. We have more. We have Jesus. We know what he said about the poor.

"How do I inherit eternal life?" the rich young man asked Jesus. "Sell all your possessions. Give it to the poor. Follow me." The young man's eyes were opened just enough to see what he wouldn't do. He wanted life. But the price tag was too high. Scriptures that deal with possessions and the poor make us feel faint. We want to love Jesus. In the words of St. Francis, we want to see him more clearly, love him more dearly, and follow him more nearly. A part of us wants this.

But if we are thoroughly honest, we know that none of us want to follow him so much that we are willing to hand over our possessions. We are not willing to hand over our abilities and ambitions, our money, our treasures, our children and spouses, our retirement, our dreams. The price is too high. Peter Gomes says that we opt instead for goodness. We follow the rules. We try to conduct our lives in a Christian manner, but we are frustrated because we know it is not enough. Like the rich young man we walk away with heavy hearts. "Who then can be saved?" the disciples asked Jesus. "No one," Jesus said. "It is impossible for people."

Humanly speaking it can't be done. We don't have power within ourselves to save ourselves. :It is impossible," Jesus said. But he also said, "With God all things are possible." God is not limited in what he can make of us. Abraham told the rich man it would do his brothers no good even if someone from the dead warned them about failing to see. This parable is so unsettling and there is no hope in it for us, save for one thing. Abraham was wrong. Someone did come back from the dead. The ancient creeds of the church said Jesus even descended into hell first. Why would he have gone there if there was no hope for the souls who were there?

Jesus came back from the dead to help us see needs we had never seen before. If Jesus was raised from the dead, then there is still hope that the scales will fall from our eyes so we will see the needs of people around us which we had not seen before, and even more, do something about them.

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