Are We Paying Attention? SCRIPTURE Luke 16:19-31

Transcription

1 SERMON Are We Paying Attention? SCRIPTURE Luke 16:19-31 Luke 16: There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. 20 At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores 21 and longing to eat what fell from the rich man s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores. 22 The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham s side. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. 24 So he called to him, Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire. 25 But Abraham replied, Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. 26 And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us. 27 He answered, Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, 28 for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment. 29 Abraham replied, They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them. 30 No, father Abraham, he said, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent. 31 He said to him, If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.

2 The renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright once told of an incident that perhaps seemed insignificant at the time, but had a profound influence on the rest of his life. The winter he was nine-years-old, he went walking across a snow-covered field with his reserved, no-nonsense uncle. As the two of them reached the far end of the field, his uncle stopped him and pointed out his own tracks in the snow, straight and true as an arrow flight. He then pointed out young Frank's tracks, which meandered all over the field. "Notice how your tracks wander aimlessly from the fence to the cattle to the woods and back again," his uncle said. "And see how my tracks aim directly to my goal. There is an important lesson in that." Years later, Wright liked to tell how this experience greatly contributed to his philosophy of life. "I determined right then," he said with a twinkle in his eye, "not to miss most things in life, as my uncle had." The parable of the rich man and Lazarus is about paying attention. I know that a lot pf people see in this parable different points. Some see the point as being about the afterlife, some see the point as doing good so you get into heaven, some say it is about the difference between heaven and hell, some see it as the relationship between heaven and hell. Some talk about the disposition of souls before Jesus won our salvation and where those righteous souls resided before Christ, some see the point as finality of death the inability to effect change once we leave this world. Maybe you see an entirely different point. What s the point? Are We paying attention? That may be the point. Here is something interesting about this Parable: This is the only parable Jesus told where we know one of the characters names. Lazarus. We

3 know the name of Lazarus and that he was a begger, who evidentially was disabled. He laid at a gate to beg and he was covered with sores, which dogs would lick and Lazarus was starving because he longed just to eat what fell on the floor in the rich man s house. Another one of the key characters was the rich man. We don t know his name but we know his lifestyle. He lived in opulence. His gate where Lazarus begged was huge. In English we basically have one word for a gate in a wall; gate. In the Greek there are more descriptive words and this word describes a huge gate like a wrought iron gate you might find guarding a home in Beverly Hills with the owners monogram in it. The rich man is very wealthy. Both men die. Lazarus is carried by angels to Abrahams side. This is unique phrase found only here in the bible and it appears to have been drawn from a popular belief that the righteous would rest by Abraham's side in the world to come, an opinion described in Jewish literature at the time of Christ. The word kolpos - literally refers to the side or lap of a person. It refers to a place of honor reserved for a special guest - the reserved place is special because it is beside Abraham, the father of all the righteous. All it says about the rich man was that he was buried. Are we paying attention? There is a significant difference in the way Jesus refers the deaths of the 2 men. Lazarus death has a beautiful quality that speaks comfort to the anyone listening. The way he describes the rich man s death is blunt. He was buried. No fanfare, just buried.

4 But then we see that the rich man has a consciousness after death and that as Jesus describes it he is in Hades. The word comes from mythology as the name of the god of the underworld. The KJV translates the word as Hell. So in the story the rich man see s Lazarus by Abraham s side and askes Abraham to send Lazarus to give him drip of water to cool his mouth in this fire. Response: REMEMBER you had your good stuff/ Lazarus had his bad stuff. Now it s flipped. In C.S. Lewis s book, The Great Divorce a story about a bus ride after death there is this quote from a resident of heaven to a new arrival: Son, 'he said,' ye cannot in your present state understand eternity...that is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, "No future bliss can make up for it," not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say "Let me have but this and I'll take the consequences": little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why...the Blessed will say "We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven, : and the Lost, "We were always in Hell." And both will speak truly.

5 AND BESIDE THAT there is no crossing over here. The true You can t get there from here. So the Richie ask him to send Lazarus to his brothers so they won t suffer like he is suffering now Response: They have enough to know this they have Moses and the Prophets Let them listen to them And Richie says: Not good enough! But send someone back from the dead and they will repent! Response: If they won t listen to Moses and the Prophets they won t listen to a resurrect person either. Are we paying attention? That was Richie s problem he never paid attention. In life he knew the beggar s name outside his gate was Lazarus s. He used it in this story. But he either didn t pay attention to Lazarus s condition or didn t care because Lazarus wasn t even getting the droppings from this guy s table no charity. He wasn t paying attention. The scriptures taught the Jewish people of Jesus day as it does today that the poor are to be cared for. Richie didn t pay attention to the teachings of the scriptures. Quoting from Lewis s The Great Divorce again: You cannot love a fellow creature fully till you love God. C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

6 Jesus isn t teach that how we treat people determines if we get to be with God. How we treat people SHOWS that we are with God, on God s side believing Him. He wasn t paying attention to his state in life or in death. Even in death he looked as Lazarus whose purpose was to serve him, even though he was in hell and Lazarus was comfortably in heaven he want Lazarus sent to meet his need. He was oblivious to the reality in which he was living. Lost people often are. One more Great Divorce Quote: There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened. The rich man didn t pay attention to two essential things: 1. that he had a soul and that one day he would stand before God and 2. He had a responsibility to the needs of others whom he could help through God s provision to him. He failed both. Are we paying attention: We have Moses and the Prophets too, and more Jesus has risen from the dead and we know there is life after death and that the way there is through Jesus but are we paying attention to Christ, to our spiritual life and growing in our relationship with the Lord everyday or

7 are we taking it for granted? We may not end up were the rich man did but we may not be in the end all God intended us to be. Are we paying attention to those around us? To the poor? To those who suffer? To those who are search? To those who don t know they matter to God and their destiny matters to God and to us? We are trying to pay attention to our community as a church. I want to share one of the ways we are trying to pay attention to the needs of others who are searching for truth but may have problems with tradition church forms. After prayer and discussion and planning the leadership of the church are preparing to offer to our community a different kind of worship experience. It will be informal, relational and conversational. We are planning to begin in the Timothy House on Friday evenings at 6 oclock. The gather will include singing and bible study and discussion and prayer and fellowship. If you are paying attention to those around you and know someone who might respond to this kind of expernce but not a traditional church setting, invite them and bring them along with you. We are beginning this service Friday, October 21 st at 7:00.