Enough

Amos 6:1a, 4-7
Alas for those who are at ease in Zion, and for those who feel secure on Mount Samaria.
Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory, and lounge on their couches,

and eat lambs from the flock, and calves from the stall;
who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp, and like David

improvise on instruments of music;
who drink wine from bowls, and anoint themselves with the finest oils,

but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!
Therefore they shall now be the first to go into exile,

and the revelry of the loungers shall pass away.

1 Timothy 6:6-19
Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment;
for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it;
but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these.
But those who want to be rich fall into temptation

and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires

that plunge people into ruin and destruction.

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich

some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.

But as for you, man of God, shun all this;

pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness.
Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called

and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus,

who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession,

I charge you to keep the commandment without spot or blame

until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ,

which he will bring about at the right time—

he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords.
It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.

As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty,

or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God

who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.
They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share,
thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future,

so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.

Luke 16:19-31
"There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen

and who feasted sumptuously every day.
And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores,

who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man's table;

even the dogs would come and lick his sores.
The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham.

The rich man also died and was buried.
In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up

and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side.

He 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.'

But 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.
Besides 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.'

He said, 'Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father's house--for I have five brothers—

that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.'

Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.'
He said, 'No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.'
He 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.'"

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Many Sundays I have to search for a thread

         that runs through the weekly scripture passages,

         that connect them to one another

         in a particularly Holy-Spirit sort of way.

That was not the case this Sunday.

And it was not hard to see how the message

         proclaimed through this Living Word

         has direct application to our lives these days.

From the prophet Amos, to the parable of Jesus,

         to the letter from Paul to Timothy,

we hear the clear message

         that God has a significant issue,

         not with our wealth or our privilege,

         but with the way we usually choose to use them.

And so, I pray that you will listen

         for the Word of God to you,

         for it is Life for those who have ears to hear it.

The book of Amos

         is almost unanimously considered

         to be the first of the prophetic books of scripture

         `to be written.

Its message is similar to those delivered

         by so many of the Old Testament prophets –

Israel, you have not obeyed the Word of the Lord,

         and so things are not going to go well for you,

         but you have the chance to turn, to repent. 

The sins of God’s people are spelled out in painful detail

         in this book.

We are given just one of many in our passage this morning –

the sin of complacent extravagance.

Note that the problem is not the extravagance in itself,

         the luxury, the wealth, but the way it is being used,

         or not used.

The New Interpreters Bible commentary puts it this way:

“Luxury is a problem when it is gathered

         at the expense of others’ misery,

         and when it deadens the mind and the senses

         to responsibility.”

Amos reminds us that luxury can lead to excess,

         but that is not his concern.

His concern is that a life of excess

         can make us numb to the difficulties of others,

         and therefore we are unaware of the ways

         that we can use our privilege to help others.

He is concerned about the effect of luxury

         on one’s attitude toward life and toward the world.

The more comfortable we are,

         the more effort we will put into staying comfortable,

         to protecting our comfort,

         and the less we will think about the discomfort,

         the pain, the oppression being experienced by others,

         even when we could help to change that.

Jesus picks up this thread

         in his parable about the rich man and Lazarus.

There are so many interesting aspects to this parable.

First of all, it comes at the end of a chapter

         that has been called “Rich Men and Lovers of Money”.

The chapter includes the story of the dishonest manager,

         which you heard Pastor Renee preach about last week,

         and ends with this story

         about the rich man and Lazarus.

In the middle are some rather harsh statements from Jesus,

         which provide context for understanding today’s story. In Luke 6: 14-15, we hear this:

“The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this, and they ridiculed [Jesus]. So he said to them, ‘You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others, but God knows your hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God.’”

“God knows your hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God.’”

And then he goes on to tell the story of this rich man,

         a man whose name we are never told,

         but a man with so much money

         that he can afford to wear the finest purple clothing,

         made of the most expensive cloth around.

A man so rich that he could eat sumptuous feasts every day,

         even on the Sabbath day –

         which means he was ignoring God

         and breaking the law

         by requiring that his servants prepare and serve him

         every day of the week with no break.

A rich man who was able to ignore the poor man

         out by the gate,

         whose name we are told was Lazarus,

         meaning helped by God.

A poor man who was laid by the gate each day,

         presumably by friends who hoped that someone –

         the rich man or his friends who feasted with him –

         would take pity on him and do something to help him.

A poor man who longed to just have the droppings

         from the rich man’s table.

A poor man who was only noticed by the dogs,

         the dogs who probably did eat the crumbs

         from the rich man’s table,

and who alone took notice of Lazarus,

         even licking his wounds

         and perhaps providing some small measure of healing.

The rich man was rich in privilege,

         in status, in standing, and in resources.

Lazarus had nothing but pain, hunger and illness.

The rich man had enough to share,

         but every day he ignored the poor man, Lazarus,

         at the gate.

The rich man’s privilege numbed him

         to the oppression of others –

         which was just what the prophet Amos

         was warning against.

And so the rich man dies. And Lazarus dies.

And the tables are turned.

The rich man is now in torment,

         and Lazarus is being comforted by Abraham.

And the rich man now wants things to improve.

He asks Abraham to send Lazarus to serve him,

         to ease his pain.

But Abraham gently tells him

         that the chasm between him and Lazarus is too great,

         it cannot be bridged.

And so the rich man begs Abraham to send Lazarus

         to his brothers to warn them, before it’s too late.

Abraham, wisely, says,

         “they have the warnings of the prophets” –

         as did the rich man himself.

“If they wouldn’t listen to them, they won’t listen to even one who is risen from the dead.”

It appears that Jesus is speaking of Lazarus – but of course, we know the end of the story. What if we won’t even listen to the commands of risen Christ?

Paul shares the same message as does Amos and Jesus, in his letter to Timothy.

“Those who are rich are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.”

When I read these passages,

         I become more and more aware of my own privilege,

         even as I find myself becoming defensive

         just from thinking about it.

I want to rationalize why I am an innocent bystander

         in a society that has unfairly privileged me

         above others.

I want to point out the ways in which I am not privileged,

         the circumstances that have limited me along the way.

I want to justify how I have earned what I have,

         fair and square.

And I want to make a list of all the ways I have tried

         to use my privilege and my resources to help others.

But the truth is, in this country, without question,

         the deck is stacked in my favor, as a white person,

         and it is stacked against persons of color.

Just as the rich man could ignore the problems

         of people like Lazarus,

         and nobody thought anything of it,

so I am able to go about my business

         without ever worrying about what will happen

         to me or my children if we walk into a store,

         if we walk down the street,

         if we get pulled over by the police.

We don’t have to automatically think

         that we will be judged as a risk or as a problem

         or as someone less capable or less deserving

         or less intelligent,

as someone who somehow deserves

         the oppression they face every day,

         just by the way we look. 

I can ignore the problems inherent in our society

         for persons of color. But they cannot.

And so I have an inherent privilege,

         and I must work to not ignore the problems of others,

         but to use my privilege to help improve their situation.

I suspect that most of you hear this

         and the same sort of defensiveness and,

         if we are honest, a sense of anger rises up in you too – that you have worked hard for what you have,

that you have not had an easy path

         to what you have built of your life, and so on.

I understand that feeling – I feel it myself –

         and it is true that most everyone has faced

         some adversity as they have tried to make their way

         in the world.

But for Lazarus, the deck was stacked against him.

There was no way to pull himself up by his bootstraps. People like Lazarus were just too easy to ignore.

And so Jesus helps us to understand

         that our blessings are not for our singular enjoyment.

They are not for us to just share with our friends and family.

They are entirely blessings that are given to us by God,

         so that we can use them to be a blessing

         to those who need a blessing.

And the place where we most find people in need

         is the place we are most likely to ignore –

the place that feels different to us, or unsafe, or unusual.

Jesus hung out with the misfits, with the marginalized,

         with those who were oppressed or ignored

         or considered unworthy.

As followers of Jesus,

         we who are rich in the love of Christ

         are made abundantly ready to bless others.

So the parable of the Good Samaritan teaches us

         that the true neighbor is the one who

         does not cross the street to avoid the outcast

         who is in trouble,

but who goes out of their way to take the risk

         of helping one who is considered undeserving of help.

And the story of Lazarus and the rich man

         tells us that God helps Lazarus,

         so we are expected to as well.

This summer I read a book by Jim Wallis,

         who is a theologian

         and the founder of a Christian community

         called Sojourners.

The book is titled “America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America”.  

Interestingly, this term for racism, America’s Original Sin, was also used this weekend by President George W. Bush at the opening of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African-American history and culture.

President Bush said, and I quote,

“The museum shows our commitment to truth. A great nation does not hide its history; it faces its flaws and corrects them. This museum tells the truth that a country founded on the promise of liberty held millions in chains. That the price of our union was America’s original sin.”

Because I am still wrestling with how best

         to understand and to discuss this,

I am turning to a few of his statements

         in the Jim Wallis book

         that helped me to see my privilege more clearly.

He says:

“Just as surely as blacks suffer in a white society because they are black, whites benefit because they are white. And if whites have profited from a racist system, we must try to change it. To go along with racist institutions and structures such as the racialized criminal justice system, to obliviously accept the economic order as it is, and to just quietly go about our personal business within institutional racism is to participate in white racism. Racism has to do with the power to dominate and enforce oppression, and that power in America is mostly still in white hands.”

He says, “The church has the capacity to be a much-needed prophetic interrogator of a system that has always depended upon racial oppression.”

And, I think most significantly, he restates the challenge that we also hear this morning from Jesus – the challenge to the rich man, and to all of us as well, in considering what to do with our privilege. This is a powerfully-worded challenge that I have carried in my heart since the day I read it, and I challenge you to hear it with the ears of Christ, and to carry it and ponder its meaning for you.

He says, “It’s time for white Christians to be more Christian than white— which is necessary to make racial reconciliation and healing possible. That’s what the country and, more important, what God is now waiting for.”

“It’s time for white Christians to be more Christian than white…”

So in this spirit, let us hear and heed the Good News of today’s Living Word!

The good news is that it’s not too late for us.

The good news is that we have enough.

We have enough resource to abundantly share.

We have enough privilege to listen to those who are oppressed, who are powerless, to try to see the world through their eyes.

We have enough time to repent, to turn, to follow Christ.

We have enough love from God to be able to love our neighbors – with an emphasis on the ones whose problems we try not to notice, the ones whose lives are so different from our own.

There is enough. We have enough.

God will judge how we use the privilege God has given us,

         how we use the resources God has made available to us,

         how we live out the salvation God has freely offered us,

         the forgiveness and the redemption

                  that make us a new creation, meant for good works.

We are blessed, dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

We are blessed, not for our own life of comfort,

         but we are blessed to be a blessing.

When we repent, we turn, we follow Christ, we live in a new way.

God gives us all good things, not for us to hoard for ourselves,

         but for us to use for good in the world.

There is enough. We are enough.

God’s love makes us enough –

         but only if we choose to truly follow,

         to truly choose the life that is true life,

         by truly loving one another.

Amen.