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Reflection for September 19th

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"Neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead."

Today's Gospel reminds me of the many times I 'm approaching an intersection and hope I can reach it while the light is green, lest I have to stop and deal with the gaze of a shabbily dressed man or woman bearing a sign saying, "I'm out of work; will work for food" or "I've got six kids to feed." Now there have been times when, having a couple of loose dollars I can extract from my pocket without strangling myself with the seat belt, I have rolled down the window and made a donation. But most of the time I'm in a hurry, not because I'm en route to any important engagement but because I'm caught in that flow of modern traffic that brooks no delay - wherein you can sense the treads of the tires around you greedily ready to spin as soon as the light turns green. And then there are those other moments when, especially in San Francisco, I have to pass someone looking not unlike the Lazarus of today's story, appealing to me with basset eyes for some loose change, the smell of a public lavatory filling the doorway in which the fellow has spent the night - and again I'm caught in a dilemma that needs a quick solution: should I or shouldn't I. And nine times out of ten I don't!

Why? For all the usual reasons we come up with in an independent society like ours; why doesn't he get a job; is he really in need of money or just taking advantage of an easy touch like me; why doesn't the city do something about this; it's bad for tourism; why confirm this fellow in his aimless condition by contributing to it with a handout; why should I feed his addictions - and so on. Rationalizations concocted to justify my avoidance of the darker, sadder aspects of our civilization - the kind that would banish the unsightly beyond the margins of my world, out of sight, out of mind. And so I wince every time I hear this story about Lazarus and Dives (the latter name means wealth and has been given to the rich man in the story by later tradition).

But you know, there's a much more profound message in this parable than the mere reversal of fortune experienced by Dives and Lazarus in the hereafter - Dives finally getting to know what it's like to be down and out. No - the closing section of today's parable confronts us with a much more ominous lesson. Dives asks that Lazarus be sent back from the hereafter to alert his brothers to mend their ways and Abraham says, "If they already discount the teaching of Moses and the prophets concerning the existence of a just God and of the holiness of all creation (which is not simply raw material to be consumed) and importance of social justice and solidarity; if that's not enough to shake them out of their self-indulgence, neither will the resurrection of a Lazarus (or a Christ) from the dead."

Or to paraphrase G. B. Caird's commentary on St. Luke: "If we close our minds to the revelation of God, our hearts will soon become closed to the demands of compassion." Which to me is a scary thought because never (it seems to me) in human history has society become so indifferent and even skeptical of our Bible's understanding of our human origin and destiny - and its moral code. Remember that song: "The things that you're liable to read in the Bible, it ain't necessarily so"? We've become much too sophisticated to allow such fables to hobble the material priorities of our life style.

Well, it's true that surgeons may be able to keep our physical hearts pumping by way of the miracles of modern medicine, but if we lose our spiritual vision of who we are and why we exist such as revealed in Moses and the prophets and the good news of Christ, our hearts (meaning this time our very humanity) will fail us altogether nor will any surgeon be able to repair that. And that's what today's reading says we have to watch out for.

-- Geoff Wood