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Philippians 2:1-11 This sermon was prepared for the Week of Compassion, which is both an event and the emergency relief, refugee assistance and self-help development mission fund of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Week of Compassion partners ecumenically with Church World Service, Action by Churches Together, One Great Hour of Sharing, Bread for the World, and other church agencies. I know that this story [of Lazarus] is on my mind today because I am a rich man who has recently been among the poor. I returned last night from an eight-day trip to El Salvador and Nicaragua with 11 other pastors of our Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). One of our hosts referred to Central America as "the patio of the United States." So, if I might borrow from the story line of this scripture, what I did this week was to leave the house by way of the south gate where I saw with my own eyes, there on our nation's patio, Lazarus. Lazarus who, according to Jesus, "longs to satisfy his hunger with what falls from the rich man's table." What I'm saying is that as a rich man who has been beyond the gate, out on the south patio, among the poor, this story has demanded my careful attention. What I've been wondering, among other things, is why this rich man in Jesus' story did not reach out to the poor man at his gate. It's too bad that no name is given to this rich man, because if we knew who he is we could ask him why he didn't reach out to the poor man. Maybe you know who this particular rich person is, but I sure don't. No name is given. All I know is that he didn't reach out to someone in need, and I'm wondering why. It's all conjecture, of course, but maybe he didn't reach out because he just didn't care. Some folks don't, you know. He might have thought that Lazarus' being poor was a sign of laziness or lack of initiative or something like that. Whatever the reason, it was his own doing, so don't come ringing my bell for a handout. Get a job! Maybe he just didn't care. Or maybe he did care, but it's just that his caring was directed to meeting needs other than Lazarus' particular needs. Right? I mean, what with all the problems in this world, you can only do so much. You can't help everybody. And you know as well as I do that when you give to one do-good organization these days, they turn around and sell their mailing list (with your name on it) to a hundred and seventy-five other do-good organizations, and soon your mailbox is filled with appeals for helping every needy Tom, Dick, and Lazarus from Columbus to Calcutta, and you just can't respond to everybody. I don't know, I suppose we could speculate all day long as to why that rich man didn't respond to that poor man at his gate. Who knows? But what if . . . what if he didn't reach out because he didn't even notice Lazarus was there? Didn't even see him. You know, it's possible. I mean, some of the gates people live behind are so tall that it would be possible for a poor man to sit on the other side and the folks on the inside not even notice he's there. Why, by and large the neighborhoods we live in, the places where we shop and play and work are so well insulated that you can live, shop, work and play there and never see a poor person. Let me ask you: If you look out from the window above your kitchen sink, would you be able to see a poor person? From where you sit in your office, can you see the poor? I sure can't. While walking through your neighborhood, would you likely come across Lazarus? I'm just saying that it is entirely possible that this rich man didn't even notice that Lazarus, a poor man, was right there on his doorstep, at his gate, on the patio. And hey, how can we criticize him for not reaching out to others in need if he didn't even see the poor man in the first place? And as my friend Johnny Wray, Director of our Disciples Week of Compassion, once said, "Before we can show compassion, before we can do justice, before we can engage in the simplest deeds of mercy and kindness, first we must notice." And what if he never noticed? And while we're on the topic of noticing, my friend goes on to ask, "Have you noticed how much of Jesus' ministry was precipitated by his noticing what others miss?" In a crowded temple (as the deacons are passing the offering plates), Jesus notices a woman, a widow, drop in a single coin. He gets his disciples' attention. "Did you see that?" he said. "She gave all she had, her whole life." They evidently missed it, but he noticed. He's in a crowd, people jostling each other, busily on their way when Jesus stops and asks, "Whoa. Whoa. Did somebody touch me?" A woman who had been hemorrhaging for twelve years admits it was she. Ashamed, a cast-off from society, she was trying to be unobtrusive, and she was to everybody else, but Jesus noticed her. Responded to her. Healed her. Children try to draw near to him, the adults paying them no mind, even shooing them away, and Jesus noticed: "Don't hinder the children from coming unto me." Jesus noticed everything, everyone. Read the scriptures and see from yourself. Particularly the poor, the suffering, and the excluded: women, men, children. Whereas others were oblivious to them, Jesus noticed and reached out to those in need. What he did, if I might paraphrase Paul's words in Philippians, was to come down out of his gated community. What gated community are you talking about, David? Heaven. You know: the Pearly Gates. Up there. With God. Away from earth's misery. "But Jesus," Paul says, "counted equality with God a thing not to be grasped (He chose not to live in a gated community), but instead he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, even unto death on a cross." It has been pointed out more than once that the direction of our Lord's outreach - from heaven to earth come down - might be called downward mobility. "He was rich," say the scriptures, "but for our sakes became poor." I'm saying that, far from the disciples and others who tagged along with Jesus and watched but didn't notice, God so loved the world that noticing its need, God reached out and sent God's only begotten Son. This is all to say that Jesus came down out of his place of privilege and pleasure, noticed people in need, and reached out to them. One thing my trip to Central America taught me is that reaching out begins with first simply noticing, but that noticing requires our coming down out of our places of privilege and pleasure so as to actually see and meet Lazarus. Greg and Dawn Nottingham, our missionaries in El Salvador, are doing incredible ministry among the poorest of the poor. (Among other things, Greg ministers to families who live in the city's garbage dump, scavenging for things to sell, recycle, and eat). During a tour of that city, built on the sides of a mountain, with the old town center at the base of the mountainside and houses built up the mountainside around it, Greg and Dawn told us of a particular street about two miles or so up from the city center which locals, particularly American nationals, refer to as the DMZ, the demilitarized zone, so named, because few of the folks living above that street ever ventured below it, thereby keeping themselves safely secluded from and oblivious to the plight of the poor down below. When residents of those neighborhoods learned of the location and nature of Greg and Dawn's ministry, they were taken aback. It was beyond them why anyone would choose to go where they went. All of which brought to mind another observation of Johnny Wray, who said, "When we make people invisible, we can deny responsibility for them. We can deny any relationship with them. We can even participate in grave injustices against them." Before we reach out, we must notice, and to notice, to really notice, we have to be willing to come down, come out, look and see. We have to be willing to look. Our last night in San Salvador, we ate with ministers of our partner churches in that troubled land. And at the close of the meal, one of the pastors said simply, "I want to thank you most of all for simply making the effort to come down here and be with us in El Salvador. I have long said that the most important step in any outreach is simply seeing face-to-face." And then he told of a trip to the USA during the civil war in El Salvador. He met a well-to-do businessman of his denomination who, when he learned where the bishop was from, responded, "I don't know much about El Salvador. Tell me a little bit about it. But then again, don't bother. To be honest, I really don't care that much. But I want to do something to help, so I'm going to write you a check for $10,000. I want you to use it in whatever way you see fit to make a difference." Whereupon the bishop thought for a moment and then said, "Here is what I am going to do in order to make a difference in El Salvador. I am going to sign this check back over to you, and I want you to use it to fly down and visit our country and see its people first-hand." That man came, the bishop said, not once but three times, and he was changed. And now his word to anyone who will listen is, "Please, if you don't want to change, don't go to El Salvador." Well, I've gone, and I've been changed. The experience has been "an eye opener." I've been helped to notice things I never really noticed before about poverty and injustice and the disparity between rich and poor and the startling, courageous ministries of people of deep, deep faith who are truly reaching out to those in need in Jesus' name on your behalf and mine. Having noticed so much, I want to reach out all the more. I have a deep, deep passion for doing that. That's what I want to do. Do you, too? Do you really want to do whatever it requires to reach out to those in need, meaning first and foremost taking great pains to first notice Lazarus? David Vargas is our church's director of ministries in Latin America and the Caribbean. David told us of a cruise he and his wife went on several months ago. A few days into the cruise the ship suddenly lurched and came to a rather jarring halt. Immediately the captain came on the loudspeaker and apologized for the discomfort just experienced and said that he had received word that someone on board had just jumped from the tenth level of the ship into the sea. It was later learned that a woman had taken her own life. Her name was Amelia de la Cruz. She was a ship worker from the Philippines, and though her body was recovered the cause of her action was unknown. David has a pastor's heart. And so, though it seemed that the majority of the people on board soon returned to their vacation, he said he spent the duration of the cruise wondering how many times he and Amelia de la Cruz may have passed each other on that ship without him or anyone else noticing her pain. David said at that point he gave himself again to the ministry of Jesus Christ, vowing to live out his days striving to notice and reach out to the Amelia de la Cruzes of the world. My question to you is this: When you say that you want to reach out to those in need, do you mean by that that with God's help you want to notice the Amelia de la Cruzes of this world and upon noticing them to reach out with a saving word and deed? Is that what you mean? If you do, I want to be a part of it. Because you see, I have discovered again this week a fundamental truth about my life in Jesus Christ. That is: There is a large part of me that can only be filled as I empty myself. The truth of the matter is that what we need most of all is to reach out to others in need. And to reach out, first we need to notice. God help us to notice. |
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