H. Stephen Shoemaker
Myers Park Baptist Church
Charlotte, North Carolina
September 30, 2001
READING SCRIPTURE: WHEN MIRACLES WON’T DO
Texts: Deuteronomy 15:7-8, 10-11; Amos 6:1, 4-7;
Psalm 73:1-9, 21-28; Luke 16:19-31
An Introduction to the Scripture Reading
Today I want to adapt a Hebrew way of reading scripture for our Christian reading of
scripture. Most Christians’ reading of scripture moves from Old Testament to New
Testament, as old to new, promise to fulfillment, preliminary to completed. This viewpoint
tends to deny the integrity of God’s revelation to the Hebrew people.
The Hebrew way of reading scripture is very different. It is like a set of three
concentric circles. The innermost core and heart of revelation is the Torah, the
Five Books of Moses or Law of Moses. That is the sacred core, the holiest of holy
scripture.
The next circle represent the Prophets, the Nebi’im. The Prophets refer back
to the Torah and apply its meaning to the present. The third circle contains the
Writings, Kethubim. These include books like Psalms, Proverbs and Job. These too
point back to the Torah and interpret and apply its truth to the present.
So today we will begin with Torah, then read the Prophets, then the Writings.
But as Christians we draw a fourth circle, the euangelion, the Gospel, the New
Testament writings. This circle points two ways: back to the Torah, and then
outward through Prophets, Writings and Gospel toward the horizon, the new that God is
doing in the New Creation. We have a God speaking not just back then, not just now, but
from ahead of us, drawing us to the New Creation, the completion and wholeness of all
things in the love and unity of God. It is the horizon of an expanding universe being made
by God.
READING SCRIPTURE: WHEN MIRACLES WON’T DO
Today we interpret scripture together as Christian rabbis. We will go back to
the Torah, the Prophets and Writings and then go forward to the Euangelion,
the Gospel and to what God may have to say to us today.
It is my hope that we will also go deep -- to the rabbi within and to the Living
Christ who is rabbi to our rabbi within.
I
The Torah is clear how we are to relate to the poor in our midst:
We are to be open-hearted, not hard-hearted; open-handed, not tight-fisted. In Leviticus
(19:9-10) we were commanded not to harvest our fields to the very margins but to leave a
portion of the crops for the poor and the transients. Because the poor will always be with
us, our generosity to the poor needs to be a weekly and lifelong pattern, not an
occasional splurge of guilty concern. Such is why in our church our budget includes care
for the poor in our midst and why our loose change offering every week and monthly Rice
Bowl offerings go to the poor of our city and our world. This year we will give about
$130,000 to those beyond us through our missions budget and offerings.
The Hebrew prophets echoed the Torah and amplified its message during a time in
Israel’s history when the gap between rich and poor was growing wider and wider. This is
what archeologists, sociologists and historians now tell us. The great prophets arose in a
time of great injustice. You can tell by the houses.
I remember a trip to Brazil in 1983 and my first glimpse of the favellas, the
"slums" of Brazilian cities: Thousands huddled together in cardboard huts and
scrap-wood lean-tos. Open latrines were dug between the huts and ran down the pathways. A
few feet away from the edge of the favellas were high walls built to protect the
people who lived in the mansions and estates just on the other side. On top of the walls
were jagged shards of glass embedded in the masonry, their razored edges pointing up to
discourage anyone from the favellas from trying to come over the walls.
Walls in Charlotte are subtler and prettier but no less steep.
We hear the Prophet Amos thunder about the rich who live on ivory beds, eat fat lambs
and sing idle songs while people starve around them. They are those "at ease in
Zion" while others in Zion suffer great distress.
The psalmist in Psalm 73 takes on the voice of the poor who observe the wicked who
prosper and flaunt the wealth and power godlessly.
"I almost stumbled," the psalmist confesses to God. Bitterness almost got the
best of me. The rich have no "pangs" (as one translation, RSV, puts it in verse
4). Their bodies are sound and sleek. Pride is their necklace. People praise them, bow and
scrape before them, to gain their favors.
I was arrogant and envious of heart. I even accused you, O God, like a brute. But then
I recovered my balance. I want only to be near you. I will not let anger and envy mar my
life. You, O God, are my refuge, my home.
Picture Lazarus at the rich man’s gate, reciting this psalm.
II
Now we come to the gospel, the euangelion. It is in the form of a story. Jesus
tells it, but he has borrowed its outline from an Egyptian folk tale which had come down
to him through a number of Jewish variations. In other words, it begins "Once upon a
time." Its revelatory quality lies in the unique turn Jesus puts to the story.
Scene one is a tableau. The rich man is feasting. He has roasted a side of beef to
get to the succulent filet. The rest he throws away. The grain used to fatten the calf
could have kept a household alive for a year.
As normal for the rich at the dinner table, he uses extra bread for napkins, tossing it
on the ground when he has finished wiping his hands. People at the gate are dying for lack
of such scraps.
The man feasts every day. God loves feasts. The Bible is full of them. But God doesn’t
intend for us to feast non-stop. Our bodies cannot take it, neither can our economic
arrangements of rich and poor. The biblical standard is something like this: Eat simply
most of the time; then when special occasions come feast till you’re silly! But this man
feasts every day in blind oblivion of the poor at his gate.
His clothes are the best: suits tailored by Oxxford and Brioni. In his garage sits a
Mercedes S-class, a BMW 7-series and a Jaguar convertible (for pretty days).
I’ve learned how to preach this text through the years: Pick out examples that leave
me off the hook. In earlier years I would have pictured the man in Hickey Freeman suits
and driving a Volvo. Now I wear Hickey Freeman and drive Volvo, so I must redefine the
rich. We always define the rich as those who have more than we do. "Can you believe
they air-condition their dog-houses?!" we say in righteous disdain, while some people
in Charlotte don’t have homes to heat or air-condition.
There is a second figure in the tableau: a poor man. "Lazarus" is his name --
which means ironically, "God helps." If God helps him, some might scoff, I’ll
stick with Baal.
This man would have loved to have the scraps from the rich man’s table. He was sick
with sores, and dogs came and licked his sores. Having no health insurance, he couldn’t
even curse managed care.
You see a wall between the two figures, uncrossed, uncrossable.
Scene two. The great reversal. It’s like the movie Trading Places: Eddie
Murphy, the street person, becomes a Wall Street Tycoon; Dan Ackroyd, the Wall Street
Tycoon, is out on the street.
This is how it happens. Both die. Lazarus expected it. The rich man could not be more
surprised.
Lazarus is carried by the angels to rock his soul in the bosom of Abraham. The rich man
is buried and goes to dwell in Hades, where he is in torment in the flames. (Hades
is most likely a temporary holding area for the dead, in the thought of that time.)
If you are a well-to-do, well-educated Christian you now begin a theological argument
against the existence of hell. If you are poor, you start enjoying the story. There is
a God! The Divine Comedy unfolds.
Third scene: Dialogue across the chasm.
The rich man in Hades looks up and sees the poor man rocking his soul in the
bosom of Abraham. Now he sees the poor man!
He calls out: "Father Abraham, have mercy and send Lazarus to dip his finger in
the water and cool my tongue. I’m in torment here."
The African-American spiritual relishes this moment:
"Stick-your-finger-in-the-water-come-and-cool-my-tongue-for-I’m
tormented-in-the-flames. I’m-tormented-in-the-flames. I’m-tormented-in-the- flames.
Stick-your-finger-in-the-water. . . ." And so on.
The poor of the earth are smiling. The rich are debating the existence of hell: This
was, you see, an Egyptian story . . . Jesus probably didn’t even tell it. . . Besides,
the notion of heaven and hell didn’t even come into Jewish theology until the Babylonian
and Persian periods when it was influenced by Zoroastrianism. Footnote, footnote,
footnote, blah, blah, blah . . . ..
Meanwhile another American child dies of malnutrition. A homeless person freezes to
death on the streets.
Abraham speaks: My child, remember that while you were alive you had the "good
things" - the good jobs, the good food, the good schools, the good streets, the good
health care - - - while he suffered the opposite. Now he’s got the good things and you
are the one begging.
A preacher in Harlem paraphrased Abraham’s response to the rich man: "Lazarus
ain’t runnin’ no more errands for you!"
Besides, says Abraham, there’s this great chasm fixed between us. You cannot cross
from there to here, nor can we cross from here to there.
Do I need to say that it was not God who dug and fixed this chasm? It is a deep
as the wall was high that the rich man had built. We dig the chasm day by day, with our
turned heads and tight fists, with our jokes and votes.
Last scene: The surprising twist. The story doesn’t stop there, however.
We see a softening in the rich man. He makes a request not for himself but for his
brothers back home. It is an honorable, unselfish request. Maybe he is changing. He
pleads:
"I have five brothers back home. Would you send Lazarus to warn them, so they won’t
duplicate my fate?"
We might have expected a positive answer from Abraham at this point: Commission Lazarus
as a missionary from heaven to my brother’s house!
But he gets, we get, this shocking answer:
"No! If they don’t hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced
if someone should arise from the dead!"
Moses said about the same thing to the Hebrew people:
This commandment which I give you is not too hard for you; neither is it far
off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, "Who will go there and bring
it to us that we may hear it and do it?" . . . But the word of God is near
you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so you can do it.
(Deuteronomy 30:11-14)
We hanker after some new word, some new discovery, some new insight so we will finally
hear and do what God wants us to do. But God says, "You’ve already been given all
you need." As Mark Twain once quipped: "It’s not the part of the Bible I don’t
understand that gives me trouble, but the part of the Bible I do."
The Word of God, Torah, and Prophets and Writings, the Gospel, this parable of
Jesus: They are near you, in your mouth, as near as the orange juice, coffee and pastry
you had for breakfast, as near as the roast in the oven you will have for lunch, as near
as the dessert table at the country club buffet.
The Word of God is near you, in your hearts, as near as your own breath, and the oxygen
it takes to your blood, as close as the Christ who dwells within.
You have all you need to hear and obey. It is not too hard. You can do it.
Nobody’s resurrection will help you, not even Jesus’! Miracles won’t do, won’t
help. You already have all you need in the Bible, in your mouth, in your heart.
Albert Schweitzer followed this very parable to Lambarene, where there in Africa he set
up a medical clinic. He left his comfortable European life as a physician. He left his
organ and his Bach. He left his theology books and teaching position and followed Jesus to
the poor in Africa.
Don’t expect any more word from God than this. Don’t wait for any spiritual
fireworks, any ghost from Christmas past, any special appearance of Jesus.
You have the Law and the Prophets and the Gospel.
Listen to them.
