Sermons for the Month

Over and Over and Over…
DATE: September 30, 2001
By: Pastor Deborah Wissner
TEXT: Luke 16:19-31
“To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN

Be honest, now; don't you sometimes get tired of hearing God say the same things over and over again? I know I do! It's like the way I keep repeating myself as a parent: "Put the milk back in the refrigerator when you're finished with it, take your shoes up to your room, hang up your wet towel after your shower, be sure to put your dirty clothes down the laundry chute…," the same spiel to the same audience every night. Every night! Over and over and over… I get bored listening to myself, and my listeners do not appear to be enthusiastic, either; in fact, from time to time they will respond, "Mom, we KNOW what we have to do!" That's how I feel reading today's Scripture lesson from Luke's Gospel. ANOTHER story of Jesus, the obvious point of which is that God wants us to help those in need. He's said that thousands of times. We KNOW what we have to do, already! Of course, as a mom, I come back later to check for evidence that my words have been not only HEARD, but HEEDED, and there's where I'm sometimes pleasantly surprised; sometimes reasonably satisfied; and sometimes I go ballistic. "HOW many times do I have to SAY this before something gets done?? Honestly, it's like talking to a wall!!" Are sentiments such as those ever expressed at your house? I wonder if God feels like saying that, too.
Fact is, the rich man in Jesus' story had heard what God had to say. He knew what was expected of him, as a child of God, as a son of Abraham, as one of God's chosen people, and moreover, as one so blessed with the riches of this life that even his underwear had designer labels, every meal was prepared by a gourmet chef, and every day was HIS to be savored. He heard what God said -- but there was no response. Like the seeds which fell on the hard path, in another of Jesus' parables, faith and its fruits of love never took root and flourished in this man's heart. Day after day, he chose to walk past the filthy, frail, famished Lazarus, chose to turn his head away and pretend not to notice, day after day, until eventually he could come and go through his gate, looking right at the poor beggar without really even seeing him, without giving him a thought. And the strange and sad thing is, these two men had so much in common! Both were sons of Abraham, both were children of God; and both were so terribly poor --- the one in body, the other in heart and soul.
The point of this dramatic and haunting parable is not just that God wants us to give to charity. We KNOW that, we've heard it a thousand times. Jesus takes us deeper into our own hearts and motivations, in a way that's at the same time not easy to hear, and also not easy to dismiss.
First, Jesus tells us in this parable that God is very much aware and very much involved in the fortunes and misfortunes of this earthly life. God is always at work to relieve suffering, to fulfill needs, to make right what has gone so terribly wrong; and if that cannot happen this side of the grave, well -- good news! God is not finished yet! He has the power to welcome us on the other side, where all things are made new, and made whole, unbroken and untarnished by human sinfulness. What wonderful good news that was to Lazarus, what wonderful good news it is to us! What wonderful news it could have been to the rich man… The Lord could have changed that stony heart of his, could have cured his blindness, could have made him rich in love -- but it never happened. You see, every time he turned away from his neighbor in need, every time he hardened his heart in order to be able to walk past Lazarus without stopping and doing something, every time he turned his thoughts to himself and his own pleasure and refused to consider his brother in need, the rich man also turned away from -- hardened his heart to -- refused to consider the claim of -- the Lord God. And after a lifetime of doing that, he opened his eyes in eternity to find himself in desperate need, but with a great and unbridgeable chasm between himself and the glory-- the power--the mercy of God.
This parable of Jesus does speak to us of the proper stewardship of the "stuff" of this life, whether we are so fortunate as to be clothed in purple and fine linen, or simply blessed to have two jackets while our neighbor has none. But he illustrates for us here that "stewardship" is not a matter of meeting a budget, paying a pastor, keeping the lights on, etc., helpful as those things are to our shared ministry. Stewardship is not even strictly speaking a matter of meeting the needs of others, though of course as a matter of simple justice and human compassion, the Lord expects that of us. The stewardship of the things of this life -- our money and goods, our time and talents, and our very selves, down "to the last, final atom" as the Covenant Players told us last week, such stewardship is a matter of the heart and soul of the believer.
The fact is, we make hundreds of stewardship decisions in the course of a day: "How will I spend this dollar? How will I spend this next hour? What will I do with today's measure of my attention and my energy?" Jesus tells us today that the sum total of our choices has an eternal significance. Not that we "earn" Heaven by choosing wisely, or "deserve" Hell by our sinful selfishness; but as we demonstrate our willingness to give ourselves over to God, in loving service to others, ready to confess, as Martin Luther said, that "we are all beggars" before God, ALWAYS completely dependent upon his loving kindness and tender mercies, then the good soil of our spirit remains soft, plowed up, ready to receive the showers of his grace and mercy, ready to sprout and to grow in the sunshine of God's Spirit.
The rich man in the story made his decisions, too, and each one trampled down the soil of his spirit a little bit more. It's like a shortcut across a beautiful lawn; the first time someone walks across it, it's barely noticeable; but as it's stepped on again and again and again, it becomes bare and hardened until finally you might as well give up and pour concrete. So hardened did his heart become that it seems as if no humble confession could break its way through, and the showering of God's mercy just lay on the surface and then dried up.
It's a sad and sobering little story, isn't it? And we know how easy it is, how tempting, to TAKE the shortcuts in life; to turn our eyes away from our neighbor's need; how easy to believe that we just don't quite have enough for ourselves, otherwise we'd surely share, wouldn't we? Any one of us could find ourselves wandering, or striding purposefully, down that well worn path. That's why I sure hope God doesn't get tired of repeating himself, because we need it -- O.K., I need it! I need His voice constantly to call me back to the right path when I've been listening to that little voice that says, "Oh, just pretend you don't notice, just this one time -- you're a very important, very, very busy person after all, and I'm sure someone else will step forward and help…"
Praise God that he loves us so much -- so much that He's willing to repeat Himself day after day, year after year, generation after generation, knowing that sometimes it's like talking to a wall, but knowing too that it is ONLY His powerful Word, ONLY His fiery Spirit that can possibly get through to us. Praise God that our eternal salvation does NOT hinge on how many times we do or do NOT rise to His expectations, but is ours only as we sit in our filthy rags and humbly beg His mercy. And let us pray to God that the choices we make THIS day, whether they are major ones, or by our human standards seemingly quite insignificant, will be guided by His Spirit, that as we journey through this life, day by day, choice by choice, our hearts would remain open to Him and tender toward our neighbor; that we be drawn ever nearer to Him and to one another, in our abundance and in our great need, until the day our eyes open to our eternal home.
AMEN