Hell and Open Hearts: Sermon, 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time

There are gated communities all over. The fact that I was a teenage boy once kept me and my parents from being admitted into one by the homeowners’ association. A personal interview with me couldn’t sway them. I was not David Kendrick to the senior citizens of this retirement community. I was a 16-year-old boy who was likely to throw a rowdy party when the parents were away, or drive the car into the gate on a Saturday night. The members of that community couldn’t see me. In their fear of the community’s peace being disturbed, they saw their worst nightmares of teenage boys. But their blindness to me was nothing compared to the gated blindness of the rich man in today’s Gospel.

There was a rich man who feasted sumptuously every day." Imagine if you had enough money to eat at Sebastian’s every single day of your life. Would you? This man could. But who is this rich man? We are not told his name. He may be the richest, most powerful man in town. Maybe the other villagers follow this man around, hoping he might occasionally throw a little bit of money their way. Or maybe they avoid this man, fearing what he could do them with his wealth and power. But either way, Jesus doesn’t even think that he’s important enough to have a name.

On the other hand, "there was a beggar named Lazarus…" He may be the man that all the neighbors shy away from and ignore because they’re disgusted by the smell of his unwashed skin covered with oozing sores. Jesus, however, considers him important enough to have a name, unlike the rich man, who sacrificed his true identity as a child of God by refusing to acknowledge another child of God.

And at this rich man’s gate lay the poor man named Lazarus." Or more accurately, Lazarus was laid at the rich man's gate. And there he stayed, day after day, too sick and too weak to move. At this rich man’s gate the villagers laid him. There was no welfare, no section 8 housing, no Medicaid, no food stamps. But there was this rich man, who at the very least could throw Lazarus the crumbs from his sumptuous feasts.

But the rich man’s gate befitted his station. It was palatial. It was a wall that surrounded him. It protected him from the riff-raff. It isolated him from the rest of the human race. It blinded him to Lazarus. He couldn’t even see when Lazarus had died and at least bury him. Note that Lazarus died and then was carried away by the angels. Jewish law required that any Jew who passed a dead man on the road was obligated to bury the person. That’s how blinded and isolated by his wall the rich man was. And so we come to the other half of our story, with Lazarus in the heavenly arms of father Abraham, the rich man in the torment of Hell.

The road to Hell is very clearly laid out before us today by Jesus himself. It is blindness to the suffering of others. It is the gates we erect, on our land, or in our hearts, that starts us on that road. On the other hand, turning around and getting on the right road is so easy. It doesn’t matter how much money we have or how much we give, since none of us could ever pay enough to ransom ourselves from the consequences of our sin. It doesn’t matter how virtuous or upright we behave, since no act of virtue on our parts will ever undo the consequences of our sin. All we have to do is open the gates of our hearts.

What are the obstacles to open hearts? Helplessness at not being able to put an end to the physical suffering you see? God doesn’t ask us to end the suffering. The beans and rice we gave yesterday won’t feed its recipients forever. But it will feed them for a few days. God doesn’t demand that we do more than we can do. Whatever you do today is enough for today. Do you feel helpless at the sight of someone’s emotional suffering? It may be that all they need tonight is that you listen and hold their hand. In one of the novels by a favorite author of mine, the lead character summarizes his purpose in life very simply: “listen to people, see how they stick themselves into the world, hand them along a ways in their dark journey and be handed along.”

None of us has enough power by ourselves to save another human being. Only God can, and will do that. But God is recruiting us to be his partners in that salvation. And our partnership begins when we break down the gates that we think are protecting us, but are only blinding us. Our open hearts are enough.