The Reverend John E. McGinn, Rector

Saint John’s Episcopal Church

Sandwich, Massachusetts  02563

 

September 30, 2007                                                                                                                           Pentecost 18

 

The sermon today is taken from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 16, verses 19-31.

 

I will begin my sermon this morning with a line from the old Broadway musical Jumbo.  My aunt, as I was growing up, lived in New York City,  and she took me to Jumbo.  It was the first time I had ever been to a play.  Jimmy Durante, who was one of my favorites growing up (I don’t know why I liked him, maybe it was because of Mrs. Calibash), but Jimmy Durante in the play had just stolen a circus elephant, and he is tiptoeing across the stage with the huge packaderm clomping behind him.  He was stopped by the sheriff who demanded, “Where are you going with that elephant?”  And Jimmy Durante, looking as innocent as only Durante could,

says, “What elephant?” 

 

I want to talk to you for a few minutes about living in denial.  Living in denial is the favorite occupation of many people.  Some people would simply not prefer to face reality.  Reality is stressful.  If we could only turn a blind eye to it, life would be so much easier.

 

Today’s Gospel reading is about a man who had learned to do just that.  You know the story well.  It is portrayed in different books and songs:

 

“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linens and lived in luxury.  And at his gate lay a beggar named Lazarus covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table.  Dogs came and they licked Lazarus’ sores.  The time came when Lazarus died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side in heaven.  And the rich man also died.  In hell, where he was in torment, the rich man looked and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side, so he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue because I am in agony in this fire.  Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony.’  And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’  The rich man answered, ‘Then I beg you father, send Lazarus to my father’s house for I have five brothers.  Let him warn them so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’  And Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets, let them listen to them.’  ‘No, Father Abraham,’  he said, ‘but if someone goes to them from the dead they will repent.’  And Abraham said to him, ‘And if they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

 

I want you to focus on those last words:  “They will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”  Some people in our world live in denial.  Even if someone rises from the dead, they will not change their minds.  It is amazing how easy it is for us to see denial in others.  We see the young woman in love with a scoundrel.  Can’t she see where this relationship is leading?  Or does she not want to see?  We see the middle-aged man not taking care of his body.  Can’t he see what he is doing to himself?  Sometimes we get frustrated if it is someone we love.  We want to grab them and shake them into reality.  Don’t you know, that if you do not get help for this problem, you are going to wreck your life?  Denial.

 

There are many possibilities for living in denial.  Some of them are suggested by the story this morning in the gospel told by Jesus.  I want to begin here.  We are living in denial if we believe that casual Christianity is a viable choice.  Casual Christianity.  It’s a comfortable place:  repentance, respectability with few responsibilities.  Yes,  it’s a nice lifestyle.  The only problem is that casual Christianity is an allusion.

 

You may remember the time-honored story of the frustrated skeptic who blurted out, “If I believed what you Christians believe I would crawl through a field of broken glass to tell others about it.”  And if we think about it, which we try not to do, it is an accurate statement of fact.  Our commitment as Christians is a poor imitation of the real thing.  Oh, in our mind, we make excuses.

 

I don’t know if you are familiar with the story of some GIs who are on furlough.  A commanding officer was furious when nine of these soldiers failed to show up at morning role call.  The first man didn’t straggle in until seven p.m.  “ I’m sorry, sir,” the soldier explained, “but I had a date and lost track of the time, and I missed the bus back.  However, being determined to get in on time, I hired a cab and halfway here the cab broke down.  I went to a farmhouse and persuaded the farmer to sell me a horse, and I was riding to camp when the horse fell over dead.  I walked the last ten miles, and I just got here.”  Though skeptical, the colonel let the young man off with a reprimand.  However, after him seven other stragglers in a row came in with the same exact story:  had a date, missed the bus, hired a cab, bought a horse, it died, etc.  And by the time the ninth man reported in, the colonel had, of course, grown weary of this story.  And with a great deal of impatience, he asked, “What happened to you?”  “Sir,” the GI said, “I had this date and missed the bus back, so I hired a cab.”  “Wait,” the colonel screeched at him, “don’t tell me the cab broke down.”  “No, sir,” replied the soldier, “the cab didn’t break down.  It was just that there were so many dead horses in the road, we had trouble getting through!”

 

As they say, one excuse is about as good as another for letting our commitment to Jesus assume a low priority in our lives.  Casual Christianity.  Is that where you are today?  Denial:  it’s wonderful isn’t it?  Unfortunately, it is an allusion. 

 

And here is another example:  We are living in denial if we believe we can be a “lone-ranger” Christian.  That is, we can ignore our neighbors, be blind to the needs of strangers, and still say that we follow Jesus.  The rich man in Jesus’ story was an expert at this.  Lazarus lay right outside his door, and chances are that he never saw him.  Or maybe at first.  But soon he was able to shut the desperate man out of his visual field.  The poor beggar was an inconvenient truth, to use a phrase of Al Gore‘s, that the rich man was able to ignore.  It’s amazing how easy that is to do.

 

Oh, we don’t have beggars lying outside our houses, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have neighbors who don’t have needs.  If we were to survey our community here in Sandwich or on the Cape wherever we live, we would find people with heartbreaking needs:  people grieving over a dying mother or a dying spouse, parents struggling with a son’s or daughter’s addiction, middle-aged people with a ton of guilt, people who have a family member with Alzheimer’s.  Sometimes all they need is a word of encouragement, an invitation to worship, a chance to express their grief.  But sometimes we don’t even know it.  We can live blissfully in our own little world and pretend that Jesus didn’t say anything about being a good neighbor, about being sensitive to people who have special needs.  But he did.  And because he did, we need to take stock of our lives.

 

I read a story recently about a good neighbor.  An Episcopal priest’s wife tells about a friend who once lived in a remote town of Victory, Vermont.  No school, no church, no store, and famous for being the last town in Vermont to receive electricity.  And during the course of earning her master’s degree, this friend found it necessary to commute several times a week from Victory to the University of Vermont in Burlington, a good hundred miles away.  Coming home late at night, she would see an old man sitting by the side of the road.  He was always there - in subzero temperatures, in stormy weather, no matter how late she returned from school - he just sat there.  He made no acknowledgement of her when she drove by.  She often wondered what brought him to that spot every evening, what stubborn habit tied with grief or mental disorder.  Finally she asked a neighbor about him.  “Have you ever seen an old man who sits by the road late at night?”  “Oh yes, said her neighbor, “many times.”  “Is he a little touched in the head?” she asked.  “He is no more touched that you or me,” the neighbor laughed.  “And he goes home right after you do.  You see, he doesn’t like the idea of you driving by yourself out late all alone on those dark back roads, so every night he walks out, waits for you, and when he sees your tail lights disappear around the bend and knows you are okay, then he goes home to bed.” 

 

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a neighbor like that?  And wouldn’t it be wonderful to be a neighbor like that?  But we would rather live in denial - it is so much easier. 

 

And one final example:  We are living in denial if we believe we have no responsibility for the least and the lowest in our world.  One of the saddest occurrences of our time is how hard hearted many Christians have become to the people at the bottom of society.  I know the poor are not easy to love.  Some of them have the problems they have because they have been irresponsible and many of them will not help themselves.  And many of them have gotten to the point where they are powerless to help themselves.  So sometimes we just ignore them; we try to shut them out.  There was once a time when a Christian would look at someone in that condition and whisper, “There but for the grace of God go I,” and lend a helping hand.

 

But like the rich man who ignored Lazarus, many of us have built up a system of rationalizations that make the poor responsible for their own redemption.  You know….“they are on welfare, they’ve had several marriages, several children, they just can’t make it.”  And, you know, we are like Bobby and Billy, two brothers who are assigned the responsibility of mowing the lawn and trimming the hedges while their parents went on a short trip.  When the parents returned, nothing had been done, and dad was very upset.  He asked Bobby, “What have you been doing while we were gone?”  And Bobby replied in a low voice, “Nothing.”  And then dad turns to Billy and asks, “What have you been doing?”  And Billy replied, “Helping Bobby.” 

 

Maybe we can make it work.  Maybe we can continue to be casual in our commitment to Jesus.  Maybe we can continue to live in our own little world and ignore our neighbors.  And maybe Jesus didn’t mean it when he said, “When you did it not to the least of these, you did it not to me.”  But I doubt it.  We have a choice to make.  Denial or discipleship.  Obviously you and I would rather live in denial.  We would rather believe that casual Christianity is possible, that we can be lone-ranger Christians, that we have no responsibility for the least and lowest in our community and in the world.

 

Father Abraham says sadly to the rich man, who pleads on behalf of his brothers, “They will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”  How about you?  Are you convinced?  Does it make any difference in how you live your life?

 

Amen