First Sunday after Trinity
Put before us today in the Gospel is one of those parables of Jesus that makes us wrinkle our noses just a little bit, or at least think that this particular part is not our favourite of the things which Jesus said and were recorded in the Gospels. It’s not the lost sheep being found, or the prodigal son returning, it’s not the wedding banquet and the poor folk in the hedgerows, highways, and byways being beckoned in, and nor is it that favourite of the mustard seed which reminds us of how great even the smallest morsel of our faith is.
Parables are always tricky because, like with most stories we read or imagine, we love to think of ourselves as the good guy. Maybe we’re the sower sowing seeds, or at least – we’re certain – the soil of our hearts is the fertile patch where the gospel takes root; we are the lamp on the lampstand, bright and luminous – and so we may be, but I’ve watched many a candle flicker and fade, or hollow out the wax in an uneven way because I didn’t trim the wick or seat it in its holder just right. Or maybe we’re the fair estate manager who pays everyone equal, and not the griping day-labourers who moan whenever our neighbour gets a bit more than us; we all love to imagine ourselves the gentle sheep and not the obstinate goat whom the Father might put at his left.
Around Holy Week we are as certain as Peter was when he said he would die before he denied Jesus that if the multitude gathered had gathered around us before Pontius Pilate, we would be that lone sheep that speaks up among the cries of “CRUCIFY HIM” to plead that Jesus be let go.
But of course we are not, and we would not be, and Peter’s bitter weeping bears witness to the fact that even one who walked and talked with and witnessed the miracles of Jesus first hand did not, in a moment of trial, have the strength to even acknowledge him. So much of what we preach, or at least assent to in our minds and proclaim as important on Sundays, flies out the window when it faces the pressures of out there.
And that’s the point of many of the parables: that in the lowest, the last, the least, and the most abhorrent people in the parables, we are meant to see ourselves, but so too are we meant to see that though the wickedness we see in those people and so easily dismiss as ‘not us’ is ours by nature, in every parable there is given a mercy that does not belong to us, but is given from God.
Today’s Gospel reading relates parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man who finds himself in the torment of hellfire after ignoring Lazarus the beggar at his gate, and from his suffering looks up and sees Lazarus in paradise and pleads for even a drop of water to cool his tongue. Is this parable then about the dangers of ignoring the poor and needy, that we will find ourselves in a similar spot to the Rich Man in the life to come if we ignore the needs of the many Lazarus’ in our midst now? Perhaps, or maybe it’s a warning not of what is to come, but what is already here.
Critical to this parable is what Abraham says to the Rich Man when he pleads with Abraham to at least send someone to his living brothers to warn them about their behaviour so they don’t wind up suffering the same fate as him, and Abraham replies to him that they have the Scriptures – the faith – to teach them, if that isn’t enough then sending someone back from the dead to warn them isn’t going to do a darn thing, the Rich Man had Moses and the prophets (the scriptures) to teach him but ignored them, and look at him now.
Last week on Trinity Sunday, that Sunday on which we celebrate and confess our faith in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we heard in the Gospel the story of the pharisee Nicodemus who comes to Jesus curious about who he is, and Jesus tells him that if any of us wish to see the Kingdom of Heaven we must be born again. Nicodemus asks how that could be, and Jesus – in a line reminiscent of our Gospel today asks him, “If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you of heavenly things?” Our inheriting and experiencing this new life that we get through this new birth is contingent on our belief, our trust, in God and what God has promised us – not belief as in a mental checklist, but belief that actually allows God in whom we trust to transform our lives, to even lead us to places, things, or ways of being and loving we never imagined.
The Rich Man had a lifetime to be reborn, to allow his belief in Moses and the Prophets to shape the way he treated Lazarus, who is just a reflection how he treats the world, and he didn’t, so the hellfire and torment that the rich man suffers is not, the parable warns us, about the torment that we suffer in the life to come as punishment, but it is about the hell that we live in our everyday lives when we choose neglect and indifference over love. That’s it. The arid, dry, thirsty, burning regretful torment that the rich man suffers is just an image of his own interior life, what’s going on in his heart; and it’s an image of our interior lives when we refuse charity, faith, and hope.
What allows us to cultivate – like a seed in a garden – these virtues that govern God’s Kingdom, is the degree to which we allow ourselves to draw near to and participate in God, in this life, and that closeness to God must be reflected in how we treat one another; not because we’re obligated, per se, but because if we actually love God we will not be able to not love our neighbour; if the rich man loved God it would have been impossible for him to ignore Lazarus because you cannot know God and not be changed, and if we think we know and love God but find ourselves failing to love one another then we need to reflect on what we think we know and love of God.
This is certainly what St. John was writing in his Epistle today when he said, “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” Loving is the proof that we are reborn. When we reject love, charity, when we refuse to live by those virtues – what is left for us? Anger, bitterness, shame, regret, hatred, envy – all things which will devour us from the inside out like flame, it will torment us, and leave us longing for even a drop of the living water which we already rejected.
Participating in love, in God, - seeking this new life as Nicodemus did is about cultivating sanctity or holiness of life: pray more, study the word more, receiving the sacrament more often, confessing more often, being more charitable, more forgiving, more patient, in the words of St. John in the Epistle today, “The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.”
But make no mistake – this isn’t cheap love, some the modern garden variety of wishing the best to those whom we think are right, or good, or on our side, but otherwise ignoring them; this is the love of doing good to those hate us, loving our enemy, seeing the poor man at the gate for who he is and treating him as we would a brother, this is the love of begging forgiveness for the very people who are spitting in our face, and hammering nails through our hands and feet. This is the shape of God’s love, and if it is not the shape of ours, then we have work to do.
Abiding in this love and growing in holiness, growing in this reborn and new life depends entirely on our fidelity, our obedience to live that commandment, ‘those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.’ Amen.
