What causes the chasms?
Thumbnail image: Colin Park / View into chasm known as Huntsman Leap / CC BY-SA 2.0, used under license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Ferndale
September 29, 2019—Proper 21C
Luke 16:19-31
Last week’s gospel was complicated and extremely tricky to parse out. We might well wish that the same could be said of this week’s portion!
Unfortunately, Jesus doesn’t give us that kind of wiggle room. This one is about money. It’s about having it, and not having it. It’s about how we use it, how we share it, how it affects the way we behave in this world. And it is about the chasms it causes, that cut us off not only from other people, but from God.
Unbridgeable chasms.
And Lord knows, Americans in the 21st century know from unbridgeable chasms! That, my friends, will preach! That is something I’m comfortable talking about, something I’ve talked about over and over in this pulpit: the things that divide us. The ways in which we make “us” and “them.”
That’ll preach.
Unfortunately, the passage is a lot more specific than that. It’s talking about MONEY. It’s talking about haves and have nots. It’s talking about God’s desire to gather those who have little in this world into an embrace that wipes away all their suffering and deprivation. And it’s talking about the dangers for those of us who have much. It’s talking about the chasms that such people create in this world, and asking us to consider what the comfortable are doing or not doing that creates these chasms: chasms not only between them and the have nots, but between them and God.
And Jesus isn’t playing around about this. His story describes the consequences in extremely evocative terms: torment, separation, alienation, and exile from the kingdom of God.
So it really does seem that the text isn’t just asking us to consider chasms in general, but challenging us to consider the question of how money can create (or perhaps) bridge divisions in this world.
Let’s start with the way in which the story flips the script on the theological belief that the rich are favored by God and the poor are being punished. Instead, Jesus puts the prosperous on notice. You’re rich? Fine. You’re lucky enough to be born into wealth and privilege, or you’ve had access to work your way into it? Fine. But that does NOT mean that God loves you more. What it means is that you need to be VERY intentional about what you do with that wealth and privilege.
Wealth, Jesus insists, is a responsibility, not a sign of upstanding character and divine favor.
Can we accept this? Or do we secretly want to ascribe to the idea that there is such a thing as the deserving rich, and the deserving poor? Do we quietly suspect that the poor could raise themselves out of poverty if they’d just get off welfare and look for a job? Are we willing to ask what factors might make it hard or even impossible for them to shift their situation? Do we have any idea what it is to need to work multiple low wage jobs, and rarely be at home to help your kids with homework? Have we experienced what it is to have no car, and rely on public transport that takes two hours each way? To try to find child care that costs less than your wages? Do we know the struggle of needing an actual address, rather than a shelter; to need a place to get a shower, or have clean clothes, or get a shave and a haircut, before you can even work at McDonalds?
Do we know? Do we dare to know? Or is it easier to push that away with ideas of merit and effort and deserving? After all, if the poor are just making their own beds, then surely this could never happen to us. And if they are undeserving, then maybe just maybe we don’t need to do anything to help them.
But Jesus doesn’t want us to be distancing ourselves like this. That’s the chasm he describes between the privileged and the destitute. The chasm, which is related to the word chaos: a wild, inexplicable whirl of things that frighten and threaten us. That’s what lies between the comfortable and the uncomfortable. Between those who have enough, and those who do not.
The only way to bridge that chasm, that scary, inexplicable chaos, is to do everything in our power to understand. Not to lay easy blame. Not to walk on by without seeing. But to engage and try to get a real sense of what is happening in their life and in the structure of our world, that brings them there to a place outside the gate of our comfortable life.
Money can cause a chasm. But surely, if that is true, it can also build bridges, if we use it properly. So Jesus is asking us to be thoughtful, to consider prayerfully, how it is our money and our thoughts about money might be causing rifts in society or healing those divides. He’s telling us our money is not just some private matter that only affects us. It affects our relationships with everyone. And it affects our relationship with God.
Because the love of money is the root of all evil, as 1 Timothy warns. Love sounds good, but apparently it matters what you love. Love of money will always lead to selfishness, will always point you away from the kingdom of God. Instead, love God first and foremost, and then send your money towards the things that God loves and cares about. Which is you, yes, but is also the sick and the suffering and the poor who are right outside your door.
What you do with your money can cause chasms between you and your fellow human beings, and between you and God. It can do this in so many ways. Think about it. Have you ever had friends who earned more money than you, and they love to go out to expensive places, and you just aren’t sure how to manage that difference? Have you felt a sting of shame (or pride) from the realization of an income gap between you and someone else? Do you believe, somehow, that your income level is tied to something deep and real about your inherent worth? Has the general affluence of our world made it difficult for your kids (by which I mean you) to distinguish between wants and actual needs? Those are all chasms.
It can be hard to understand what poverty is, or why poverty is. It is scary to contemplate the vulnerability of our world, and tempting to believe that we are immune. The idea of “deserving” makes us immune. And it makes us able to ignore the truth that wealth begets wealth, especially across generations! Wealth or poverty in one generation creates or limits possibilities for the next generation. The chasms are real.
Our challenge is to ask ourselves, over and over: how do we bridge the chasm; how do we bring order to the chaos? There’s no doubt that we must begin by being clear-sighted and brave enough to understand the complexities of economic forces. But beyond that, there is compassion. There is a deep and painful willingness to be connected. There is admission of our own precariousness (so many of us could go over that precipice, with just a job loss, or a medical emergency). There is … I don’t know, you tell me! How could you spend, or give, or make other economic choices that would bridge that chasm towards other people and toward God?
These are the questions. These are the conversations Jesus is demanding that we have, lest we strand ourselves on the far side of love. Lest we cut ourselves off from the Kingdom. Lest we choose money and security and self-satisfaction over God.
Once again, we are being asked to choose Jesus. To choose our brothers and sisters. To choose Love. How the hell are we going to do that? That’s the question. May we never cease to ask it. Amen.