And lying at his gate was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. (Luke 15:20)
A man was trying to get help for a widow in dire financial need, but his efforts were meeting with little success. Even so, most of the people he contacted expressed regret over the sad situation of the poverty-stricken woman. The concerned man, refusing to give up, had high hopes as he approached a wealthy acquaintance, but he too refused to help. In declining his request, the wealthy acquaintance said, “I do want you to know, however, that I really feel sorry for that poor woman.”
The one who was asking for the money responded, “I’m sure you do. But I’m afraid you don’t feel it in the right place.” Oh, yes, I do,” the acquaintance replied. “I feel it very deeply in my heart.” The other responded, “That’s the problem. You feel it in the wrong place. I just wish you felt it also in your wallet.
“Compassion” is defined as “a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for someone struck by misfortune, accompanied by a desire to alleviate the suffering.” The wealthy acquaintance in the story satisfied the first part of definition, but not the second. The rich man in today’s gospel satisfied neither.
In 1928, a disturbing case came before a trial court in Massachusetts. It concerned a woman who had been walking on a boat dock when she suddenly tripped over a rope and fell into the deep water of an ocean bay. She came up sputtering and yelling for help and then sank again, obviously in trouble. Her friends were too far away to get to her, but only a few yards away, on another dock, was a young man sprawled on a deck chair, sunbathing. The desperate woman shouted, “Help, I can’t swim!” The young man, an excellent swimmer, only turned his head to watch as the woman floundered in the water, sank, came up sputtering in total panic, and then disappeared.
The family of the drowned woman was so upset by that display of callous indifference that they sued the sunbather. They lost. The court reluctantly ruled that the sunbather had no legal responsibility to try and save the woman’s life. Moral responsibility, on the other hand, is quite another matter.
The sunbather, like the rich man in today’s gospel showed no compassion, but at least the sunbather was aware of the person in desperate need. The nameless rich man in today’s gospel story isn’t particularly cruel or mean-spirited; he doesn’t beat the poor, sick Lazarus, for example, or report him to the police for panhandling or to public health officials for having open sores. Self-absorption and self-indulgence, however, blind him to the pathetic creature right before his eyes; keep him from helping someone enduring terrible hardship. To the uncaring rich man and others like him the prophet Amos in the first reading sounds the warning: “Woe to the complacent in Zion!”
The rich man isn’t punished with eternal damnation because of his wealth. He’s punished because he’s totally oblivious to Lazarus. It’s as if the poor beggar isn’t even there, as if he doesn’t exist. The rich man’s sin isn’t the evil he does; it’s the good he fails to do! His sin is callous disregard for the suffering of another. And today callous disregard of human suffering continues unabated in staggering numbers because Lazarus lives on, embodied in the poorest of the world’s poor.
Do you know what’s worse than hating people? Being indifferent toward them. That’s the essence of inhumanity -- an example of which is expressed in the U.N. Foundation’s slogan decrying the deadliest epidemic humankind has ever faced, currently ravaging Africa in particular: “AIDS is preventable; apathy is lethal.”
More than 14 million children worldwide have been orphaned because of AIDS – 14 million. That’s the equivalent of every child under the age of five in America. Nearly 6 million children have been killed by AIDS, more than every child in every grade school and high school in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, Miami and Atlanta combined. “AIDS is preventable; apathy is lethal.”
There are over 800 million poor people in the world today who are starving. 1.2 billion live on less than $1.00 day. 40,000 people die each day from hunger-related causes – 40,000 every day! Starvation is preventable; apathy is lethal. The same principle applies to genocide at this very moment decimating the Darfur region of Sudan. “Woe to the complacent in Zion!”
There’s a marvelous story of a woman who once stood before God, her heart breaking from the pain and injustice in the world. “Dear God,” she cries out, “look at all the suffering, the anguish and distress in the world. Why don’t you send help?” And God responds, “I did send help. I sent you.”
We’ve all heard the Good News. Jesus calls us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, visit the sick and imprisoned -- all behaviors requiring us to act compassionately toward people in need. We are their Good News! How do we thank God for our own good fortune? By sharing our gifts and talents with others. How do we demonstrate our love for God? By loving and serving our neighbor.
Frederick Buechner, a famous Presbyterian preacher, compared the interrelatedness of humanity to an enormous spider web. He said:
“If you touch the web anywhere, you set the whole thing trembling…As we move around this world and as we act with kindness, or with indifference, or with hostility, toward the people we meet, we too are setting the great spider web a-trembling. The life that I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place and time my touch will be felt. Our lives are linked. No (person) is an island."
We all have a choice to make – to see life as it truly is, with each of us connected to every other person on the planet, all linked in one large cosmic destiny, or to be consumed with self-interest. Scripture tells us the wrong choice risks eternal life. “Woe to the complacent in Zion!”
It’s important to note that Lazarus isn’t a particularly loveable person. A leper, his open sores made him ritually unclean and, therefore, an outcast in first century Jewish society. The unsettling implication of this detail is that the definition of “neighbor” is expansive, inclusive, including people not at all like us, people who upset, frighten, or even disgust us. Each of us has our own personal “Lazaruses” to reach out to -- those we’d prefer not acknowledge or to deal with at all. To walk away from them, to ignore them, to wall them out of our lives, as the rich man does, is to court God’s judgment.
Who is the Lazarus at our gate? The cantankerous old woman who lives alone nearby? The panhandler on the street corner? The kid at school who eats alone in the lunchroom because he doesn’t quite fit in? The welfare mother who keeps having out-of-wedlock children with different men? The gay or lesbian person seeking understanding?
The message of today’s scripture readings is clear. God loves unconditionally -- especially society’s victims. The kind of victimization doesn’t matter. In God’s house, all are equal and all are welcome. One life isn’t worth more than another life. When anyone’s in pain anywhere, God feels it and responds through you and me. In short, you and I are meant to reveal God’s love in the world. Indifference to human need, therefore, is a damnable offense. Damnation is preventable; apathy is lethal.
Anthony J. Sciolino
26th Sunday in Ordinary Time.
September 26, 2004. (Cycle C)
Amos 6:1a, 4-7/138
Timothy 6:11-16
Luke 16:19-31.