Who don't we see: A sermon based on Luke 16

I heard a story this week about a bishop in another diocese calling his clergy together for a clergy conference at one of their downtown churches.   The morning of the conference came and as the clergy were arriving at the conference there was a homeless man sitting on the corner right outside the church. His clothes were in disarray, he had a thick stubble growing in and knit cap pulled down tight over his head.  Next to him was his trusty cart that carried all the possessions in the world.   As clergy entered the church, the route they took was right by this homeless man. 

As the clergy gathered in the meeting space, the time for the conference to begin came and went without any sign of their bishop.  After five or ten minutes folks began glancing at their watches, grumbling about the punctuality of the bishop.  About fifteen minutes in- the homeless man wandered in to the gathering-he wandered to the front of the room— and took off his knit cap-  and standing there was their bishop. No one though had looked beyond the dirty clothing- no-one had looked beyond the  knit cap pulled down, beyond the disheveled look, no one had come close enough to see that this man was in fact their bishop. Some had rushed by wanting to make sure they weren’t late.  They really didn’t see the man.

The sin of the rich man from today’s parable- what lands the rich man in hell is not that he is wealthy, not that he feast sumptuously day or night or that he has nice clothes,  but rather what lands him in hell, what his sin is, is that he fails to see Lazarus and he fails to care.   One of the reasons he might have failed to see Lazarus is that all he might have sitting at his gate were the crack pipes of addiction, all he might have seen was Lazarus and all that poverty entail, all he might have seen were those oozing sores that the dogs would come and lick.  The rich man might have been punished for failing to see beyond all the sores, beyond all the begging that for failing to see  that underneath it all Lazarus like all of us- bears the image of God.

Another reason that the rich man might not have seen was because of the busyness of his life- maybe he didn’t have time to stop by the gate- because he was too busy booking the caterer- or trying to the figure which band he wanted to have at the next raucous party. 

Maybe he didn’t see because he felt powerless to change the situation. So Lazarus is left with the scraps that fall from the table and dogs licking his sores  

And amazingly even as the flames of hell are dancing around the rich man  he still doesn’t get it, he still only sees Lazarus as an object to do his bidding. Father Abraham send Lazarus to dip his finger- to cool my tongue for  I’m in agony

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But the chasm, father Abraham says, is too great.

As I ruminate on this parable I wonder who do we fail to see? Who do we avert our glance from? Who do we have a hard time recognizing as children of God? Who gets missed in the busyness of life?

In our culture- it is ok to walk by someone without even looking at that person- without acknowledging their presence--Is that really Ok? Does that bring life to the folks we encounter as we move through this world?

One of the things this parable calls us to as followers of Jesus, as disciples of Christ is not to allow the sin of the rich man to be our sin as well.

The call of this parable is to not allow the busyness to blind us from seeing, to blind us from caring. The call of this parable is to see beyond all the oozing sores,  to see beyond the stink of not having bathed, to see beyond the smell of alcohol,  to see beyond the rantings and ramblings of mental illness, to see beyond the begging we find offensive, to see beyond the dangers we perceive someone might pose to us and see that underneath the track marks, underneath whatever it is that horrifies us--- is somebody that God loves, is somebody that bears the  beautiful image of God, that deserves dignity and respect, underneath it all is somebody who probably is not as wretched as we might think-  is probably someone who like  Lazarus will  too be like taken up to heaven by the angels of God when they take their last breath.    

Our call is to have sight and try to glimpse through everything --to peel it back and try to see what God sees. To see that perhaps the poor man who is very broken maybe that way because of the war we sent him into and that the only way he can survive by putting his lips on the bottle and washing away the pain of those memories.  To see that perhaps that young woman is out on the streets is selling herself to survive because she has done so to escape the horror of constant physical, sexual abuse at home. 

May we on this day repent of the times that we have failed to see, we have failed to care, when we’ve averted our glance.  May we remember that in repentance God is gracious and merciful- slow to anger and quick to forgive?  May we also remember that repentance is about amendment of life, about starting over in a brand new direction.  Repentance is as much about saying sorry as it is about saying I am going to try my hardest to never do this again. 

May God on this day open the eyes of our hearts- may he takes his hands and touch our eyes and remove the scales so that we can see Christ sees, May we on this day open our minds to the possibility that behind all the stuff we see on the surface is so much more- May we see what Christ sees and respond as Christ responds.