The Grand Canyon of Life

In this week's parable Jesus talks about 'a great chasm.'  One of my colleagues pictured it as the Grand Canyon.  The people on one side can't get to the other.  Really quite a poetic image, but the reality of living on the wrong side of a great chasm I couldn't cross is much less so.

Jesus builds up this image of the chasm between a rich man and Lazarus.  The rich man is clothed in purple (very expensive!) cloth and fine linen .....and Lazarus is clothed in 'sores that the dogs lick.'  The rich man lives in a mansion with a gate to keep out the unwanted ones; Lazarus lives outside the gate. He is one of the unwanted ones.  The rich man has sumptuous feasts every day; Lazarus would have been satisfied with the crumbs from the rich man's table.  Luke 16

Now that's a chasm.  This rich man is very, very, very rich and Lazarus is equally poor.  Jesus doesn't want to leave any doubts in the hearer's minds.  He describes a chasm of wealth which leads to a chasm between God and the rich man.

What do we do with this old story?  First, we don't try to convince ourselves that the same conditions are unheard of today.  Great chasms exist today and wealth is often the underlying source.  Second, we are to see how the rich man's blindness to his neighbor (because, in fact, Lazarus lived right outside his gate) built a great chasm between him and God.  The rich guy saw Lazarus only as someone put there to serve his needs....not as another human being with needs (overwhelming needs!) of his own.

Most importantly, the rich man was blind to God's purpose for this world from the beginning, but especially in the life and ministry of Jesus.  Jesus came to mend this world - to heal it - to make it whole - to bring it again into perfect relationship with God the Creator.  Anything which keeps us from being a part of this great healing of the world also keeps us from God.

N.T. Wright, a biblical scholar has written "What you do in the present- by painting, preaching, singing, sewing praying, teaching, building hospitals, diggings wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself - will last into God's future."  Or as one blogger writes, 'Whatever we do to mend the world has lasting value.  Everyone contributes.  God blesses each and every gift.'

Great wealth can lead to great blindness and a mistaken trust in the protection that wealth provides.  But it is not only wealth that can pull us away from contributing to God's vision of a redeemed world.....it is just that most of the time it does.  Money too often makes us blind.

The rich man had so much with which he could have balanced the scales of justice for Lazarus, and possibly for many others as well.  He wouldn't have reversed the spin of the earth but he would have contributed the blessings he had received to God's holy plan through his care for one neighbor.  One neighbor.  One.