Sometimes you just got to preach it!

So, this is for tomorrow. And we'll see if I still have a job after telling a congregation that I truly and deeply love that they treat each other (and their church staff) like s#!t from time to time and that they are called to be better than that.

A Sermon Preached by The Rev. Anne Marie Richards
Trinity Church, Princeton, NJ
September 30, 2007
Proper 21C (RCL)


Yesterday at nearly 3pm I put away the sermon I had almost finished for this morning. You may hear parts of it someday—no good exegetical work goes unused, and I had the help of some of the best and brightest minds in the church today. So, thank you to Carey Stone in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Paul Canady in Washington, DC—your words opened up Luke and Timothy to me in unexpected ways—but in a flash I was converted and knew that there was another word on my heart that I needed to say out loud.

And that word is about how we as a Christian community treat one another—how we encourage the best from our sisters and brothers, and how we lovingly correct mistakes in judgment, sins of omission and sins of commission.

Consider the scene narrated in Luke’s gospel this morning. The rich man has died and is in Hades, while poor Lazarus has died and is among the heavenly chorus. As separate as they were on earth, they are even further apart now—the chasm having been fixed between them. And yet, the rich man still thinks he is calling the shots. From the fires of Hell he instructs Abraham to send Lazarus down to serve him, to bring him water. When that demand is denied, he still wants to tell ol’ Lazarus what to do, so he tells Abraham to send him to his brothers.

Now, to my mind there are multiple problems here with the way the rich man is behaving. First, um, well, he’s in Hell—shouldn’t that maybe have clued him in to the fact that the status quo was no longer acceptable. Was he so un-self-aware that he couldn’t see what got him there in the first place? Is he so full of pride that even death and eternal damnation cannot shake his self-importance or open his eyes to the pain he might have caused. Clearly he is not concerned, even now, about the pain he might still cause Lazarus—he invites him down to Hades, to the midst of the flames, for no reason other than his own comfort. I suppose he feels that Lazarus’ burns and blisters are justified because, after all, Lazarus is the servant.

It was this realization, at 2:47pm yesterday, that caused me to toss out hours and hours of work and struggle. The rich man did not care about Lazarus, and it was made most evident in his treatment of him even after he was dead. The rich man assumed a position of superiority, of “rightness”, of privilege, and from that position, both in life and in death, assumed that he had the right to dis’ Lazarus.

Jesus, in telling this parable, is not trying to make his audience comfortable, so I will not apologize if I am making anyone here today uncomforted. The one thing I will rescue from my work on that other sermon is this message from my friend Paul Canady, the Canon for Youth Ministry in the Diocese of Washington. Speaking to the less-than-pleasant character of today’s text, and with tongue planted firmly in cheek, Paul said, “That is a tough Gospel passage. I'd like to see it removed from the lectionary. We really only need happy and encouraging Jesus stories.” Paul was being sarcastic, but how many of us have had that same thought? How many of us thought last week’s passage was equally deserving of being left on the cutting floor?

Here’s the hard-hitting message of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Luke. You are not better than your brother or sister—no matter what his/her station in life relative to your own. You are not more worthy of respect, or more deserving of a cool drink of water. And you are not justified in speaking to any child of God in a way that makes him or her feel inadequate or less than the beloved creation that he/she is.

This is not a subtle or nuanced teaching. You do not need to noodle it through. But you, and I, do need to take it to heart and put it into action every time we address one another, every time we pick up the telephone and, most particularly, every single time we put fingers to the keyboard and prepare to hit the “send” button. How we speak with one another matters as a deep and abiding theological statement. Because we are incarnational people. Our Baptismal vows include a promise to “seek and serve Christ in all persons,” so perhaps we need to remind ourselves that when we communicate with a brother or sister, it is Christ that we are addressing. Would you go behind Christ’s back to gossip about him? Would you speak down to Christ? Would you assume that you are more important than Jesus? I hope not. So why do we let ourselves treat one another as something less than the holy and blessed ones that we are?

Our station in life need only be described as child of God. Our earthly titles are human ways of creating a sense of order, and within an organizational structure, they do serve a purpose. In a hierarchical denomination such as ours, there are folks with more authority than others, but the best of those all the way up the ladder are those men and women who exert their authority humbly and with the greatest love and respect for those given unto their care. In the end, though, an earthly title or position, does not give any of us permission to deal unfairly or disrespectfully with anyone either within or outside this community of faith. Jesus died for my sins and for yours—neither of us will appear at the heavenly throne unblemished.

The struggle is not new. The first letter of Timothy is, in many ways, saying the same thing to the church:

“As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty…They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, … so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.”

And there’s the nut of it—what are you taking hold of? What are we valuing? The life that is materialistic, or power-hungry? The life that is about being better-than, or richer-than, or more-important-than our brother or sister? Or are we, maybe, trying to hold on to “the life that really is life?” A life of respect, and dignity, of abundance and generosity, of love for Jesus and for one another expressed in the way we treat one another.

Amen.