At the Gates

Luke 16: 19-31

It’s a perfect sermon set up:
Jesus tells the story of a rich man – content, confident, comfortable – and sets up the contrast with the destitute Lazarus, so poor and ill that he can’t even resist the neighborhood dogs treating him like part of the furniture.  They die, and the poor Lazarus is given spiritual honor while the rich man suffers torment. 

Then we overhear a conversation between the rich man and the spiritual guru of the dead – the patriarch Abraham – that boils down to “follow God’s law while you’re alive, so you won’t be tormented when you’re dead.”  Give your money away, and don’t be rich, so that you will be rewarded in heaven.

It’s the perfect set up for a fire and brimstone sermon, or a money one, all about how you have to give your money away, or you’ll go to hell.

You may be happy to hear that I’m not planning to preach you that sermon this morning, but don’t breathe that sigh of relief, because I believe that this story is about something else just as challenging.

It’s not so much about money and hell as about hospitality.

More specifically, about a failure of hospitality.

Lazarus lay at the rich man’s gate, day in and day out. His excruciating poverty and illness were right in front of the man’s eyes, right at his doorstep, where you’d think the man could not possibly miss it.

But he does.

He misses the hunger and need right in front of him. Misses the guest at his gate, a guest who doesn’t need an invitation, a formal dinner, and a clean house, but just to share in the abundance already there.

It’s a failure of hospitality, and a failure of humanity.

Has that ever happened to you?
Have you ever been somewhere and felt like everyone ignored you? Been in a place that didn’t seem to care, or to notice you?  Had a hunger, or a need, that no one seemed to notice?

Did that happen to any of you in a church?

It does happen. All the time.

Even here.

For all the joy and energy, the food and the friendship, that make Calvary attractive,

there are guests we simply miss.

Guests who make it into our pews, but don’t feel welcome enough to return.

Guests who are practically on our doorstep, Monday through Saturday – people we see all the time, but don’t think about, and never invite to the table.

And guests who don’t even make it that far – people whose yearnings and pain we simply never imagine, who never make it on to your radar screen, or mine.

I’m thinking about this because our Thrive team has been talking about hospitality this month. We read and learned and talked about the ways that churches just like ours become intentionally welcoming:

Taking care to open our doors wide – and make sure we’re not blocking the entrance with our own conversations and concerns. 

Seeing each of ourselves as hosts, when we claim this place as our own, and therefore all paying attention to the comfort of any guest. 

Making the simple effort of ensuring that no one stands alone by the coffee pot, and that everyone is personally invited to the table full of bagels as well as the table of the altar.

And being ready to tell other people – the people on our Monday through Saturday doorsteps where our own spiritual support comes from.

It’s very simple stuff.

But it depends on a deep gospel truth, one highlighted in our story today.  The rich man’s sin isn’t simply having money. It’s not even precisely refusing to help.

The real problem is that he never even notices Lazarus is human.  Never recognizes his brother, or himself, in the man on his doorstep.

Before they die, we know that Lazarus sees the rich man, and longs for even the crumbs off his abundant table – but the rich man seems never to have noticed that Lazarus existed. Then when they are both in the place of the dead, he sees Lazarus only as a tool – a convenience to bring him refreshment, or to run a message.

That error doesn’t even require selfishness. Just expediency. And that’s the real problem.  The sin that makes true hospitality impossible.

Has this ever happened to you?
Have you ever considered another person more as an object – an inconvenience or an asset – than a brother or sister?

Ever –even accidentally – used a store clerk or telephone tech support person as a target for your frustration or a tool to get what you want?  Talked about “management” as a faceless nuisance? 

It’s easy, really.  Much easier to deal with a world of objects and faceless strangers than individual brothers and sisters.

Wealth – in any degree – insulates us, but so does poverty.  It’s as easy to label “the one percent” as faceless and far away - and especially as “not me” - as it is to label “the homeless.”  And incredibly easy for “Tea Party” or “Socialist,” conservative or liberal, to become faceless categories rather than neighbors, friends, and teammates – much less “us.”

I know I do this.  It’s a useful defense, it keeps me from bleeding to death in endless compassion. But it also has a great danger: the danger of ignoring the unexpected guest on my doorstep, or missing the human connection God offers me as a gift.

Here, inside the church, those defenses may make us believe that we don’t want to embarrass people by putting them on the spot, or that someone else is better equipped to greet and welcome.  Our defenses declare that our own business or needs won’t wait, and that the people we don’t know well are just from the other service.

Those defenses might keep me from embarrassing myself, but they also keep me from meeting and welcoming someone that God has brought to us as a gift, and as a guest.

A friend and colleague observes that most people who come looking for church come in some form of crisis or hunger:
Death or illness has touched them personally. 

Loss or fear or some other emotional pain moves in.

Sometimes the hunger is a longing for community and connection.  Or a sense of something missing, something you can’t quite define, but ready to blossom in the right time and place.

Here, our table is overflowing, just like in the gospel story.

We have community and connection. 

We have comfort, and prayer, and companionship to heal grief, listening ears and sympathy to relieve lonely pain.

We have energy and joy and laughter, and work to share – fertile soil for the seeds so many of our guests carry.

When we are comfortable, happy, and connected, it isn’t always easy to share, but it’s very simple.  And it starts with welcoming the guests God brings to our doorstep, literally, at Calvary’s doors and pews and parish hall, and the guests God puts into your weekday life, and mine, who might not make it to the building at all without our truly seeing, then welcoming and inviting them.

Our table overflows, at Calvary.

And there are hungry people at our gate.

What do you suppose we will do?