A Nightmare-Parable To Wake Us Up

Lectionary Reflections for the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost (C)

By Jim Lewis

Readings for Pentecost 17, Proper 21, Year C, Sept. 26, 2004

Amos 6:1a, 4-7

Psalm 146

I Timothy: 6:6-19

Luke 16:19-31

Fetching from my doorstep the gigantic Sunday edition of The Charleston Gazette Mail – a pound of advertisements but only ounces of hard news – I shake loose the comic section in search of my favorite funnies.

Berke Breathed's Bloom County is one of them. I love Opus the penguin, particularly when cartoonist Berke Breathed puts him in bed, draws the shades and allows the beasts to come out of Opus' ol' closet of anxieties.

Like Opus, we all have a closet full of anxieties, with an occasional nightmare that wakes us up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.

I call today's Gospel a Nightmare-Parable right out of my closet of anxieties. It has to do with money and possessions, subjects that Luke has been harping on for over a month in our lectionary.

Jesus tells a parable to his followers about a rich man dressed in purple and a poor man by the name of Lazarus. To cut to the quick, the guy in purple has been “wasting his days in conspicuous consumption,” while Lazarus has been “dumped on his doorstep” and had to live off the scraps from the rich man's table.

Change of scene: They've now died and Lazarus is in the “lap of Abraham.” Translated, that means he's sleeping on silk sheets and eating three square meals at a three-star, all-you-can-eat restaurant. Meanwhile, the old guy in purple, without even a cup of water, has to gawk through a plate glass window at Lazarus dining sumptuously.

Lesson: When the final banquet table is set at the Big Hereafter Cafe, them that got won't get, and them that didn't get will get.

Lesson: When the final banquet table is set at the Big Hereafter Cafe, them that got won't get, and them that didn't get will get.

Living in the richest nation in the world, never having gone hungry, and blessed with a bed and a roof over my head, this parable is a nightmare. I have, and I have no desire to be a have-not. Am I destined to be looking in from outside while the multitude of Lazarus' finally get their fair share?

My only hope rests in the belief that this parable is a Nightmare-Parable offered by Jesus as an early-warning siren to wake up any person or nation caught in the web of conspicuous consumption.

And not only conspicuous consumption, but consumption not conscious of the inconspicuous labor force that provides the world with goods and services – goods and services the workers themselves can't enjoy.

The Prophet Amos, in today's lesson, knew about the conspicuous consumers who were oblivious to the workers who did the work that made the people in purple wealthy. He saw them, lying on their ivory beds, eating their succulent meats, drinking their fill of wine, and being anointed with oil while the poor went without.

Not so far from life today, when you think about it.

Think of the poultry and other meats we as a nation consume with hardly a thought, if any, for the poultry plant workers who live off poor pay, work in dangerous conditions, and live in unsuitable housing.

Think of the wine carried out of local liquor stores, some blessed at church, with hardly a thought, if any, for the migrant labor that picks the grapes, as well as the fruits and vegetables plucked from trees and vines and dug from the earth so that others may eat. Migrant labor that works for cruel crew chief leaders, offered no health care, and forced into sub-standard housing.

Think of how we Americans are anointed with oil each and every time we pull up at the gas pump and fill our tanks, with hardly a thought of the cost of that oil in human life – human life lost in a war in Iraq. And don't kid yourself, this war is about oil.

Think about the people who work in low wage jobs critical for the health and welfare of the communities in which we live but cannot afford to live there themselves.

Today's reading from Timothy puts a large early-warning signal in front of us. “People who long to be rich are a prey to temptation; they get trapped into all sorts of foolish and dangerous ambitions which eventually plunge them into ruin and destruction . . . The love of money is the root of all evils . . .”

Today's Nightmare-Parable from Luke is designed to wake us up before we take our final sleep. While we have time, we are challenged to take note and serve the people around us who have been dumped on our doorstep and are sidestepped by our nation's economy.

Today's Nightmare-Parable from Luke is designed to wake us up before we take our final sleep. While we have time, we are challenged to take note and serve the people around us who have been dumped on our doorstep and are sidestepped by our nation's economy. That means serving them in simple works of charity in prison, at a community shelter or soup kitchen, tutoring, giving generously to local agencies who serve the poor and abused, and assisting children caught in addiction.

But more than that, it means collaborating with local and national efforts dedicated to bring about the kind of changes to our political, economic, educational, and health care systems that will reduce substantially the need for charity – efforts that result in the empowerment of people in a way that reduces their dependency on nothing more than the crumbs that fall from the tables of the privileged rich.

(Bible quotes from The Message by Eugene Peterson and from the Jerusalem Bible .)

The Rev. Jim Lewis is an Episcopal minister living in Charleston, West Virginia. He writes Notes From Under the Fig Tree ( www.figtreenotes.com ).