Homily–26th Sunday in Ordinary Time–Rich Man, Poor Man

Amos 6:1, 4-7

1 Timothy 6:11-16

Luke 16: 19-31

 

Back in January I had one of those God moments. You know the kind -- when the Gospel comes to life before your very eyes. 

I am reminded of it with today’s Gospel.

Our parish community was holding a funeral for a longtime homeless guy who died on the streets. (CLICK here for an article on the homeless funeral)

            As I was readying the Church, a big, tall homeless man came to the side door near the piano at Our Lady of Perpetual Help and knocked. I opened it up and welcomed him.  He asked if he could hang out for the hour of so until the funeral began.  I told him, “Of course.”

            As we talked, he shared with me the despair of living on the streets.  It was a cold, raw January day in Everett. The temperature was about 40 and a frigid rain was falling.

          The man told me his name was Ben and he’d been on the streets for years. Many times, he says he feels ignored, forgotten, and alone.

            As we sat in the Church, he confided in me that he was brought up Catholic -- living on the reservation as a kid.  He said he loved our beautiful Church, and actually choked-back tears as he shared how thankful he was just to rest his feet and warm his bones.

As he talked about his reality, I reminded him of God’s reality. This human experience can be

difficult, but this too shall eventually pass and my friend Ben will someday sit at the banquet table with the Lord with Jesus serving his every need.  

He said he liked that thought.

I thought of this Gospel passage as I shared it.

            Former Pope Benedict said something profound about what’s expected of the People of God while we wait for that heavenly banquet.

He said this,

           “In recent years it has been encouraging to witness the positive signs of a worldwide growth in solidarity towards the poor. But to turn this solidarity into effective action calls for fresh thinking that will improve life conditions in many important areas, such as food production, clean water, job creation, education, support to families, especially migrants, and basic healthcare.

Where human lives are concerned, time is always short, yet the world has witnessed the vast resources that governments can draw upon to rescue financial institutions deemed 'too big to fail.'

Surely the integral human development of the world's peoples is no less important: here is an enterprise, worthy of the world's attention, that is truly 'too big to fail.'” 

The story of the rich man and poor Lazarus is only found in Luke’s Gospel, a Gospel that shows an overriding concern for the poor and marginalized, and is lazer-focused on social justice.

The story is an echo of Jesus’ Beatitudes, “Blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God is yours. Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied.” 

The story also echoes Mary’s Magnificat: ”the hungry he has filled with goods things; the rich he has sent away empty.”

Jesus’ story is directed right at the hearts of the wealthy Pharisees of His day, but is also a shot to the hearts of our wealthy society here today. 

Like it or not, we are the rich man in this story.

We live in a land of abundance, with every creature comfort known to humankind.  We are the envy of all the poor of the world. Yet all the while, people in our society live on the streets, mired in addiction, mental health crisis, and abject poverty.

In today’s Gospel story, the rich man’s lack of charity and responsibility to his fellow man condemns him to flames of the netherworld.

As one bible scholar puts it, the rich man’s greatest sin is one of omission (That “what I have failed to do” line we used to say in the Confiteor). This omission has fashioned a great chasm between the rich man and Lazarus. 

The danger of wealth and power in Jesus’ eyes is that they blind us to the kingdom of God both in this life and the next.

Our ambivalence, our apathy are shameful in God’s eyes.

Remember, unless we’re part of the solution, we’re a part of the problem.   We can’t just say, “poverty, homelessness, addiction … not my problem.”

The amazing irony in the story is how much the rich man needed Lazarus in order to be saved. “Had he paid attention to Lazarus begging for table scraps at the door of his house (and responded), the rich man would not be in the predicament he is now.”

God wants us to know “how much of a role we play in our (own) salvation.”

God asks us to humbly be open to His will in our lives, to feel the tugging at our own hearts when we see someone truly in need.  I know it’s sometimes difficult to hear God or have His message break through all the noise in our society.  But we can’t just say, “not my problem,” or, from our privileged perches, condemn the poor for being lazy or people who just need to get their acts together.

The CEO of Salt and Light Catholic Media Fr. Thomas Rosica put it this way:

”The rich, the powerful, and the (so-called) 'just' find it very difficult to be humbly open to God; they are full of confidence in their own treasures and securities. The only real security is the one based on friendship with God…     to be a servant of human beings and of God after the example of Jesus of Nazareth.

Exalting oneself is a form of self-reliance as opposed to reliance on God. This makes clear why being rich, prosperous, satisfied almost naturally imply being arrogant, proud, godless

As human beings, we are radically weak and constantly try to cover up our weakness by finding security in power, wealth and status. This deception will ultimately be unmasked by God's act of judgment.”

Another bible scholar sees this very story in Luke’s Gospel as a key that unlocks the door to “salvation” from Jesus’ perspective.

“On one hand, it holds up a cold mirror to our social realities, challenging us to either ‘live against’ or ‘die with’ the inhumane disparities that divide our social landscape. Then it invites us—like the epilogue of (the Road to) Emmaus (story)—to reread the Bible, reread our (salvation) history, and reread our own social maps, and then dedicate our discipleship to justice and equity. This, for Luke, is the key to ‘salvation.’ And Christians who would rather daydream about the ‘hereafter’ will be in for a rude awakening about how the ‘here’ persists in that ‘after.’” 

            If the words of this Gospel message truly afflict the comfortable here in this Church and comfort the afflicted just outside our door, then it’s done the job Jesus intended.        

So, as we lay our heads down on our pillows tonight and thank the Lord for the many blessings in our lives, let us also ask Him to guide our hearts as His disciples to see and respond to the poor man or poor woman sleeping at our door. 

            As Doctor of the Church, St. John Chrysostom put it so beautifully 16 centuries years ago: “If you cannot find Jesus in the beggar at the Church door, you will not find Him in the chalice.”

Introducing MercyWatch

MercyWatch is focused on homeless street outreach to the marginalized and outcast in Snohomish County. Our mission is to sow new life, hope and peace through a commitment to be present to those on the streets stuck in addiction, mental health crisis and poverty, and to work with them for a better future. MercyWatch is 100% volunteer operated.

Homily – 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Guillermo’s Story

SIRACH 3:17-18, 20, 28-29

HEBREWS 12:18-19, 22-24A

LUKE 14:1, 7-14

Jesus is in a tight spot again.

He’s talking to a hostile audience of Pharisees and lawyers.  As Luke’s Gospel puts it, the guests had Jesus under close scrutiny.  These are people who had grudges with Jesus and were lying in wait for him to slip up and say something they could persecute him with.

To add insult to injury, this is the Sabbath and a few moments before today’s Gospel passage, Jesus cured a man of “dropsy.”  This is a no-no to some in Jesus’ world on the Sabbath.

But Jesus seizes the moment to feed our souls with a lesson in humility.  

Jesus is teaching us how to approach Him, how to approach God and how to approach heaven. Not as people believing ourselves worthy of something, but as people who are totally dependent on the mercy God for our very being, for every gift in our life, and for our potential future entrance into heaven.

Webster’s Dictionary defines humility as:

“The quality or state of NOT thinking you are better than other people”

In God’s eyes, we are humble when we are free of pride and arrogance. 

God desires us to not think of ourselves as better than others.  That kind of thinking only generates bitterness and division, and can lead to embarrassment when we overstep our place with God and with our brothers and sisters.

In other words, if we walk around with our noses up in the air, we may land flat on our faces.

One bible scholar says the Mediterranean world was an honor-shame based culture and “the social gaffe of overstepping one’s station, such as Jesus describes, would have been a mortifying experience.”  But he says this “points to the proper disposition toward God and how we define our need for God’s salvation in our lives. Social self-inflation is equated with spiritual self-inflation.

Do any of us see ourselves as better than others?  Do any of us see ourselves as more worthy than others for God’s mercy? Do any of us see ourselves as righteous enough to be worthy of heaven… without God’s help?  Or do we see our unworthiness and total dependency on God’s love and grace for everything in our lives, including our entrance into heaven?

This is the lesson Jesus wants us to learn this weekend. 

Drop our airs of self-importance.  Get real.

And again as part of this lesson, Jesus wants us to pay attention to the poor, the marginalized, and the outcast.

Jesus goes on to remind his fellow guests and us that a true act of generosity is one given to someone who can give us nothing in return, who cannot repay us, whose very social standing carries with it no prestige, no honor.

This is the exact way Jesus went about doing good, by emptying himself for others (especially the poor, marginalized and outcast) without counting the costs.

Once again, Jesus is sharing what’s expected of us as we build up the Kingdom here on earth.  

I’m reminded of something that happened earlier this year.

In early January, an Archbishop Murphy High School sophomore came up to me in Campus Ministry, and said, “Deacon Dennis, we need to help the people affected by the Bluff’s Apartment fire.” 

The Bluff’s Apartments house very low income families near Casino Road, many of them Hispanic.

I said, “Sure, Guillermo.  We can do something.  Do you know someone who lives there?”

He said, “Yes, I do, because I used to live there.”

Guillermo told me his family has limited means (as did most who lived in the apartment complex).  With little siblings, his heart ached for the kids who lost their Christmas presents in the fire.

By the way, Guillermo’s family belongs to the Spanish language community in our own parish.

I asked him what should we do? He said, “Could we raise funds for the families on campus?”

The following week, we held our Martin Luther King Jr. Mass. I asked him to come up and speak about the need and ask his classmates and teachers and the entire school community to dig deep and give to these burned out families who lost so much.

The response was great. When all was said and done, Guillermo’s fund raised nearly 7-thousand dollars for the people of the Bluff’s Apartment complex.

A week or so later, we invited the families to Immaculate Conception after Sunday Mass and Guillermo handed each one of the 20-plus families hundreds of dollars in donated cash.

Some cried as they received the money. Some embraced Guillermo with a big hug. Others just humbly expressed their gratitude to Guillermo and shook his hand. 

I’ve posted a picture from the experience and an article on Guillermo that ran in the Herald a few days later on my blog at DeaconDennis.com.     Link to article on Guillermo in the Herald

  

 

Guillermo is a soft-spoken, humble young man. He's at a prestigious private Catholic high school, but Guillermo remembers his roots. He remembers the community from which he comes and does not consider himself better than them, but seeks what's best for his friends in need.
          Jesus is pointing a finger at Guillermo’s example and asking us to follow it in our daily lives.

We live in some of the richest zip codes on the planet.

People from poorer parts of the world would give anything to live where we live and live how we live.

We are blessed to have been born into this wealthy society.  We are blessed with plenty, especially when compared to the rest of the world.  

As we heard in today’s first reading on the importance of humility from the Book of Sirach, “Water quenches a flaming fire, and alms (giving to the poor) atone for sins.”

So how do we bless others with the many blessings we’ve been given by God?