Trentons and Princetons

9-29-19

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our lord and Savior Jesus the Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

As we all know, fall doesn’t just bring us Decorative Gourds and Pumpkin spice lattes. Fall also brings us… road construction.

While I was an associate pastor in New Jersey, my commute to my church almost doubled because of a particular bridge that needed to be updated and fixed…. This process took at least three months. Thanks NJ DOT! I eventually found a slightly shorter detour, one that took me passed an area of Windsor Township that I don’t normally go. The houses were large and fancy, and the yards were manicured within an inch of their lives. One house, though, stood out among the McMansions. THIS house had a heavy-duty fence around its stylish grounds and had not one but TWO impressive wrought iron gates, flanked by stylized concrete walls.

I even stopped one Sunday morning on my way to church to snap a picture when my colleague Jim was preaching on this very text – trying to do it in a hurry without looking suspicious about it! I could see the headlines – Pastor Caught Skulking around Rich Person’s House, Claims She Only Wanted A Sermon Illustration on Jesus’s Parable of “the Rich Man and Lazarus.”

That house was located less than 10 miles from where I lived in Trenton at the time. Both Trenton and Windsor were in the same county, but they might as well be on different planets. Within the span of time it takes to cook a pizza, you could drive from the poorest areas in New Jersey – Trenton – to some of the richest – Princeton, and it’s suburbs like Windsor, where this particular gate was located. Everyday, when I drove to my congregation, I passed both homeless people outside of abandoned houses, and million-dollar home with kids on the soccer fields with gleaming new Nikes. Sometime it felt like cultural whiplash. All in the span of less than 10 miles. 

For the rich man, he did not have to travel 10 miles to experience his own cultural whiplash. He merely had to walk 10 steps outside of his very door to find sitting at his own fine gate a man named Lazarus. While the rich man feasted, Lazarus longed for the scraps and half-eaten bits left in the garbage. Even the dogs pitied Lazarus.

Pastor and Songwriter Bryan Odeen wrote a song about this story called “Across the chasm.” Pastor Odeen describes these two men like this - “One man feels the comfort, the other feels the rain. One with the means change things, the other with the scars.” In other words, two men who could not be more opposite.

In this instance, as in the case between Trenton and Princeton, ten steps might as well be ten miles, and ten miles might as well be ten light years. The Gate between them becomes an uncrossable chasm, one that the rich man cannot – or will not – cross.

As Jesus’s parable goes, both men died right around the same time. One could imagine that they most likely died of different things – Lazarus from complications due to lack of medical care, poverty, and starvation, the Rich man perhaps from gout or heart disease or diabetes. After they died, however, both men found an interesting reversal in their fortunes. 

Before death, the theme of Rich man’s life was Hakuna Matata – no worries for the rest of your days… a problem free philosophy, because really DID have nothing to worry about.  Everything was handed to him, every need anticipated.  After death – well, it was a different story. In the parable, the rich man found himself to be suddenly lacking, while his closest neighbor Lazarus is seated at the place of honor by Abraham's side.

But here is the thing - even in death the rich man still doesn't see Lazarus as a person, but only as a means to an end - a way to gain relief from HIS OWN suffering, or a way to protect his brothers from future torment… with no regard for what it might cost Lazarus.

And perhaps the most shocking thing of all here is that we learn that the rich man knew Lazarus’ name ALL ALONG. He knew his name…. and did nothing to help Lazarus while they were alive. While the rich man might not have caused Lazarus’s poverty, his hunger, or his sores… he still stood by and did nothing.

People from Princeton, New Jersey were not driving into Trenton in the middle of the night and stealing from people there in order to make them poor. People from Princeton were not damaging buildings or taking away people’s homes to make them homeless. But people from Princeton WERE benefiting from a system that privileged things like home ownership, high property taxes, the color of their skin, and access to an abundance of resources. And people from the surrounding area did and do stand by and watch Trenton crumble under the weight of poverty, lack of resources, the sores of homelessness, and the general attitude of “don’t go there, that’s a bad place.” Route One became the inaccessible gate and the uncrossable chasm between the Haves and the Have nots, the Rich and the Lazaruses.

But this is not the only place in this country where this is happening. It happens everywhere, including in our own neighborhoods.  The fifth commandment is being broken everywhere. That’s the one that says, you shall not kill. Which, on the surface seems like one of the “easy” no brainer ones. But nothing could be further from the truth, in the case of Princeton and Trenton, the rich man and Lazarus, you, me, and the parts of our cities we separate from.

Martin Luther brought being a follower of God to the next level in his explanation of the fifth commandment “Thou Shalt not Kill,” … by saying “We are to fear and love God, so that we neither endanger nor harm the lives of our neighbors, but instead help and support them in all life’s needs.”

We might not actively harm the people at our very own gates…. But we benefit from systems that privilege some kind of people above others. It’s not just enough to NOT murder our neighbor. We break the fifth commandment when we aren’t active in helping them as well.

As we sometimes say in our time of Confession that we “We have sinned…  in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done AND by what we have left undone. We have not loved… our neighbors has ourselves.” We use others as a means to an end, and do not see or acknowledge the full humanity of the Lazarusus in our own lives. We have become too familiar with the brokenness and have chosen the comfort of no longer seeing it. We are in bondage to sin, and cannot free ourselves.

The refrain that Pastor Bryan Odeen sings in his song repeat these words: “Across the chasm we see the other side…. the broken and divine. Both of them beloved, both are sore and tried. If only in their life, they crossed the great divide.”

In this life, the gate can be unbolted, and the chasm between us is crossable. There is someone who shows us the way across this chasm, who bridges the gap himself, and he is the one telling this story. We hear that this particular parable has an uncertain ending, but we can be certain of how Gospel of Luke ends. Yes, Luke ends with “people crucifying Jesus because they could not abide a God who…” bridges the chasm and “joins us in our humanness and promises to stay.” The Gospel of Luke ends with Jesus rising from the dead… despite when we, like the brothers of the rich man, might refuse to see it. Even when we refuse to see people who are ten miles … or ten steps away. Even when we allow sin to get in the way of our seeing the humanity of others.

The cross is God’s defeat of everything that separates us from God, and on another. There is no more gate separating us. There is no more chasm to cross. As Pastor Dan Erlander writes, “Our death and our life are no part of Christ’s own dying and rising. We are no longer alone.”

We – together - are called to be part of a new kind of community, a community is the kingdom of God, where we all find welcome, where we all are made whole. This community defies time and space, spans political parties and world views, resists racial and economic divides, and crosses the chasms that separate us from one another, chasms caused by fear and hate and bondage to sin. A community that doesn’t just refrain from doing harm, but instead intentionally acts for the good of our neighbors, whether they are ten feet or ten miles or ten hours away. Because I don’t think the chasm is as big as we think – at least, not anymore. Thanks be to God. Amen.