Proper 21C
In the name of the God knows us
by name, and loves us, still. Amen.
Earlier this week, while watching
the chipmunks scurrying about in the Rectory driveway, I told Michael about a
time I took my oldest nephew, Brooks, to a movie. He was four years old at the time and had
newborn twin brothers, so I thought it was important to do something – just the
two of us – so he wouldn’t feel so completely upstaged by having the babies
around. So I decided to take him to a showing
of a kids’ movie that had just come out, Alvin
and the Chipmunks.
Brooks was so excited. I didn’t get to make the trip down to
Mississippi to visit very often, so he was excited that we were taking some
one-on-one time together. But also, his
twin brothers were born prematurely, so a lot of everyone’s attention around
him tended to be directed to them. This
time, he was the focus.
We’d been building up this movie
outing for a couple of days, and on the morning it was happening I asked him if
he knew what we were going to do that day.
He answered, “Yes! You’re taking
me to see Albert and the Chick Monks!”
I tried to correct him, “No, it’s
Alvin and the CHIPmonks, not Albert and
the Chick Monks,” but he would have none
of it. The more I tried to assure him I
was right, the more he dug his heels in.
He thought I was trying to pull one over on him, and he just knew he was
right.
And even though he was mistaken,
and it’s a sweet little story that continues to amuse me, even now that he’s a
teenager, the thing he did get right in his defense of his position is that
naming is incredibly important. He
wouldn’t stand for someone trying to tease him to mess with these characters’
names. He came to their defense.
So often, in our lives as people
of faith, one of the greatest traps of sin that we fall into is being blind to
the suffering around us – letting that suffering go unnamed and unnoticed –
staying so focused on ourselves and our own needs that we simply can’t see the
need around us. But in the Gospel lesson
we read this week, the sin isn’t that the rich man in the story failed to see
the suffering around him. The problem
was that he did see it, and he didn’t
seem to care – at least not until he had suffering of his own.
What is so powerful to me as I
read this parable is that the rich man (who goes unnamed in the parable, by the
way) – the rich man calls out Lazarus by name.
He says, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the
tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in agony in these
flames.”
He didn’t say, “Send that fellow
next to you.” He didn’t even say, “Hey,
I recognize him – he used to lie in the gutter by my gate – perhaps he’ll be
good enough to help.” No – he said,
“send Lazarus…” He knew his name. He knew it all along. The rich man knew exactly who Lazarus was and
all that he’d been through.
Names have great power, and in
this story, the name of the suffering one had damning power for the one who’d
spent his life ignoring the suffering of another. And the rich man spent his life not
respecting that power. Instead, he spent
his life enslaved to another power, altogether – the power that comes from
having accumulated wealth.
But the message of God in Christ
is that earthly powers are turned on their heads. The message of our faith is that true power
doesn’t look like we tend to expect it to look.
The collect today has this
beautiful opening line wherein it describes God as one whose “almighty power”
is declared “chiefly in showing mercy and pity…”. Isn’t that a fascinating way of considering
what “power” really means? Power isn’t
about accumulated riches or physical possessions for oneself. Power isn’t even about accumulating control
over others for oneself. Power isn’t
about cozying up to the leaders. Power,
instead, is about having the strength and self-confidence and grace and
compassion to define your life by showing mercy and pity. Power, in the way that God is trying to lure
us, is more about kindness than control.
As the Apostle Paul said in his
letter to Timothy, “be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus
storing up for [yourselves] the treasure of a good foundation for the future,
so that [you] may take hold of the life that really is life.”
Naming is important. What qualities do we assign to names like
“power”, “riches” or “wealth”, “treasure”?
And what actions do we associate with names like “grace”, “kindness”, or
“mercy”?
It’s easy to look past suffering
and never see it. We need to work to
stop that. But it’s also easy to look
suffering directly in the eye, to recognize it and to know it – to know its
very name – and to still do nothing.
May we all work harder at
cultivating that Godly power that is our inheritance – power that is known
chiefly by its nature of showing mercy and pity. Amen.
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