Lazarus at the Rich Man's Gate
posted by James Diggs @ 2:02 PM
The Corridor
We are a church community committed to having an incarnational presence in the Washington/Baltimore Corridor.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
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We are a church community committed to having an incarnational presence in the Washington / Baltimore Corridor.
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2 Comments:
If these people would get off their butts and drugs, then they too can live out the great American dream. It is great to be in America. We have because we work. That makes all the difference. Social justice and emergent churchs really suck. They make you think that you are helping, but really what are you able to do at a coffee house? Surf? Get real!! See ya soon...
Well Jay, we don’t meet in a coffee house (though that might be nice) and no one in our community surfs, but I do work for a homeless shelter for families here in Washington DC. I can tell you first hand that while there are homeless that are not helped by their own drug addictions and such there are an abundance of homeless people that simply can not make it no matter how hard they work. The costs of housing and healthcare are simply not affordable for everyone and this has no barring on their morality or work ethic. You also have to take into account the lack of opportunity to succeed for the generationaly poor or the families that were making it fine (though pay check to pay check) until tragedy struck. Also, mental illness is sometimes a significant factor in homeless as well.
Even though I work with the homeless and those in poverty I do not pretend to have all the answers; I actually have many more questions than answers. But I do know as followers of Jesus that we can not put our heads in the sand and ignore it or blame others for it.
Jay your reaction is typical of someone who has not really looked at the issues and instead makes a lot of assumptions. In the scripture that the title of the post refers to, the rich man finds himself suffering in Hades after a long life of apathy toward Lazarus. In the days of Jesus’ original audience many correlated wealth, health, success, and prestige with “God’s favor”. The rich man assumed that he was favored by God and Lazarus was not; at the end of his life he found the reverse to be true. Today, many of us carry with us that same type of prejudice; we wrongly assume that if someone is poor they are so because of their own doing, because of moral failure, and because of their poor work ethic. We wrongly assume that they have what they deserve, which is nothing; and we have what we deserve, which we worked hard for (because we think the homeless wont work or work hard).
In the Parable Jesus told, the rich man found out the hard way that this isn’t the case; and just because one might have and others do not doesn’t mean that God’s favors those that have and that they are necessarily living the right way. In fact, the rich man even in Hades thought that he was above Lazarus. He thought that Lazarus should serve him by asking Abraham to have Lazarus serve him water and take a message to his brothers. The rich man looked down on Lazarus; this parable reminds us that we should not look down on those who find themselves in poverty.
As a follower of Jesus we need to extend both love and grace (grace for when there are things people may do to hurt them selves and their own situation) to serve those that are in need. Jay, if you are a follower of Jesus I suggest that you try not to confuse the American dream with your faith and the gospel. I suggest you rethink the complexity of the issues and learn to look on even the least of these with the love of Christ.
Peace,
James
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