SCRIPTURE READING |Luke 16:19-31
9 “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. 20 At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores 21 and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores. 22 “The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. 24 So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’ 25 “But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. 26 And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’ 27 “He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, 28 for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’ 29 “Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’ 30 “‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ 31 “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”
TO BOLDLY GO – LISTENING | Pastor Thanael Certa-Werner
Today we continue our sermon series, To Boldly Go! where we’re looking at six parables, or stories, which Jesus uses to illustrate points about what it means to follow Him. Throughout this series, we’re looking at how these stories teach us to be brave with our faith and to have the courage to live into it.
Last week, we looked at the parable of the wise man who built his house on the rock and the foolish man who built his house on the sand. When we choose to build our lives on Christ and His word, we can stay standing when the flood waters of our lives hit and threaten to take us out at the knees.
This week, we’re taking a look at another parable. But before we get too far, we need to practice our memory verse.
For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline. 2 Timothy 1:7 (NIV)
The parable we’re looking at today is a longer one and it has multiple lessons to teach. It starts by showing us a man who’s living large. He has a nice house, all the food he could ever want, nice clothing – in other words, he’s living the dream. Outside of his property, there’s living a poor man. Lazarus is his name and he has nothing. No house, one pair of clothing; Jesus even throws in that he’s covered in sores that dogs come to lick. Nowadays, the equivalent to that would be having a bunch of open wounds that racoons crawl out of the trash to come and lick.
So these two men are on complete different sides of the socioeconomic scale. The day comes when both of the men have died. Lazarus, who was poor, is now standing beside the father of the faith, Abraham, in heaven. But the rich man is now in Hates, or Hell. He looks up and sees Lazarus standing there and pleads for a drop of water from the finger of Lazarus.
This is the ultimate irony! All of his life, Lazarus has had nothing – no food, water, clothing, place to live – he’s lived in squalor. Yet, the rich man saw this his whole life. Here before the man who had everything sat a man who had nothing and yet the rich man did nothing. But that doesn’t mean that the rich man was malicious. In fact, this man seems a bit like us today. Managing all that he had probably took much of his time. To be fair, one rarely gets rich and stays rich unless someone is working to make sure that the money is well-spent and continues to make more money.
In reality, this is something we experience pretty regularly as well, right? We all have busy lives which need living. There are things that we need to get done. We have honey-do lists, and work obligations, and children to get to classes and sports. It’s easy to fill our days full to the brim because there is so much to do!
And this seems to be the case for the rich man in the story. His life was so full that he didn’t have time to deal with much else, even Lazarus who was at his very gate. Again, this is so similar to us. Driving around town, especially in places with a lot of traffic, it’s pretty common to see people standing in the margin holding signs that say, “Out of Work. Please Help” or “Homeless.” I’ve only lived in Milwaukee for two months now, but I’ve already begun to stop noticing them. It’s not because I hate them or because I think they’re dirty. I’m in the car trying to get some place before I have to be back to do something else and I don’t have time to be bothered with anything else.
In the same way, the rich man was too busy with his own life to notice Lazarus. We know this because of how the parable ends. The rich man asks for Lazarus to be sent back to earth to warn his brothers about this fate. Abraham responds, but they have the prophets and Moses. They should already know this!
The rich man replies, “That’s not enough! They need someone from the dead to come back so that they’ll listen.” And the whole parable ends with Abraham saying, “If they won’t listen to the prophets and Moses, then they’ll be deaf to a dead person returning from the grave.”
The rich man is so astonished with what has happened to him that he’s trying to send back Lazarus to warn the others. It doesn’t even occur to him that the message was given to him and all of humanity beforehand! The whole Bible is a message about how we’re supposed to live and what it looks like to live good lives. But the rich man didn’t think of that because he was too busy focusing on other aspects of his life.
We experience this all the time in our lives. Have you ever gone to lunch with someone and they won’t put their phone down? I really hate this. In fact, it’s one of my biggest pet peeves. You try talking with them, try to interact to get them off their phone so that they can just be with you. Because when they’re focusing on their phone, you know that they’re not really listening to what you have to say.
It’s just like an old radio. When you turn the dial to a station, you pick up what they are broadcasting and you can listen. But the way we live our lives, and the way we deal with faith especially, we’re trying to tune into multiple radio stations at once. There’s only one needle on the radio and it can only point to one station. So, what happens if you try to listen to two stations? You’ll get static. Instead of hearing either station, all you’ll hear is white noise that is meaningless. Now imagine trying to do that with three stations, or seven! That’s how we try to live our lives and that’s definitely how we try to live into our faith.
I know that one of the hardest things for me to overcome is the constant whirling of my mind when I’m trying to pray. I’ll be in prayer and all of a sudden, I’ll think about that phone call I forgot to make, or that person who needs something from me, or that friend I haven’t talked with in a while. All of a sudden, I’ve spent ten minutes thinking about all the stuff I have to do and spent none of my time actually praying.
The reality of our situation is that we always are trying to do multiple things at once and in order to listen to what God is doing, to what He is calling us to in our lives, we have to work at it. We have to intentionally take time to listen. This might mean starting every morning with 15 minutes dedicated to prayer and devotions. It might mean scheduling time to go for a walk and just listening. Every person is different, but we are the same in this way – we need to work to listen to what God is telling us.
Where the rich man got it wrong was not in ignoring Lazarus his whole life. This was really a reflection of the rich man ignoring God his whole life. When we tune into one station and start listening, our lives will start to look differently.
Listening is hard because we also often only hear what we want to hear. But the challenge of our faith really is deciding who gets to speak and who listens. When we build our foundations, we get to choose what we build on. We can build on our jobs or our families or money. Just as when we choose what to listen to, we can choose to listen to ourselves and what we think is right. But we have a book full of testimony to what building our lives on Jesus and listening to what He teaches does for our lives.
Living boldly in our faith starts with choosing what we are building our lives on and what gets our attention. It’s not good to start building our lives on Christ and then have our attention divided so much that we never stop to see the cracks forming in our foundation. Our challenge this week is this, to make time every day to listen to what God is telling us. Our challenge is to stop trying to tune into five stations at once and to tune into God. God is already speaking in so many ways. He’s teaching us how to live good lives and to be Godly people. Our job is just to listen. And for that, thanks be to God. Amen.