Sunday 20th September 2007TRINITY XVII

Fr Julian Browning

Amos  6  :  1a  &  4 – 7  :  I  Timothy  6  :  6 - 19  ;  Luke  16  :  19 - 31

They will not be convinced even if someone should rise from the dead. Luke.16.31

For God there is only the present. In the present God sees our whole life.

Last week I watched the documentary film called Into Great Silence. It is about the lives of the Carthusian monks at Grenoble. The film is three hours long, mostly in silence, and not a dull minute. Towards the end of the film, one monk faces the camera and speaks. He is elderly and blind, and he says: human beings live in the past and the present. That's the way we're programmed to think. For God there is only the present. In the present God sees our whole life. I thought that was the most extraordinary thing to say. He was saying, I think: there is another world out there, beyond the dull world of what you see is what you get. There is somewhere for us to go beyond the world of comparing past and present, young and old, rich and poor. You and I are called to enter the world of the One Who Is. What can it be like, this world of the spirit, the world of the eternal present? Those monks know. Maybe we are liberated, liberated from guilt about the past,  and from our fears of the future, forgiven, released to work with God in the present. And if that's the case, then what we do now, in the present, really matters.

Today's Gospel contains a warning. The warning comes rolling down the centuries, from those who have died to those who are alive, from the rich man calling in vain to his five brothers: watch out, what you do in your lifetime has a permanent effect on you and on others, an eternal significance. That scowl, that rejection, that refusal to forgive, that pretending not to notice, these are not forgotten. So too a smile, a genuine concern, an attempt to heal, a self-sacrifice in love, and a death on a cross are of eternal value as well. This Gospel is about us and our eternal lives which begins now, in the present, not when we die. Whole chunks of St.Luke are about money and how to use it, but this Gospel is about more than that. Sometimes we listen to a Gospel story like that of the rich man and Lazarus, and think well, oh yes all right, I feel a little guilty, I'll attempt a modest improvement so I don't go to hell, update my standing orders, buy the Big Issue, smile at those less fortunate than myself. Great, but that's just typical. We downplay the Gospel, we prefer it tame. Jesus isn't running a stewardship campaign, he's using words of fire to singe the beards of the Pharisees, Jesus is pointing us to the narrow gate which leads to eternal life, holding out to us the promise of salvation. The trouble with the rich man in this story is not that he had the money, but that he had no religion. He didn't see Lazarus at all. He had not heard the great truth of our religion which is that all things are to be reversed, that the blind will see, and the dumb will speak, and those who separated themselves from others through their power or selfishness will find themselves to be exiles in their turn, while those who were outcasts will find themselves in the community of faith. He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble and meek. And the twist to the story is that even there in hell the rich man treats Lazarus like a slave, and asks Abraham to send him across from heaven with some water. But it's too late. You can only quench another's thirst on earth, and life on earth is over for the rich man and Lazarus. What's done is done. The present is over. In Dante's Inferno the damned are those don't know the present; they know only the future.

So there's the warning. It's a little harsh on those of us who are grumpy old men or women or their youthful equivalents, whose petrol tank of compassion is always running on empty. If I were humble enough to examine my conscience, I would find there a long list of Lazaruses I have not only failed to help, but have consciously avoided. So what of us, high church, broadminded, but with realistically low expectations of ourselves? The agenda was set at our baptism, as St.Paul reminds Timothy in today's epistle, and we can pledge ourselves again and again to fight the good fight of faith, and so on. But all of us need extra help, to be convinced, as the Gospel puts it. Christians do not work alone. Far from it. Jesus Christ rose from the dead to be with us now, and it doesn't matter how useless we think we are, because we can now see with his eyes, we can now heal with his hands, we can pray in his name, we can give with his self-giving love, and like calls to like, we see Jesus in other people's lives also, and there is no difference, no great gulf fixed, one equall light. God will help us to do his work. Grumpiness is no excuse. We shall be surprised by what we can do, we shall be surprised at how close God gets to us when we welcome Lazarus figures into our lives. Anyway, Christians have no choice. God is counting on us to join in his work of compassion and love. There's our life's work, and it's more than enough. Remember then the two failures of the rich man in this story. Throughout his life, which may have been on the whole a good one, that man's mind was closed to God in this world, and therefore his heart was closed to the demand of compassion, even when the most obvious need was at his gate. So easy to go that way. So easy. What a waste. When we respond to any opportunity for compassion and help and love, opportunities which the world very obviously presents to us every day, we share in God's redeeming work, we win for ourselves, as St.Paul puts it today, the life which is life indeed, and there we meet Our Saviour, who has risen from the dead and walks among us.