The 18th Sunday after
Pentecost
Lazarus at the Gate
Deacon Carole Maddux,
St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church, Alpharetta, Georgia
When I was in formation, you could call
it “Deacon’s School,” I loved the book of Amos so much that my fellow
classmates nicknamed me Amos. It seemed that no matter what we
were discussing, I could find a relevant verse in the clear, spare,
uncompromising voice of the prophet Amos. I still find energy
and passion in this grumpiest of prophets. So here I am finally
assigned to preach with a reading from Amos…And I’m going to preach on
our Gospel reading from Luke…Because this reading is unique and
powerful, somewhat like Amos.
It’s unique in
that only Luke reports this story from Jesus, and this is a rare
instance in the Gospel where the afterlife is mentioned. And what
could be more powerful than a story of the downfall of the ignorant
and indifferent and the rising up of the poor and suffering? A story
Amos would approve of…And a story I was reminded of when I watched the
movie “The Painted Veil.”
Based on a
Somerset Maugham book of the same name, it takes place in the China of
the mid-1920s and tells the story of a British couple, Kitty and
Walter. They met in London and married hastily, Kitty to escape her
mother and Walter to escape loneliness. Now they are stuck together
in Shanghai, where Walter works as a physician, and they discover that
they really don’t know each other at all. Bored and immature, Kitty
has an affair and Walter decides to punish her by forcing her to
accompany him to a remote village wracked with cholera. The village’s
doctor been killed by the epidemic and Walter, angry and despondent
over his wife’s infidelity, has volunteered to be their new physician.
Not
surprisingly, their marriage is not helped by this mutual suicide
pact. Their nights are angry and silent and their days are separate
and lonely. Kitty and Walter seem like two people going over a cliff
with their hands on each other’s throats! Walter’s attention, however,
is soon consumed by the cholera epidemic, and he leaves Kitty alone
for most of the time in their gated house with a maid and a bodyguard,
neither of whom speak much English.
Bored again, but
deprived of her lover, Kitty decides to go for a walk to the village.
Because of rising tensions between the English and Chinese, her
bodyguard accompanies her. She gets as far as the gate to her house,
when she stops suddenly. There, right at the gate, is the corpse of a
villager felled by cholera.
Kitty is both
repelled and naively mesmerized---not turning back until her bodyguard
cries out in alarm at her. This is her Lazarus. Literally dying at
the gate while she stays inside, ignorant and indifferent.
Who is our
Lazarus? Who is at the gate of our homes? We, “who in the
present age are rich” as described in I Timothy this morning.
When I worked at
North Fulton Community Charities back in the 90s, I was sometimes
asked by people what I did. When I told them I served the poor of
North Fulton, their reactions ranged from surprise to actual
laughter. “The poor of North Fulton!?” they’d exclaim, “What, people
who can’t get their BMW out of the shop?”
Most of the
people I knew in North Fulton did not realize that we had a hidden
population of poor - That we had whole families living in a walk-in
closet in a North Fulton apartment - That we had homeless people who
literally froze to death every winter in the pockets of woods here -
That we had elderly women who were choosing between medicine and food
every day.
Now, as North
Fulton has grown and somewhat urbanized, I don’t think it’s much of a
surprise to people any more that we have a Lazarus at our gate, but I
don’t see the gates going down any faster either. We’ve gone from
ignorance to indifference, and that may even be worse.
Who is at the
gate of our neighborhoods?
When I work
among the homeless of Atlanta, I can see Lazarus many times over.
There are literally people lying at the gates of buildings and parks,
covered with the cracked skin and sores of poverty.
Who is at the
gate of our country? Within Central America, just outside the gates of
the small middle class neighborhood of Tegucigalpa, is the poor
neighborhood of La Flor. Just outside the gate of La Flor, lies La
Conterra. I can tell you that those of us from our church who have
been to La Conterra, were shocked to see who lived outside the gate.
It was naked and dirty children, left practically on their own, while
their parents worked in T-shirt factories for slave wages so that
cheap, new clothing can be delivered to the US. Once you see that,
you never look at a “Made in…” tag the same way again.
Who is outside
our farther gates? The Lazarus here is the hardest to see. In
journalism school, I learned the hoary maxim that all “news is
local.” And if you look at a newspaper today, you’ll find it’s still
true. In a recent addition of the AJC, the headline was about how
suburban Atlanta singles meet, but buried inside was 92-word story
about 83,000 Somali children facing starvation due to drought,
war and poverty. 83,000 starving children at our gate while we
spend 5 billion dollars a year on Halloween candy and costumes. So why
are we still inside our gates, is it ignorance or indifference?
Let’s go back to
our movie:
Eventually,
Kitty is driven by tedium outside her gate again. This time, she gets
as far as a local convent that takes in orphans. The mother superior
accepts her request to volunteer and Kitty begins to work with those
orphaned by the poverty and disease of the area. As she works, she
learns more about her husband’s work and begins to respect and admire
Walter’s tireless fight against the cholera. Walter, in the meantime,
sees more of her as he tends to the sick children and sisters
of the convent, and begins to respect what she is doing. Their respect
for each others’ work eventually leads to a greater respect for each
other. And it also leads to an end of the epidemic. None of that
could happen, though, until they came out from behind their gate, lost
their ignorance and shed their indifference, and risked entering into
the sorrow of the suffering.
Much like Christ
entered into ours.
As Henri Nouwen
states in “The Wounded Healer,” Who can save a child from a burning
house without taking the risk of being hurt by the flames? Who can
listen to a story of loneliness and despair without taking the risk of
experiencing similar pains in his own heart and even losing his
precious peace of mind? In short: “Who can take away suffering without
entering it?”
Perhaps that is
what keeps us from tending to the Lazarus at the gate. We know, from
“Moses and the prophets” what our duty is. We know from the Epistles,
how to keep “our eagerness to be rich” from allowing us to “wander
away from the faith” and be indifferent to the poor.
But to take that
final step outside our gate, we must be willing to enter into
their suffering. We must be willing to stop masking our fear with
indifference. We must be willing to love.
Mother Teresa is
a famous example of someone who left a gated community of teaching
nuns to start a community outside among the dying poor of Calcutta.
She is also famous for her great love for those she cared for. When
she was asked, “Do you think that your patients see the face of Jesus
in your face?” She replied, “No, I see the face of Jesus in them.”
And that is the secret, for entering into the suffering of those you
love, is no burden. Is, in fact, not really a decision at all. Who
among us hesitates to run to our child when he is suffering?
One last look at
our story of Kitty and Walter. In one scene toward the end of the
movie, the Mother Superior assumes that Kitty followed Walter to the
village out of love. Unwilling to share the true reason, Kitty claims
it was only out of duty. Peering closely at her, the older woman
instructs Kitty, “When love and duty are one, there grace abides.”
When we shed our
ignorance for the wisdom and duty of the prophets, when we shed our
indifference for the love of the suffering Then, we will find the
grace described in our Epistle that will allow us and compel us “to do
good, to be rich in good works, to be generous, and ready to share”
and then, then, we will “take hold of the life that really is life.”
Amen.
© Deacon Carole Maddux. All Rights
reserved.
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