"Liturgy is not there to be understood-- it is there to haunt us."

O God of all Mystery and all Strength 

We come together because we need you, 

We need each other, 

And we need to hear your Word.  

And if we hear it here, may we be so possessed by it  

That we become servants of it out in your world. 

We pray this in Christ, and though Christ, and because of Christ, 

Amen. 

After the lessons are read in this church, we often are instructed by the reader to “Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people,” an instruction for which we then give thanks. The task of the preacher, then, is to help us follow that instruction, to help us hear the Word in some useful way. To that end, this morning I recall the words of an old preacher in a small church far away from the world that most of us inhabit most of the time. He declared that “the Liturgy is not there to be understood; it is there to haunt us.” He claimed to be quoting a long-passed Archbishop, but I couldn’t find the source, but the words continue to do their work. Think about it: “the Liturgy is not there to be understood; it is there to haunt us.” [ ] This is a strong and necessary corrective for those of us who would try to digest the lessons of Scripture with our minds, and by doing this to make them safe, to file the edge off of whatever challenge they present, so that we might return to our daily lives edified, but not really changed. With that corrective in mind, we have to consider this morning what the Scriptures tell us about the fates of rich people (globally speaking, that’s all of us), and the poor (poor in worldly terms) who, we must admit, rarely worship in Episcopal churches on a Sunday, however sincerely we welcome everyone to our fellowship. 

This morning’s passage from Luke recounts the experience of a rich man and a poor man named Lazarus (this is not the same Lazarus who was brought back to life, in a different, well known, passage). This rich man wears fine clothes and feasts every day. This Lazarus sits at his gate, ill and starving. They both die. This rich man falls to the place of flaming torment, and this Lazarus is carried by angels to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man asks Lazarus for a drop of water to cool his tongue. Lazarus doesn’t answer, and I do wonder what he would have said, but we don’t know because Abraham answers for him, “Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.' [The rich man] said, `Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father's house-- for I have five brothers-- that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.' Abraham replied, `They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.' He said, `No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' He said to him, `If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'" 

So, to be clear, the book says that the rich man has no way out. None. His fate is sealed and the great chasm between hades and the bosom of Abraham cannot be crossed. Moreover, Abraham rejects the rich man’s request that his brothers be warned; he says `If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'"  

Moreover and more to the point, there is no indication that this rich man or his brothers did anything wrong other than be rich. If that doesn’t haunt every one of us, then according to this Word, we are, like the rich man’s brothers, doomed. 

And this message is not a one-off, not likely an interpolation by some later editor hoping to appease his prosperous congregation.  Earlier in the same gospel of Luke Jesus speaks the same message, if anything even more clearly: 

Blessed are you who are poor,     for yours is the kingdom of God. ²¹“Blessed are you who are hungry now,     for you will be filled. “Blessed are you who weep now,     for you will laugh. 

. . .²⁴“But woe to you who are rich,     for you have received your consolation. ²⁵“Woe to you who are full now,     for you will be hungry. “Woe to you who are laughing now,     for you will mourn and weep. 

There’s not a lot of nuance there. The reversal of fortune that awaits us is complete and unconditional. There’s no allowing for what’s in our cholesterol-saturated hearts, or for any conscience any of us might possess, or any moral rightness in our intentions.  

And yet Jesus had—has always had—some rich followers, many of whom in His time and in our day are haunted by the lack of wiggle room Luke’s Jesus gives us. I say Luke’s Jesus, because other New Testament voices sound a little different, including the writer of Paul’s letter to Timothy, which we also heard this morning. This letter offers many prescriptions for the rich that of course apply to all, but that reach out to rich folks in a way that Luke does not. The command is not to be haughty, or to set [our] hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. [We] are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for [our]selves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that [we] may take hold of the life that really is life. And which of us who is prosperous has not clung tightly to the idea that simply having money is not evil; it’s only evil if the acquisition of money is driven by a love of money, which the writer of Timothy says is the root of many evils, and that in their eagerness to be rich [the rich] have pierced themselves with many pains. 

Almost all the Christians I know much prefer the message that wealth is ok as long as humility and generosity come with it. This is understandable, and indeed the Psalms and the Wisdom books like Job and Proverbs and Ecclesiastes often endorse the idea that one’s flocks and orchards and family are multiplied by a life of righteousness. 

But it will not do to cherry pick from the plentiful menu of biblical witness. The messages often seem to contradict each other. The same Jesus who said that I come not to bring peace, but a sword also warns us—in the very same Gospel according to Matthew—that those who live by the sword, die by the sword. There are certainly ways to reconcile those statements, at least rhetorically, if you understand enough history and enough Koine Greek—and the same is true of this morning’s passages from Luke and Timothy. In the latter, we are offered the chance to understand that ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ are really spiritual conditions, not material ones. We are offered the chance to assure ourselves that material comfort does not make you a bad person, to put it bluntly.  

I think we take that chance all too easily, and when we take it we ignore the stark promise that our fortunes in this life will be reversed in eternity, like those of the rich man and the Lazarurus of this morning’s gospel.  

So what are we to do? I strongly suspect that most of us have no intention of surrendering our own extraordinary comfort and security—I know I have no such intention—and, that being the case, we must be willing to be haunted by the eternal reversal promised in the story of the rich man and Lazarus. Similarly, we must take hold of the life that really is life, which we are assured by Timothy has nothing to do with our portfolio of material assets, but only with how we use them. 

Ultimately, it’s hard to make sense of this. But that’s why we gather to pray and sing and open ourselves to the words of Scripture. We need to share this experience, we need to feel it together and know the work of God in each other. Attempts to explain it are necessary, but ultimately futile, because liturgy is not there to be understood; it is there to haunt us.  

Amen.