Dismantling the chasms

Jesus said, You cannot serve God and wealth, and then he told this parable about a rich man and Lazarus.  It is meant to be extreme—an unnamed rich man who ignores Lazarus, the one who gets a name but who is desperately poor and suffering in his lifetime but after he dies, he is rewarded with comfort in the presence of Abraham. 

The rich man also dies—wealthy people and poor people all face this same situation of mortality.  When the rich man is spending eternity in suffering, he still wants to order Lazarus around as his personal butler, fetching water and warning the rich man’s brothers.  Isn’t that just the absolute pinnacle of privilege, the cluelessness that human life has value? 

In this parable, it’s Abraham who is doing the teaching, reinforcing the presence of a “great chasm” between them.  Perhaps this is the same great chasm that the rich man couldn’t manage to cross during his lifetime, every day that he passed by Lazarus at his gate.  Abraham explains to the rich man that he has long had all the information he needs to make better decisions.  If you can’t listen to Moses and the prophets, it wouldn’t even matter if someone rose from the dead: nothing will change your mind. 

A great chasm is the image of a huge valley between two places, a wide space of separation.  We don’t always think of the separations between people as chasms, but imagine it—the great distance separating you from people who are different from you because of socioeconomic means or different cultures or languages, or citizenship status, or abilities. 

If you spend your lifetime determined to reinforce these great “uncrossable” chasms, to serve wealth instead of God, you will first cut yourself off from your own humanity, whether you recognize it or not, and you may well cut yourself off from the mercy of God that you will one day absolutely need.  And what you actually need is God’s mercy right now. 

Biblical scholar Ched Myers calls this parable as an “eschatological mirror” held up to “our own economic realities, challenging us to either live against or die within the inhumane gulfs that divide our social landscape.”[1]  Is this really a life-or-death situation?  Well, how much do you value your own humanity? 

Are you willing to live with these chasms of our own human construction, separating us from one another and cutting ourselves off from love and mercy?  Or will you “live against” the chasm, denying its power to separate humans from one another?  Are you willing to follow Jesus Christ into a discipleship that dismantles these chasms? 

Ched Myers would say this parable proves that resurrection is not meant to be a “get out of jail free” card that releases us from responsibilities to care for our neighbors as long as we ourselves are secure in our eternal salvation.  That would be a gross misunderstanding of God’s mercy, what Dietrich Bonhoeffer would call “cheap grace.” 

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is pointing his disciples back toward the ancient prophets they have long known.  Oh, that old stuff?  Yes.  Because humans have been persistent in the same nonsense for generations.  Ched Myers writes, “Luke’s Risen Christ doesn’t offer a ‘happily ever after’ ending but empowers us to transform disparity by apprenticing to our traditions of prophetic faith.  We wealthy North American Christians tend to resist this biblical witness from both testaments, despite our professions of scripture’s ‘authority.’”[2] 

In this parable of the rich man and Lazarus, these characters are demonstrating the actions described by the prophet Amos, in chapter 5, just before the sections we’ve read this morning.  In chapter 5, verses 10 through 12, Amos says:

10 They hate the one who reproves in the gate,

and they abhor the one who speaks the truth.

11 Therefore because you trample on the poor

and take from them levies of grain,

you have built houses of hewn stone,

but you shall not live in them;

you have planted pleasant vineyards,

but you shall not drink their wine.

12 For I know how many are your transgressions

and how great are your sins—

you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe

and push aside the needy in the gate.

The one who reproves in the gate, which means gives instructions to correct someone’s behavior, the poor are trampled upon and pushed aside in the gate…aren’t these the words to describe Lazarus? 

In the words of Amos that we’ve read today from chapter 6, the prophet pronounces woe upon those who are at ease, who feel secure, who lounge and sing idle songs “but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph,”[3] that brother sold into slavery and abandoned by his brothers.  It’s the heartlessness that ruins one’s sense of grief. 

What would it look like to take hold of the life that really is life?  What would it look like to dismantle the chasms that separate humans? 

In this season of creation, now seems like a good time to consider the creation, especially the land, as wealth.  How can that wealth be shared?  How can land be part of the process of dismantling the chasms that separate humans?  What would this look like in the real world?  Here’s one possibility.

Callie Walker is a retired United Methodist pastor whose father owned farmland in central Virginia.  After her father’s death, she and her two siblings inherited the land, and after much discernment and exploration of options, Callie decided to give her portion away. 

In an article in Sojourners magazine, she said this:

“With this inheritance, I was getting too much.  Way more than one human person’s share.  I would have to figure out how to even that out and be a good and faithful steward.  I see the land itself as having been a place of more injustice than justice over the past 400-ish years.  This is a place where Indigenous people were run off and annihilated. I don’t know whose blood was literally spilled on this piece of land, but I know that in 1790, my county already existed in its current geographic limits.  In that year, [over] 11,500 people were enslaved in Amelia County.  That’s almost equal to our current total population now. 

“When I start multiplying out generations and years, I think that approximately 100,000 people were born and died in Amelia County without anybody knowing their names anymore.  Nobody knows where they’re buried.  That’s 100,000 lives of unjust brutality and suffering .

“That is an unrepairable and irredeemable thing.  I don’t see this land donation as living up to the word ‘reparations’ or being able to genuinely repair that kind of injustice.   But I see my own heart as being moved and broken open by that kind of injustice and wanting to acknowledge it and to do what can be done to atone for it.  Whatever blood is crying out to God for justice, I want to hear that and honor that and respond to that.”[4] 

In planning for the future of the land, Walker doesn’t like to say she’s ‘giving away’ the inherited land.  She said, “I think I’ve made a great investment.  We’re going to have the best neighbors ever.”

Now does it sound absolutely bonkers to give away the land you’ve inherited?  Of course it does.  This is discipleship.  This is what it looks like to dismantle the chasms that separate people, starting with reaching out to others and then exploring how to transfer wealth and set up neighbors to thrive. 

May we encourage each other as disciples, looking for ways to build connections, to “live against” the chasms and the values of the world that divide us from each other and even separate us from our own selves and our humanity.  Let us take hold of the life that really is life. 

Amen.

Pastor Cheryl

[1] Ched Myers, “The Rich Man and Lazarus,” Sojourners magazine, January/February 2025, page 35.  https://sojo.net/magazine/januaryfebruary-2025/idol-wealth-coming-our-eternal-souls

[2] Ibid 35.

[3] Amos 6:6c

[4] Callie Walker quoted in “With this inheritance, I was getting too much: Is it a gift of reparations when a retired pastor gives away her inherited farmland?” by Martha Park, Sojourners magazine, September/October 2025, page 31.  https://sojo.net/magazine/september-october-2025/inheritance-i-was-getting-too-much