God greets Mother Teresa at the Pearly Gates.
"Art thou hungry, Mother Teresa?" God asks.
"Yes, Lord, I am," she replies.

So God opens a can of tuna and reaches for a chunk of rye bread and they share it. While eating this humble meal, Mother Teresa looks down into Hell and sees the inhabitants devouring huge steaks, lobsters, pheasants, pastries and fine wines. Curious, but deeply trusting, Mother Teresa remains silent.

The next day God again invites Mother Teresa to join him for a meal. Once again, it is tuna and rye bread. Yet again, looking down, Mother Teresa sees the denizens of Hell enjoying caviar, champagne, lamb, truffles and chocolates. Still, Mother Teresa says nothing.

The following day, mealtime arrives and another can of tuna is opened. Mother Teresa can contain herself no longer. Meekly, she says, "God, I am grateful to be in Heaven with You as a reward for the pious, obedient life I led on Earth. But here in Heaven all I get to eat is tuna and rye bread, and in the 'Other Place' they eat like emperors and kings! Forgive me my Lord, but I just don't understand."

God sighs. "Let's be honest, Mother Teresa," He says. "It hardly seems worth cooking when there are just two of us here."

There are lots of jokes about the "pearly gates" - you probably have heard better ones. As we've seen from the parable we read today, there were stories about the heavenly hereafter at the time of Christ too. Jesus probably borrowed one when he told his story of the rich man and Lazarus. It's a well travelled story - versions of it have been found in Jewish literature and Egyptian writings.

It probably seemed a funny story at the time too - a rich man ends up begging that the poor man he had ignored in life would hear from behind the pearly gates. But Jesus' version, even if light hearted, would have had a particular impact. Once again Luke places it in the context of disagreement between Jesus and the Pharisees. Luke puts it very bluntly when he says "the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, ridiculed him." Part of Jesus response was to tell this story, a story with very clear contrasts between rich and poor, and a very clear reversal which was often his way of talking about the Kingdom of God.

Behind a high wall a rich man lived. His clothes were luxurious, his feasts were sumptuous. His extravagant consumer lifestyle was conspicuous. Down outside the gate a beggar lay on the ground. The sort of person most of us would never encounter - but the sort of person Mother Teresa spent her lifetime ministering to. Starving, full of sores, helpless.

The first surprise of the story is that the man at the gate is given a name: he is the only person in Luke's parables who receives a name. A significant name too: Lazarus, deriving from a Hebrew expression "God has helped". To name a character in a story is a form of empowerment: so often the status quo is maintained exactly through anonymity. It is much easier to ignore those in need when we know nothing about them. When the poor man is identified in the parable he becomes a character who has importance for Jesus. Later copies of the gospel which gave a name to the rich man also miss the importance of this point.

A second aspect of this parable which would have stood out to the original audience was the fact that there was very little other information about Lazarus. He was poverty stricken, so ill that he was unable to stand and unable to prevent dogs from rendering him ritually unclean by licking his sores. We are told he was outside of the gate, a term meaning he was outside of the accepted culture. Yet there is no mention of his moral standing. He lived in a religious culture which saw disease and poverty as a punishment from God but we are given no reason given either for his state on earth nor his ascent to heaven except that he was being comforted for the evil he received in his life. Similar stories in contemporary literature always stress the goodness of the poor man, so that the afterlife is seen as a reward. But in this version the man's only virtue seems to be poverty.

It's even more surprising to realise that in this story the revelation of God is not dependent upon the resurrection. Even with only the Old Testament scriptures the rich man had the clues to God's ways and God's justice. Remember the other Lazarus in the New Testament, the one who was raised from the dead? His story shows that not even a miracle as fantastic as that makes any difference to the character of God already revealed in the scripture. Those who were not willing to see this character of mercy and justice in scripture and personified in Jesus would not be convinced by resurrection. Perhaps there was an ironic reference to the difficulty of the message of the parable: is it harder to believe in someone who rises from the dead or in strange economy of the kingdom where poor will be made rich and the rich sent empty away?

Things are certainly turned upside down in this parable. We see a rich man whose sumptuous life is transformed after death so that he ends up a beggar, while the poor man who had lain dying at his gate by the end of the story is resting secure in the bosom of Abraham.

Do you remember the old version of the hymn "All things bright and beautiful" had a verse

Most hymnbooks have quite rightly deleted this verse - the idea that poverty and wealth are ordained by God and cannot be reversed is not a teaching of the Kingdom of God. One of the hymns we will sing today is truer to the message of this parable:

The message seems to be that God is with the poor, and not with the rich who ignores the poor. A rabbinic saying from around that time expresses it well: "God stands together with the poor man at the door and one should therefore consider whom one is confronting" (Leviticus Rabbah 34:9).

And yet surely life more complicated than that. The rich man in this parable is not so different to us: sure, his life is luxurious in comparison to the beggar at the gate, but so is ours in comparison to so many in the world. He is not obviously profiteering at the expense of others - just living according to contemporary standards. And what difference could he have made really? Even if he had helped Lazarus, wouldn't there be another poor man at his gate the next week?

I'm sure you have your own experiences to relate but I'll share a couple of my own with you: when David and I were living in South Africa, one of the hardest things to deal with was the constant, daily, knocks at the door with people asking for work, money, food or accommodation. Perhaps God was with those beggars at the door and on the street, but our resources were not endless. In Melbourne we lived as part of a community which provided support and housing for people suffering from schizophrenia. They were usually on a pension, so they weren't necessarily starving, but there was still a sense of poverty in the hopelessness of their situation, the constant cycle of pension checks which got used up in the first couple of days of the fortnight and seemingly no will to plan or save, or change their situation. I heard the same sort of criticism again this week on the radio - that low income families were using the bonus family payment of $600 per child to buy alcohol and cigarettes or luxuries like mobile phones and computers when the money should have been used for children's clothing and proper food. How do we as middle-class, healthy Christians respond to such poverty? How do we act in a world where things seem to be beyond our influence, where political systems and economic structures result in such an inequality on a global scale, but the constant downward spiral is also accelerated by overpopulation, natural disasters, things beyond our control?

Earlier this week just after I had decided on this parable for my sermon I opened an envelope from the Justice and International Mission unit of the Uniting Church - a regular mailout that I receive. One of the pages inside had this heading: "Lazarus at the gate - Australia's grab for oil and gas deposits in the Timor Sea". The author of the article suggested that Australia's dispute with the government of East Timor over oil and gas deposits is reminiscent of the parable we are looking at today - the rich man's failure to share his wealth with Lazarus in poverty and need at his gate should prompt us to think how we are treating one of our closest neighbours in need. In the article the Prime Minister of East Timor is quoted as saying "Australia knows that these revenues are vital for us. I am very surprised by their attitude. I never thought a democratic country like Australia would play this kind of role with a poor neighbour."

Is this parable simply saying that God will reward the poor and punish the rich in the next life? Such an interpretation fits with Luke's beatitude:

And yet it seems to me that what is not said in this parable is just as important as what is said. What is not done is just as important as what is done. The lack of communication between the rich man and Lazarus is carried through to the next life, but it starts very obviously on earth. The rich man is just not aware of the poor man at his gate. He only became aware of him as a person when he himself was suffering. Isn't our helplessness and feelings of futility on the issue of "the poor" so often for that very reason: the "poor" remains a nameless, unknown group which we can't connect with. Our encounter with world poverty is so often only the television screen - poverty is elsewhere, distant, outside our boundaries, beyond our gate.

And yet wouldn't most of us have had experiences where we did relate to another human being, did become aware of their situation and need and were able to do something? I know that many here support orphans through programs such as SAO, and I have noticed when these programs are advertised there is an emphasis on the fact that by supporting an individual child a relationship is established. We know that the refugee families who have become part of our church have in some cases changed our views on refugee policy. When people have a name, a story, a life that we can relate to, they become important to us. By the same token, keeping a distance and giving a family a case number or making a decision about their future without ever meeting them makes such decisions much easier.

Communication and relationship leads to compassion.

The famous anthropologist Margaret Mead was once asked this question: What was the earliest sign of civilization in any given culture? One might expect the answer to be a clay pot or perhaps a fish hook or grinding stone. Her answer was "a healed femur." The femur, of course, is the leg bone above the knee. Mead explained that no healed femurs are found where the law of the jungle, survival of the fittest, reigns. A healed femur shows that someone cared. Someone had to do that injured person's hunting and gathering until the leg healed. The evidence of compassion, she said, is the first sign of civilization.

The message at the end of the story is the suggestion that the word is a sufficient guide to life. God has revealed the way we should live. God's ways are clear in the Law and the Prophets, and Jesus' life of compassion was obvious to all who saw him. Later in Luke's gospel there is another reference to Moses and all the prophets, and this time it is the resurrected Jesus speaking in the context of the meal at Emmaus (ch 24). I have spoken before about how important shared meals were in the parables of Luke and in the gospel as a whole. I think it could be argued that for Luke the practice of table fellowship was the key to interpreting the Scriptures. The rich man in this parable would have been saved if he had raised his eyes from his table and reached out to include Lazarus at his gate. Over and over again we see Jesus doing this - and it is the meal which includes everyone that represents the Kingdom of God.

So would it be a different story if there had been awareness, communication, compassion in the worldly life? If there had been a relationship between the rich man and the poor man at his door, if there had been an ability to let go of the ritual boundaries keeping them separated? If the rich man had opened the gate and seen God in this destitute man: a shocking idea yet entirely biblical as we see God represented by the outcasts, the prostitutes, the children, the man hanging on a criminal's cross.

God's word is our guide to life. It tells us we are justified by grace. But it also tells us we are judged by our works. God's word tells us we will see God as we feed those who are hungry, clothe those who are ragged, provide space in our communities for those who have no homes. If we build fences and close gates in this life, it may be that we are shutting ourselves out of the eternal life that is God's kingdom. The parable ends with a fixed chasm dividing the rich man and Lazarus. But we could perhaps imagine a better end to the parable. If only it were possible to reach out and include the needy as brothers and sisters, the walls between rich and poor might come tumbling down.

The long season of Pentecost in the church calendar reminds us of the role the Holy Spirit plays in the church's life and mission. The first sermon of Jesus in Luke begins with a quotation from Isaiah: "The Spirit is upon me to proclaim good news to the poor". Luke's other book, Acts, introduces the church by quoting Joel: "I will pour out my spirit on all flesh - your sons and your daughters shall prophesy". And this spirit is still present for us: reminding us of God's grace and justice and empowering us for true table fellowship in our world. The evidence of compassion is not only the first sign of civilization, shouldn't it also be a sign of the work of the Spirit in the life of the church?

We are privileged to have the hope of a better future. We can imagine with the writer of Revelation a new heaven and new earth, where death will be no more, mourning and crying and pain will be no more. A new Kingdom where the God of love and justice reigns. But this hope can only be brought to reality as we put flesh on it. Let us be reminded again of the words of Teresa of Avila: "Christ has no body on earth now but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours."

Is Christ standing outside our door? Do we see the needs of our neighbour? Let us not allow the gate of indifference become a chasm between us and eternal life.

Jeanette Mathews
27/06/04