The Mouths of Babes

It’s 1990.  We’ve recently moved to Connecticut, and have decided to take a trip to see the sights in New York.  Mary Kate is six and Joey is four.  As we’re walking from the train station, I’m focused on getting us where we need to be.   Suddenly, Joey is tugging at my pants leg.  “Daddy, daddy,” he says, “there’s a man back there sitting on the sidewalk collecting money in his hat.  Can I have a dollar to put in his hat?”  Stuck in my own little world, I never even noticed the man begging on the sidewalk.  I give Joe a dollar bill and he happily trots back to the man with his contribution.

Out of the mouths of babes…

I imagine today’s parable of Lazarus and the rich man is very familiar to most all of you – it was familiar to me back then on the streets of New York.  And yet, I found myself uncomfortably cast as the villain of the tale.

What I’ve since realized is that my perception of the man’s sin was simply the symptom of a much deeper spiritual disease.  Apparently, the rich man did nothing during his life to alleviate poor Lazarus’ distress, despite the fact that Lazarus was just outside his door.  Okay, that’s bad, but again, just a symptom of the true evil.  The real issue is revealed in his conversation with Abraham.  He calls him Father Abraham, for the rich man was a Jew, a son of Abraham.  But he doesn’t refer to Lazarus as a fellow Jew, a fellow son of Abraham, his spiritual brother.  For him, Lazarus is simply a slave or a messenger.  His lack of charity towards Lazarus was not out of ignorance – he knows Lazarus’ name – but was because he considered Lazarus almost not human, not worthy of the slightest attention or dignity, never mind charity.

Jesus constantly reminds in his words and in his deeds to respect the dignity of every life around us.  While the rich man did not recognize his brotherhood with Lazarus, a fellow Jew, Jesus insists that we recognize the brotherhood and sisterhood of all humans, who are our fellow children of God, created in God’s image and likeness, vested with the goodness of God from their very conception.

My sin on the sidewalk that day long ago was not that I saw the man and decided to pass him by, but that he did not even break through into my consciousness.  For me, it was as if the man did not exist.  In my concern about tending to my own, leading my own to where we should be, I could not extend the dignity of human life to others around me.

When I can remove the dignity of life from any one person, I have opened a floodgate of ills and evil.  I can justify just about any offense against life - war, racism, xenophobia, capital punishment, abortion, poverty; you name it.  All I need to is to deny the full humanity of my victims.

The rich man, recognizing that his own fate is sealed, asks for Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his brothers.  Interestingly, the Greek word that Luke uses for “warn” is the same word that his uses nine different times in the Acts of the Apostles to describe the disciples witnessing to the risen Christ.  Yet Abraham says that even that warning from one risen from the dead will not be enough.  After all, they haven’t paid any attention to the plentiful warning already given by Moses and the prophets.  To remind us of these very warnings, we hear from the prophet Amos today, scathing the wealthy for being oblivious to the plight of the people of Israel (Am 6:4-7), a typical prophetic urging to care for the poor and needy.

Yet even today, with not only Moses and the prophets, but Jesus himself as an example, I can easily disrespect the life, the dignity, the humanity of others.  But then, Jesus sends me a message as I remember a tugging on my pants leg, “Daddy, daddy, there’s a man back there…”