“Beware of Blindspots”
Original sermon given September 25, 2022, written and delivered by Pastor Gregg Ramirez at First Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church
Watch the sermon live here
“Beware of Blindspots"
Luke 16:19-31
Luke 16:19-31
I think many of you have experienced this when driving. It’s happened more times than I’d like to admit that I’m cruising along on the road and I decide to change lanes. Routinely I check the rearview and side view mirror. It’s all clear, but then as I begin the lane switch, I hear the blaring of someone’s horn. Inadvertently, I’m on a collision course with another vehicle. And why? They were in my blind spot, and I didn’t have one of those new bind spot indicators in my car to give me warning.
Likewise, at a moral and spiritual level we all have blind spots – areas of our lives that need to be uncovered so we can sense correctly and adjust our lives accordingly. But they are not easy for us to identify. Others can often see them in us, we rely on friends to point them out. Otherwise, we are clueless that we’re stepping over the line with others. But the reality is, even then we have a hard time being willing to make a course adjustment. We don’t want to admit a problem exists … often until it’s too late and consequences result. We discover them in hindsight, but we struggle with them in the present.
I can think of one glaring blind spot in American Christian history. Slavery. How could Christians who supposedly believed the teachings of God’s Word and the liberating Gospel of Christ so easily rationalize the enslavement of other human beings? Here were churchgoers with good intentions worshiping on Sundays and reading the Bible all week long yet all the while using God’s Word to treat men, women, and children as property to be used or abused. Owners actually thought they were generous when they gave their salves an extra chicken at Christmas. Nor did it stop after the Civil War. The Jim Crow laws stretched into the 1960’s and worked to dehumanize people of color, and to this day there are yet those who twist the Bible to support racist views.
This appalls me. Good intentions, regular worship, and even study of the Bible do not prevent blindspots from arising in us. Part of our sinful nature instinctively chooses to see what we want to see and to ignore what we want to ignore. In truth, the Bible is God’s chosen blind spot indicator for our lives, but some have chosen to turn it off to suit their purposes.
Over the years, God’s Holy Spirit has been working in my life to uncover and further sensitize me to a blindspot in my life, and I believe all of our lives to one extent or another. It’s the blindspot of materialism, money, a god whom Jesus personified as Mammon, who has the power to cause us to turn a blind eye to the warnings of danger from God’s blindspot indicator, the teachings of Scripture.
When it came to selectively turning off the blindspot indicator, the Pharisees, the religious legalists of Jesus’ time were major offenders. In his Gospel St. Luke reports how they fail in coming to grips with the issue of Mammon by justifying their self-indulgent life styles. So, out of genuine concern for their spiritual welfare, Jesus would turn on the warning light, and in today’s lesson He shares with them the parable of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus. You heard about his lavish wardrobe. According to Roman standards few were permitted to wear purple. The rich man was so well-off as to have fine cotton imported from Egypt and then colored purple from the dye of a shellfish. His was a luxuriant self-absorbed lifestyle and with it the tendency to ignore beggars like Lazarus, at his gate. By all earthly standards Lazarus is a failure in life. He’s a mess. He’s crippled and diseased with sores, and abscesses. His only relief comes from the dogs who lick his irritating sores, and the starving Lazarus, whose name means “he whom God helps”, has a longing to eat the rich man’s leftovers, which in those days because they didn’t have eating utensils, you ate with your fingers, and at the end of the feasting you’d clean off your gooey hands with bread. That’s the table scraps Lazarus wanted.
However, as you read on, the day came when both men die, and then comes the great reversal heralded in the Beatitudes – blessed are the poor for there is the Kingdom, blessed are those who were hungry for now they will be satisfied. It’s the great reversal Mary spoke of in the Magnificat. “He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.” And so, it was with the parable. Life could be no better for Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham. The humbly trusting beggar whose name means “God is my help”, receives the ultimate of compassion from God. But this parable also illustrates God’s condemnation of those who neglect the poor. The spiritually bankrupt rich man finds himself in hell. He’s in agony and he cries out for relief, but Father Abraham says that the chasm between him in torment and Lazarus in comfort cannot be bridged. Nor is it the case that the rich man is in hell because of his money. No, it’s not money but rather the love of mammon, material wealth that blinded him to the needy man inescapably present at his gate, and a love of money that caused him to feel superior and look down and even dehumanize and be prejudicial toward others. You witness this in the parable when the rich man begs Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his 5 brothers so they won’t end up in the place of torment. What’s astonishing is that even though their statuses have been reversed, the rich man seems to be blind to what has happened. He still expects Lazarus to be his servant and treats him as his lackey. He’s expendable as his water boy. Where can there be a place in heaven for the rich man? He has built his life on mammon, with its superior status rather than on God, “where your treasure is, there will be your heart also.”
Now I have to ask the question. When you hear this story from Jesus’ mouth, with whom do you identify more – Lazarus or the rich man? On a scale of 1 for Lazarus and 10 for the rich man, what number would you choose on the scale? For that matter, with whom do I identify more? In uncovering this blind spot over the years, God has made it clear that I look a lot like the rich man in the story. I don’t always think about myself as being rich and I’m guessing you may not think of yourself as rich either. But the reality is, if you and I have running water, a roof over our heads, clothes to wear, food to eat, and the means for public transportation then we’re in the top 15% of the world’s people for wealth. If we have $25,000 a year income, we’re richer than 90% of the world. If our income is $50,000, we’re richer than 95% of the world. If we have a car, we’re in the top 6% of the world.
What is the point of the parable? At first glance, the bottom line is that we are rich, and all of us are mortal. We can push aside the thought, but the truth is that one day we will die. We’ve all seen the statistics that we are rich and we recognize that one we may die like the rich man and then there will be judgment with heaven and hell as very real places. However, will Bible verses achieve the goal of getting us to change regarding a sinful love of money? I think not. So, what can move us to rightly use our money? Yes, we can be moved to compassion, but all too quickly, we can put images of needy people to the side. Out of sight, out of mind. No, for us to experience a change of heart, will, and wants, it has to go beyond Moses and the Prophets. Jesus Himself has to teach us. It’s only through the Holy Spirit building our personal relationship with Him Who expended not money, but in love gave Himself to pay the price for us sinners. He Who was rich became poor so that we could become rich. Jesus is the Lazarus who became like us in experiencing suffering and rejection. He never owned a house, a car, a share of stock. He came to seek those who were lost. He saw us when our lives were a mess, and get us out of some tight spots to put us in a better place in life. In our relationship with Him, He’s seen us do stupid and mean things but yet He’s put up with us. In love, He’s never given up on us, and it’s only through our experiencing that love, His unspeakable patience toward us, that we are moved to repent of our self-centeredness and accept His Lordship which urges us to give to the needy Lazarus’ of this world as unto Him.
That’s how we’re rescued from our self-centeredness. But frankly this is not the end of the story. By the end of the parable, it’s clear that the real difference is how the rich man regarded God’s blind spot indicator. He didn’t think very highly of God’s Word or its power, even in hell. It wasn’t on his radar. He had become numbed to it. He didn’t like it when Abraham told him that Lazarus rising from the dead would not be enough to convince his 5 brothers to make the necessary changes in order to avoid an eternity of torment. He was not satisfied when Abraham declared, “They have Moses and the prophets, let them listen to them.” His brothers would need more. “No, father Abraham,” he said, “but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.” Yet, Abraham doesn’t budge. It’s the Scripture or nothing. It’s all about how it is regarded. Too late, the rich man recognized it was more precious than gold.
Earlier I asked: Why do you identify with in the story? The rich man or Lazarus? But, in reality, our true identification in the parable is with the 5 brothers and how we regard God’s Word and its power. It’s all about the 5 brothers and ourselves not being like the rich man who turned off the blind spot indicator by refusing to submit and listen to Scripture. It’s all about seriously heeding the words of the prophets like Isaiah and Amos regarding social justice, and Proverbs 21:14, “If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered. Or most principally in Deuteronomy, God tells the people to be merciful to aliens because they once were aliens in Egypt and in 15:7 “If there is a poor man … do not be tightfisted or hardhearted. Rather be open handed.”
God’s remedy for navigating our dangerous blind spot. It’s His Word. And for me particularly as of late it’s been one word as a means of blindspot removal that has most impacted me. It’s the first word Jesus spoke in Matthew’s and Mark’s Gospel. It’s the word “repent”, and it’s in the present imperative, meaning continuous action. Martin Luther said in the first of his 95 theses: “The life of a Christian is one of repentance.” That’s what I need to do. Daily I need to make an admission: “Lord, I have a problem with money. I’m prone to rationalize, to justify my actions or inaction, and so be seduced by its power, and put it ahead of you and the Kingdom. By Your Spirit, help me in the process of change and daily fight for perspective over self-serving impulses. I can’t do it on my own, the power of my fleshly impulses are too strong. Make my heart totally devoted to you and others.”
Today’s parable is powerful. It makes it terrifyingly clear that God is serious about us and our need to have compassion on those where Jesus called the least of these. It’s a matter of life or death. As the people of God our challenge is to study and show ourselves approved and as St. Peter instructs to have an answer in our time when you hear sentiments like: “The Gospels are a bunch of stories created by early Christians to get people to join their religion. You fundamentalists just have blind faith in your Bible stories.” They need an answer spoken by us with gentleness and respect. God grant us wisdom to get ourselves and others beyond those shallow and false understandings and to believe that Jesus’ words are spirit and truth and give life eternal.