Sermon for September 28th
Sermon for September 28th
Our text for today falls in line with many of our past readings over this season after Pentecost. Jesus is once more offering to us a rather scathing rebuke of someone who has pursued wealth all their lives, even going so far as stepping over the body of Lazarus, a man with no home and obvious health issues, who would beg at the rich man’s gate. His heart was not for the people, but only for his own comfort, luxury, and opulence.
Yet, for all the comfort that he was able to acquire, his life still ended, and he ended up in what can only be described as hell. His riches didn’t prevent his death or his inevitable fate. Even when he begs Abraham to send Lazarus (who has also died) to his five brothers, who are apparently following in their brother’s footsteps, Abraham refuses, saying that they had Moses and the prophets and they still haven’t listened. Why would it be any different if Lazarus went?
The passage is grim. It holds out little hope for those who choose the path of wealth over God’s path. And that sentiment is also expressed in our reading from 1 Timothy. Put not your hope in wealth. It will fail you. Only God is true, now and forever.
It would be easy to rail against the evils of wealth and classism and point out that the growing gap between rich and poor, as well as the shrinking middle class, is becoming an ever-greater issue in our society. It would be easy to point out that we need to do more and say more to help turn the trajectory of society around. But that has been said, many times by me and others. We know what we must do. The question, when faced with the pressures of the world, is how do we do it? Or perhaps even more central, is the question of why? Why do we turn away from those who need us? Why do we shun the one who has less or is struggling? Why do we look upon them with eyes of judgement, even though we know that our own lives could have followed a similar course, if things had gone differently for us? Why, when we have the person of Jesus and all that he said and did through the course of his life as our model, can we not do better?
I caveat what follows by saying that it mostly applies to our Western world. Other parts of the world have different understandings of how our existence should play out and I don’t presume to speak for them. That being said, the Western mindset of the upwardly mobile person or the self-made man, has certainly moved beyond the borders of Western societies and now influences the way many people think around the world.
There is a narrative within much of the Western world that if we work hard, and if we put our nose to the grindstone, we can create for ourselves a good life. And the more successful we are, the harder we obviously worked. Our success is a mark of the kind of person we are. This mindset is rooted in the idea that we have it within ourselves to become perfect. It is the ideology of perfectionism. Anything less than perfect becomes a mark on our character. It is why social media is such a dangerous echo chamber. It compounds and exacerbates the myth of perfection. Very few people have the courage to post less than glowing reports about their life. Look at my latest trip. Look at my beautiful home renos. Look at my perfect family. We want to claim that myth of perfection for ourselves because if we are not perfect or as close to perfect as we can manage, then we are failures. Every step away from perfection is a greater mark on our character and wealth is one of the great measuring sticks. We use it on ourselves. We use it on those around us. We use it on the poor. If you’re rich, or even well-off, you have done well. You are successful. You are blessed by God.
Yet this way of thinking has led to so much suffering. It has caused us to look down on our neighbors who are struggling. Whether we name it or not, we can’t help but think that the person on the street has obviously done something wrong, otherwise they wouldn’t be there. We use it on ourselves and when we don’t measure up, we are filled with shame, angst, and even despair. We believe that we have failed, and we live with that feeling as it gnaws on us and leaves us feeling hollow. This may be no more apparent than in the farming community, where the idea of farm bankruptcy bears so much shame and stigma that it has led many farmers over the years to commit suicide.
Perfectionism, of which wealth is a marker, is a plague. It informs us that we can be the masters of our own destiny and damns us for any apparent missteps. There is no grace. There is only law. And there certainly isn’t God. We may try and shoehorn God into this philosophy, but it is quite possibly the most Godless ideology a person can encounter. It makes sure to supplant God as our centre and has us put ourselves first instead. We need to be perfect. We need to prove to God we are worthy and when we do, God will bless us. This is no longer about God. It is about us. And wealth is the grand measurement to show the world just how blessed we are.
But never, ever, are we told by Jesus that wealth is the standard upon which we can measure God’s love for us. Never does Christ inform us that we need to be perfect to earn God’s love. If that was ever truly in our power, than Christ had no need to journey to the cross and endure Good Friday. In fact, the very opposite is true. Jesus doesn’t interact with “the worthy”. He interacts with the broken. He tells the one’s we are so willing to ignore that they are loved by God, that they are children of God. In the story from the Gospel, the wealthy man, who would have been seen as being blessed in life, finds himself not in the halls of paradise, but in some form of hell. Jesus takes the myth of perfectionism and inverts it. Perfectionism is not only impossible, but also ungodly, because it takes God out of the equation and puts us at the centre. It makes us cold and uncaring to anything but our own success and even when we stoop to offer help to those who need it, we never do so in a way that will jeopardize our own perfection. We don’t do what God has called us to do. We dishonor the gift of the cross and we miss the biggest logical fallacy in the entire scheme of perfectionism. If we remove God from the equation, the only perfect thing in our lives has also been removed.
Thus, we can not do or be anything in this world unless we first surrender and give up this nightmare of perfectionism. We must embrace that we are imperfect beings, made righteous only because of what Christ did for us. We must accept that we are not only imperfect, but that God loves us JUST AS WE ARE. And that applies to everyone, even the broken man on the street, even the twisted politicians who seem to be driving our world to catastrophe, even our own flawed selves. God doesn’t love us despite our imperfections. God loves all of us, cracks and chips included. Because, as the late Leonard Cohen said “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” It is through our imperfections and living into our authenticate selves that we can best show God’s love to the world.
The cult of perfection drives us to ultimate destruction. But the reality of God’s life, as God embraces us, warts and all, leads us to the kind of wholeness and joy we were so desperately seeking on our own. No wealth or success demarcates God’s love for us. For God loves as only God can, recklessly and with a wild abandon. As we come to know that, to really know that, we can let go and just be loved. We are set free and, in our freedom, we find we can love as God loves. For any perfection that Christ does call us to a perfection that can only be found in God and in the love that embraces all things. It will never be found in wealth, nor in success. The life we all crave begins and ends in God, now and forever.
Amen