Homily for the Week of September 29, 2013

Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2013
Am 6:1a, 4-7 • 1 Tm 6:11-16 • Lk 16:19-31

One day the Pastor answered the phone. The caller asked: Is this the Pastor? Yes, it is. This is the Internal Revenue Service. We wonder if you can help us. I’ll try said the Pastor. Do you kow Harold Schwarz? I do. Is he a member of your parish? He is. Did he donate $10,000? He will.

A Lot of people say money is the root of all evil thinking that they are quoting the Bible. But what the Bible actually says is the love of money is the root of all evil. “Love of money” is placing possessions before everything else. This is the beginning evil in our own lives. We cannot improve as a person or as a person of faith if something is more important to us than God.

Our first reading is about the Amos. The prophet Amos was a wealthy man living in the southern kingdom of Judah. He looked at the northern Kingdom of Israel and did not like what he saw. He described a wealthy class who lived only for themselves. They were consumed with their own pursuits and didn’t notice that their own country had collapsed around them, the “collapse of Joseph.” Amos began his condemnation with the word “Woe,” the word used to begin funeral dirges. He was telling the north that they had made something else more important than God, and thus he was beginning their funeral hymn.

Jesus never condemned the wealthy for having wealth. He condemned them for letting their wealth make them forget about the God who had blessed them so generously -- like the farmer we heard about a few weeks ago. He had such a great harvest that he had to tear down his barns to build bigger ones and he gave no thought to life after death. Or Jesus condemned the wealthy for letting their wealth lead them away into dishonesty like the unjust steward we heard about last week. Or Jesus condemned the wealthy because they let their wealth turn them into selfish, self-centered persons like the rich man in today’s gospel.

Today’s s story would have been quite a shock for those who heard it. For in Jewish mentality, if a person was wealthy they were assumed to be good people whom God favored. If a person was poor or sick or infirm they were assumed to be sinners whom God was
punishing for something. But things didn’t workout that way for the rich man and Lazarus. Those who belong to God must love God and others. Love is the supreme law and love is not just a warm fuzzy feeling but it is a willingness to even make sacrifices for others.

What should the rich man have done? Jesus does not give us a specific answer. Perhaps he wants us to ask ourselves what we might have done if we were in his place. The rich man wants Lazarus to visit his brothers and warn them about how they should be living. Jesus says they already have some examples like Moses and the wise men and women of the Bible to guide them. If they don’t pay attention to the Bible they probably will not pay attention to someone who rises from the dead.

In Jesus’ day people did not know what was going on elsewhere in the world. With the Internet and the most up to date communication devices which we have today we know an instant that an earthquake or tsunami kills hundreds and thousands of people and leaves other thousand homeless. We know instantly when a gang of terrorists takes over a shopping mall as in Kenya or burn down Catholic churches and kill the people in the pews as is happens almost daily in the Moslem world. Knowing all this can give us guilty feelings, thinking we should help everyone -- which we can’t.

In a sense charity begins at home, but it should not stay there.Although personally we can’t help everyone, we can help some. If we all try to do what we can the world may be a better place.

That was probably the rich man undoing as we listened to the Gospel today. The rich man did not hurt Lazarus. He neither denied him the leftovers nor ordered him his property. And that is precisely the point of the story that Jesus tells us. The rich man did nothing wrong to Lazarus. He just did nothing at all good for Lazarus. Only in death when he is separated from Lazarus can the rich can the rich man finally see Lazarus, whom in life he failed to see when Lazarus was right before his eyes. His wealth had blinded him.

It has been said many times that the only things we can take with us at the time of our death are those things we have shared or
given away. The rich man loved his life of luxury and squeezed it tightly like the grapes of his fine wines. He adorned his fragile body with the best that his money could buy. He was unable to move out, extend his hands, because he was too tight. Tight, because he was bound up with things and himself and so what he got in the end was what he wanted, just himself.

As we place this story today within our own personal life, we might ask ourselves the specific question who is the Lazarus in my life. It certainly is a person right before my very eyes in whom I need to see and serve this week in whatever way I can.