Jer 32:1-3a,6-15; Ps 91:1-6,14-16; 1 Tim 6:6-19; Luke 16:19-31
When I looked at the lectionary for today, I was a little disappointed that we were following track 1 instead of track 2. Track 2 included the reading from Amos, and that reading seemed to fit perfectly with the message of the 1st letter of Timothy and the passage from the Gospel of Luke today. With the Amos reading we would have had a perfect trifecta of condemning the rich… ah well. So I’m going to give the rich a break today and I’m not going to condemn them as Paul and Luke and Amos do.
I’m really not sure why the editors of the Revised Common Lectionary chose this reading from Jeremiah to complement the other two readings. It feels to me like a lost opportunity, but far be it from me to question the choice. There must be something else going on that I need to figure out.
While I ponder what unifies all our readings today, I’d first like to tell you a story about my father-in-law Paul. Paul began his struggle against prostate cancer in 1997. His early diagnosis wasn’t alarming because he acted like it was not a big deal. For several years he received low-level treatments, and nothing much seemed to change. Around 2002 things began to change for the worse. Low-level treatments gave way to treatments with more power, some visible side effects. In 2006, Paul began a full-fledged chemotherapy regimen, and we began to realize that things were getting serious. In March of 2007, words like metastasize and palliative care and terminal began to be spoken. That April, counseled by his doctor and with the blessing of my mother-in-law Bernice, Paul decided that it was time to stop all treatments and to enjoy what time he had left until the inevitable happened – embracing eternity, he called it.
Looking at his own looming morality, Paul could just as well have given in to hopelessness and depression and died a bitter man. But he didn’t. He decided that, even at the end, he had a choice. Paul was a man of faith, especially at the end. (In fact, his returning faith and my growing faith were what brought us together in 1975, long before I even knew he had a daughter who would one day become my wife.) While we were all starting to come to terms with the fact that we really were going to lose him, he looked into the looming darkness and chose light.
Paul was a recovering alcoholic for all of the 32 years I had know him. He had been sober since the year after Joann and I were born, since 1961. He and my mother-in-law Bernice had been active in Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-anon long before I met them in 1975. Paul was a sponsor to many for decades. When he got his cancer diagnosis, his participation in AA kind of faded away after a couple of years. He never started drinking again, but he phased out as an active member of AA.
When Paul received the final diagnosis of his terminal illness, he could have spent his last few months drinking again. Earlier in his treatment he had joked about doing just that if he ever became terminal – what was the point of sobriety in the face of looming death? Instead, on the day after he was told that he was terminal, he attended an AA meeting. But he didn’t attend the AA meeting so that he wouldn’t start drinking again at the end, which he didn’t by the way. He started attending AA meetings again to bring some hope to others. As he said, “I have 46 years sober… most people at the meetings are struggling with a few hours or a few days or a few weeks sober. When they see it’s possible to remain sober for 46 years, it just might give them the hope they need to believe that they can actually be sober, too. They need to see that years of sobriety, a lifetime of sobriety, is possible.” And that’s how he spent the last 6 months of his life. I will forever be in awe of him for that.
Taking what feels like a negative reality and turning to hope instead of despair. That’s what my late father-in-law did. That’s what St. Paul and Jesus and Jeremiah are trying to teach us to do today. That’s God stuff.
Where Paul and Jesus write today to warn of the dangers of wealth and being rich without a conscience, a negative-sounding message that is actually a positive one, Jeremiah writes what is a boring-sounding message that actually disguises a very positive one.
In case you’re not familiar with his “origin story”, as this generation refers to a person’s biographical information, Jeremiah was a prophet in the Kingdom of Judah, from around 620 to 580 BC, and his prophecy was not what the leaders and the nobles (the rich), and the king, by the way, wanted to hear. Jeremiah preached about God’s coming abandonment of Judah into the hands of another power, a human power. Jeremiah prophesied Judah’s end as being much like the destruction of the northern Kingdom of Israel a couple of hundred years earlier. Jeremiah ended up in jail several times for speaking truth to the power of his time.
So then why is this passage from Jeremiah so important? In today’s passage Jeremiah prophesies the end of Judah at the hands of the Babylonians and the Judean king’s exile to Babylon – not a very positive message. But then the reading becomes a discussion of God telling Jeremiah to purchase land in Anathoth, which is in Judah. The final third of the passage details how legal documents were stored to ensure that Jeremiah’s purchase of land is stored and remembered long into the future. Why should we care about the purchase of a field when faced with the destruction of an entire people?
You don’t have to read much of Jeremiah’s book to know that it’s filled with oracles of doom and destruction. There is not much hope in the book of Jeremiah, very little good news. But there are a few glimpses of hope in Jeremiah, and one of those glimpses comes today, and it’s a big deal! What will and does happen to the kingdom of Judah is horrific, and if what happened to the Northern Kingdom of Israel is repeated in Judah, the destruction will be permanent. Jeremiah’s message of hope in the midst of this reading is that Judah’s destruction will not be permanent or complete. When Jeremiah buys land at a premium price in a country that is about to be pillaged, destroyed, and occupied, Jeremiah is making a gesture of profound hope. Jeremiah’s message of hope is that the nation of Israel and the holy city of Jerusalem will one day recover from the pending destruction of Judah. Jeremiah makes a statement that the faithful will not be destroyed utterly, that those who have ignored God and his message for them to repent of their injustices will be punished through their own actions, but that in the end God will not abandon them utterly. By their own hand they will know desolation and tears, but by God’s will they will also know forgiveness and mercy again.
On first reading Jesus’ message in Luke feels more permanent and more hopeless that Jeremiah’s. Not only has the rich man sent himself into hades and eternal torment through his thoughtless actions in life, now even if he wanted to not even Abraham from heaven can show mercy to him. The rich man’s ambivalence to the suffering on his own doorstep in this world has condemned him to harsh reality and harsh judgment in the next.
But Jesus’ message is not all bad news. Part of the good news of Jesus’ parable is in the person of Lazarus. What happens to Lazarus is good news because it tells us whose side God is on when it comes to injustice in this world. Those who suffer at the hands of injustice in this world will be comforted by God in the next.
The really good news comes to those who heed the message of the parable of Lazarus and the rich man. This story reminds me of “A Christmas Carol” – if we are tempted to act like the rich man, like Ebenezer Scrooge, we are given a glimpse of what waits for us if we become ambivalent to the suffering around us, or we allow our own suffering to blind us to the suffering of others. Will we take the warning of the story in Luke and amend our ways, or will we be like the rich man and his brothers who have already heard the message but refuse to change their behavior?
The Good News from the tough readings today is that God is on the side of those who suffer the injustices of this world. While wealth and power can distract us from the suffering of others around us, we do well to remember on which side of suffering and injustice Jesus stands.
The Good News today is that we cannot always change the way the world treats us, but we can decide how we will respond. When faced with darkness and despair, it’s easy to respond in kind with anger and hopelessness. Jeremiah and Paul and Jesus and my father-in-law come to us today to tell us that there is another way for us to go, another path that we can travel, a road less traveled. We can choose light instead of darkness. With God hope and mercy are not impossible, with God hope and mercy are inevitable.