Year C / Ordinary Time / Week 26 / Sunday
Readings: Amos 6.1a, 4-7/ Psalm 146. 6c-7, 8-9a, 9bc-10 (R/v 1b) / Timothy 6.11-16 / Luke 16.19-31
This art piece is entitled Bon Apétit. It is a paper cut by Victoria Teng. She studies at St Joseph’s Institution (SJI) in our International Baccalaureate Programme. You will see hands: they represent people involved in heartwarming exchanges of food, drink and conversation at a meal. But Victoria has also cut out cracks and gaps to symbolize divisions between people.
In life, we would rather ignore such divisions. We would much prefer to turn a blind eye to them, these elephants in the room. In the English Language, “the elephant in the room” is a metaphoric idiom for an obvious truth or problem or risk that no one wants to name or discuss.
Yet we all have an elephant, or two, in all our lives. We desperately try to cover up these elephants. We shy away from admitting them, and we often ignore them as best as we can, like they are not there. Sometimes, we cleverly talk about these elephants through another person’s experience of them.
Today, Jesus is challenging us to confront these elephants in our lives. He does so using the parable of the rich man and Lazarus he teaches in Luke’s gospel.
We are familiar with this parable. We know its moral teaching: beware the dangers of wealth and power; it leads to damnation. Here is a rich man who lives an entitled life, with no room in his life for the poor like Lazarus. He does not care to feed them. He does not reach out to welcome them, nor share his wealth.
No matter how hard-hearted we can be towards one another, our hearts are naturally predisposed to empathize. This is why man of us would applaud the parable’s ending: the rich man in death is banished from the bountiful goodness that Lazarus now shares with Abraham. As Christians, we have no trouble embracing Jesus’ teaching about this reversal of the rich man’s fortune and status with Lazarus. The rich man’s selfishness has made his heart hard; he has no mercy or care for the poor. Now he is paying for his sinfulness. He is cast into the netherworld to live his afterlife; he is separated from the heavenly. God’s right and just punishment, some of us would insist.
What divides the rich man from Lazarus at the parable’s conclusion is a chasm that Abraham says cannot be crossed. There is irony here for there was an earlier chasm that the rich man could have crossed and so saved his life. He could have bridged it by reaching out to care for Lazarus.
Jesus teaches this parable to effect a change. He wants the Pharisees to hear and change so that they will more fully live out the Law of loving God and loving neighbor. Today, Jesus wants us to hear and change by crossing the different dividing chasms we have with the many Lazaruses in our lives and world, and so save our souls.
This change involves re-orientating our everyday life to Jesus’ way. This is how Paul describes this task in today’s second reading: “aim to be saintly and religious, filled with faith and love, patient and gentle. Fight the good fight of the faith and win for yourself the eternal life to which you were called”.
What are these chasms we should pay attention to? It’s easy to name them: the gaps in education, in economic opportunities, in racial and gender equality, in access to opportunities. And we quick, clever, even shrewd enough in identifying these chasms, these divisions, these obstacles that prevent us from helping another, as society’s faults, as faults others have made.
But haven’t you and I also created or perpetuated chasms and divides against those we dislike or look down on?
Chasms like telling our children be good or else the Bayis* or karung-guni** men will take them away? Or, gossiping about that woman at work those dressing suggests an immoral nightlife? Or, sending out whatsapp messages that ridicule the socially awkward or fat or dimwitted classmate?
Chasms too like refusing to celebrate in jealousy a neighbor’s good fortune? Or, like distancing oneself in self-preservation when a family member needs help from making the wrong choice? Or, like passing unChristian remarks that little ones and special needs children should not be at Mass because they disturb one’s worship? And, on Migrant Sunday, chasms like the “us and them” divide that insists on divisions by colour, ethnicity, language, religion: do we welcome them or do we exclude them?
And how about when we know these chasms but refuse to cross over to another who says, “Help me, please,” or, to one whose suffering eyes cry out, “Will you not accept me?” or the helpless who plead, “Hold me and keep me from falling”?
However we justify these divides and our refusal to bridge them—be it to protect ourselves, to secure the happiness we want, to live the lives we’ve worked hard for—Jesus’ teaching today is a harsh, hard challenge.
He is challenging us to look at the chasms we’ve created, the divides we refuse to bridge, because these are really the elephant or two in our lives. We don’t want to admit that they exist, or to talk about them, or even to want to change them at times. But Jesus is saying, “seriously, look and consider.” And if we dare to look at these chasms, our elephants, with eyes of faith, we’ll probably discover that own selfish ways are like the rich man in today’s gospel. They divide us from others, like him. They also numb us to another’s need for life, like him.
These chasms are dangerous: they do not let us lock others out of our lives, as they bluff us into locking ourselves out of heaven. They do these by making us complacent, self-indulgent and self-serving as those God is disappointed with is in the first reading. Such an attitude and way of life angers God so much that God will banish and put aside.
It is hard to hear this message, isn’t it? It doesn’t sound like good news.
But it is. It is indeed good news because Jesus is warning us that the reversal the rich man and Lazarus experience can possibly be our own self-punishment on judgment day. Wouldn't we be condemning ourselves before God when we present to God our life as one marked by constant failures to care for others and uplift them, as Jesus teaches, because of the chasms and divides we build around us?
Today Jesus is waking us up to save us. This is the good news deep in the heart of his hard, harsh teaching.
His call comes nine months after New Year’s when we make resolutions to live better and five months after Easter when we thanked God for saving us through Jesus’ death and resurrection. With 14 weeks before this year ends, Jesus is challenging us to honestly evaluate how we are grappling with that either/or reality of choosing between being selfish and being selfless. He is giving us time to take stock and change so that we can save ourselves for God. Whoever has ears, let them hear Jesus’ call clearly.
At Friday’s Art Exhibition, Victoria’s intricate paper cut art piece drew much attention from students and teachers, parents and guests. All admired her labor of love. A few reflected on her message of reconciliation to overcome fragmentation. But I was captivated by the cracks and gaps: they challenged me to acknowledge the elephants in my life. May be you feel same as you look at it again.
But let’s not stop here at seeing; let’s make the change the rich man should have made. Let’s reach out to those we have divided ourselves from and care for them. Then God in mercy will surely see our compassion and save us. Can we do this? What will give us certain hope that we can and will succeed? Today’s psalm reminds us that the Lord is faithful. He will help us make this change; he will accompany us to do this. So, yes, we can change. Let us.
* a Singaporean term for Sikhs
** a Singaporean term for junk collectors
Preached at St Ignatius Parish, Singapore
Artwork: bon apétit by victoria teng (2016)
Add a comment