Fridays might never be the same. On Friday, September 20, millions of young people filled city streets across the world demanding with one voice that those in power and influence act on global warming. This past Friday there were millions more. One, now famous, sixteen year old girl—began taking Fridays off of school to sit at a prominent place in her hometown, with placards warning against climate change and demanding grown-ups with power act. These young people are convinced that their future is in serious jeopardy. If you didn’t catch her address to the United Nations, please do yourself a favor, and look it up on YouTube. And I invite you to take some time to learn about other youth climate activists that are working to save the planet.
Where all this is going, I don’t know. There are a number of you who have heard the cry much earlier than I, and seek to call us to attention and action. I do know that a disastrous “tipping point” to which scientists are urgently attesting, does not come “in the final hour” during the last 5 or 10% of the time we have. When you fill a jar of water with sand, the point of no return or “spilling point” comes at 50%!
Insects, birds, and now the oceanic life, and in the UK the tree population are under watch. On the road to the Manchester Airport, as I returned from caring for my mother in convalescence, there was a chalked message across the highway bridge, inviting us to join the “Extinction revolution.” In a different time, we might say that’s something from a dystopian novel.
We are the rich man in the mansion. And Lazarus lies at our gate, first to be afflicted by drought, floods, hurricanes, imperiled waters and food insecurity. And this is not politics, though we must look to those invested with our trust to use the power of our common resources to act, or move over and let others of more courageous will do so. It is more a matter of asking the question—how then shall we live?
Listen to the prayer we uttered on Sunday, “You declare your Almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity…Grant us the fulness of your grace.”
Listen to the Scriptures we recited on Sunday, “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” It entraps us in senseless and harmful desires. On the other hand, true gain is found in godliness, combined with contentment. And if we are blessed with riches through inheritance, or our creative spirit and skilled industriousness—then carry your wealth with humility; be rich in the good works your wealth affords you to do, and be ready to share, recognizing the real perspective of faith is the treasuring of God’s abiding presence and love.
Hypocrisy goes with the territory when handling this subject, but our lectionary has brought us to this consideration. We are the rich man in Jesus’ story in Luke last Sunday. Who is Lazarus? And how do we learn to see him?
At diocesan convention in a few weeks, we are aspiring to a theme of “The Simple Way.” We have invited a speaker, Shane Claiborne, who asks these types of questions. His aim in life is to follow Jesus and especially as His relationships and teaching connected with the poor and least in His society. I am assuming he will inspire some of us, and yet also challenge us.
It’s good to recall that, at the point our lectionary has brought us thus far, Jesus was just revving up His confrontation with the religious establishment of his day, and challenging the behavior of those around Him. Lives of faith impact our relationship to the resources around us, and our stewardship of them and how we treat both people and material things. He moves onto dangerous ground and ultimately suffered the loss of His life because of it. We know that wasn’t the end of the story but we cannot let knowing of the resurrection lessen the significance of what irked the authorities to remove His menace. In fact there is a gift of hope that says we can be bold to shift from possession to sharing and releasing—precisely because loss and death is not the end of God’s story ever.
Some have wondered about the timing of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr; how did it become time to have him removed? What nerve was he hitting? It just happened to be at a moment in which he had begun to deeply engage economic inequality, had announced the Poor People’s Campaign 5 months before, and was bringing profound questioning to the military spending of the nation and about the effectiveness of the Vietnam War.
Jesus had no doubt about where his meddling would take him. This has got to be part of the story of our salvation. Jesus died because He called us to share, and to do that we have to be willing to let God turn us inside out. He called us to share a common life (which His disciples attempted early on). He included orphans and widows, tax collectors and prostitutes in this shared life. He also died because He called us to share God and access to God with those very same people whose poor and tragic circumstances seemed to us to reflect an absence of the blessing and the Divine favor. He died because He saw no bounds to the sharing of God’s love for all whom God made; and He saw them as God’s children.
God shows power chiefly through mercy and pity. Chiefly! Sometimes God also simply lets people like the rich man abide with the consequences of their behavior and attitudes. They say that we are at the tipping point with the consequences of our actions towards the planet. Maybe we are at a tipping point with God’s readiness to show continued mercy and pity. God let Lazarus die; so did the rich man. And then, in the perspective of eternity, the real gap between them appeared.
Jesus told the story with the hope that hearts of his listeners may be pulled into God’s love. It is never too late to have ears that hear; or hearts that respond with openness; or voices that offer prayers that God might grant us the fulness of grace in how we live. That fulness sees Lazarus; and finds strength to take him in. What will we be doing next Friday?
In the peace and love of Christ,
+Alan
The Rt. Rev. Alan Scarfe, Bishop of Iowa
