The Violence

I think it’s important to clarify something about today’s gospel passage right off the bat. For some of us who came through a more, perhaps, conservative theology, this passage was often used as a clear biblical mandate on the realities and the dynamics of Heaven and Hell. Live a godly life, die and go to heaven. Live a life of sin, you end up in a literal Hell chock full of the fires of damnation and eternal suffering.

Of course, taken in its total context and what we know about the gospel of Luke, it becomes difficult to read this passage as simply a “turn or burn” altar call. And many of us have a difficult time with that kind of theological thinking anyway. No, not only is this a parable being told by Jesus, parables being the metaphors or theopoetics that Jesus used to convey larger messages that usually had little to do with the story on its face, we here have discussed several times how the gospel of Luke was far more concerned with the social ramifications of our actions versus the spiritual ramifications.

In that context, and taken in conjunction with other passages from today’s lectionary such as Psalm 146 which states:

"Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help. Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. God sets the prisoners free; God opens the eyes of the blind. God lifts up those who are bowed down; God loves the righteous. God watches over the strangers; upholds the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked God brings to ruin."

In this context, we should read today’s gospel passage as a reaffirmation of the importance of understanding and embracing what scripture calls “the life that really is life.” This real life is one that we’ve returned to focus on repeatedly in the short time I’ve been standing in this pulpit. The life that really is life manifests only when we take steps to live in right-relationship with all life, living in community with one another, and ensuring the equal flow of God’s resources to all.

And today’s gospel passage is a story of what happens when we are NOT living in right relationship with all of life, of not living in community with one another, of what happens when money and status take precedence over the intrinsic value of people and the world we inhabit.

And when I read this passage, I’m reminded of a song from one of my favorite bands, Rise Against. The song is called The Violence, and the lyrics are powerful and poetic:

Dancing on the crumbling precipice
The rocks are coming loose just at the edge
Are we laughing? Are we crying?
Are we drowning? Are we dead?
Or is it all a dream?
Can we break this mold
And set in motion something new
Forgetting what we know
An evolution overdue
Are we not good enough?
Are we not brave enough?
Is the violence in our nature
Just the image of our maker?
Are we not good enough?
Are we not brave enough?
To become something greater
Than the violence in our nature?
Are we not good enough
Or is it all a dream?

Today’s gospel passage is a parable of violence. Abraham tells the rich man that his actions in life created a great chasm, a rift, an open wound, one that cannot be traversed, closed, or healed. How many times did the rich man pass Lazarus who was begging outside the gate? Did the rich man even notice Lazarus, or had the beggar been so dehumanized in the rich man’s eyes that he was nothing but the equivalent of the other dogs hoping for scraps from the table.

Similar to what the lyrics of the Rise Against song describe, the rich man found himself dancing on the crumbling precipice, unable to now, when it was too late, traverse the chasm his actions of neglect and cultural violence created.

So now, suffering and afraid and aware of the violence his inaction has caused, the rich man begs Abraham to send the ghost or the reanimated body of Lazarus to his father’s house to warn his brothers of the dangers of a life out of balance with the community, hoping this visit will instigate a transformation in his similarly greedy siblings. But Abraham tells the rich man that his brothers have Moses, they have the prophets, the teachings and stories and mythologies of their forebearers…that’s all they should need.

In other words, the narrative arc of the scriptures, from Moses to the prophets through Jesus, into contemporary voices such as Dorothy Day, Howard Thurman, Mary Oliver, or Mel White to just name a few, is one of an ongoing evolution or transformation toward justice. From Moses standing against Empire in the guise of Pharaoh and demanding liberation for his oppressed people, to Jesus ushering in a new dynamic of the first being last and the last being first, to the efforts of 21st century youth standing in opposition to gun violence and climate change because the grown-ups in charge refuse to act, we are constantly reminded that everything needed for personal, communal, and cultural transformation is staring us in the face.

That is what this parable is teaching us. That God’s Kin-dom is one of the reversal of power dynamics. That those who refuse to live in right-relationship with Creation and who block the equal flow of God’s resources, those who can walk by suffering without a second look, their actions – or their inaction – create a chasm between themselves and the Divine, a separation from creation that is its own type of Hell. But also that everything we need to answer the questions, “Are we not good enough? Are we not brave enough to become something greater than the violence in our nature?” has and continues to be made apparent to us through the spirit of the Divine.

When Abraham refuses to send the dead Lazarus to warn the rich man’s brothers, and says, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead,” aside from this being a sly narrative wink to the eventual fate of Jesus, it was an acknowledgment that cultural and personal change does not occur through some unknowable or magical process. If you’re going to church on Sundays in the hopes of a having a miraculous lightning bolt moment where God suddenly blesses you with eldritch knowledge that makes everything suddenly clear, then you might be coming for the wrong reasons.

We’ve been given the Divine blueprint for constructing a life together. Jesus and other prophets modeled for us what it means to live a life of justice and reconciliation. Our rituals and traditions such as the communion we will share next Sunday serve as our models for wholeness, forgiveness, and transformation. Historical and contemporary justice movements continually remind us of what Kin-dom come looks like in the flesh and played out in real time. What more could possibly be said to get our attention, to challenge us to imagine new futures and new ways of living…to become something greater than the violence in our nature?

In this parable, Jesus is telling us, look, if you’re not living a life of transformation now, after everything you’ve seen and the overabundance of information you have, the dead rising or some other miraculous event probably won’t change your mind either.

If the normalization of school children having to conduct active shooter drills in their schools doesn’t move you into action, what will? If the research and findings of 98% of the scientific community with regard to global climate change doesn’t move you into action, what will? If children in cages doesn’t move you into action, what will? As winter approaches and we now have snow on top of Quartzite, if the thought of your neighbors living outside and unsheltered doesn’t move you into action, what will?

Hell, according to this parable, is inaction.

Hell is living a life broken off from community.

Hell is our inability, despite what the prophets tell us, despite the picture the gospel narratives paint of Jesus, to recognize or understand that our lives are intimately tied into the lives of those around us. That our lives are enmeshed with the whole of creation, both spiritually and physically.

As Trappist monk Thomas Merton told a gathering of Asian monks in 1968, just moments before he died as a matter of fact, he said, "We are already one. But we imagine that we are not. What we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are."