Cute puppies are now being used to attract donors to the begging poor and a child lies asleep on the sidewalk next to a begging bowl in Bangkok, Thailand.
Luke 16:19-31
Today's Gospel story couldn't be much more uncomfortable in it's directness. Let's be clear that the rich man is not portrayed as an overt evil-doer. His crime is his self-preoccupation with which he prevents himself from caring about others as he cared for himself.
The parable targets the violence of apathy and neglect which is widening the chasm between rich and poor. This parable challenges us not to dismiss real people as statistics. I hear a challenge to justice, to transformation, to a bigger vision, a Eucharistic vision that will have a place for all persons, and turn no one away.
Let us hear this story not simply about increasing our charity to the poor. It's about much more than charity.
We are surrounded by good well-meaning people, but people who are swept along in a stream of shallow options. Not only is the good made increasingly difficult to do, it is even increasingly difficult to recognize. It seems that affluence takes away the clear awareness of what is life and what is death. I do not think the rich are any more or less sinful than the simple and the poor. It is just that the affluent have many more ways to call sin a virtue. There is a definite deadening of the awareness of true good and true evil. We also have confused justice with charity. Charity was always considered the highest virtue and was popularly thought of as a kind of magnanimous and voluntary giving of ourselves, preferably for selfless motives. As long as we rose to this level on occasion, such as giving gifts at Christmas or baskets at Thanksgiving along with our almsgiving, we could think of ourselves as charitable people who were operating at the highest level of virtue.
Sermon by: The Rev. Michael E. Allwein, St. James Lutheran Church, Gettysburg, PA
Photos used courtesy of Mistifarang @ Flickr Thank you, Toni
