"SOMETHING THERE IS?"

Joshua 6:1-7; Luke 16:19-31

When Paul and I were first married,

we lived inIrvine, California.

Irvine is pretty close to perfect -

so much so, in fact,

that sometimes we thought

we were living on a ride at Disneyland.

Our home was on a quiet cul-de-sac.

We were renting the middle third of a triplex,

what they preferred to call "attached housing."

Nobody knew each other,

except for the renters next door from Austin

and the renters across the street from Fort Worth.

The closest thing we ever saw to "the right hand of fellowship"

was when someone used the garage door opener to get into the house.

We didn't live in a so-called "gated community,"

the name for which I have come to think is an oxymoron.

But who needs gates

when you had twelve to fifteen garage doors

which never remained open any longer than it took

for the car to enter or exit.

If it's true that "good fences make good neighbors,"

out there we learned that good garage doors

mean that you might never even have to know your neighbors.

I wonder if those people who like gates and fences and walls so much

ever stop to think that they are two-way.

Walls and fences and gates and doors by their very nature

cause a forced decision

as to what gets in and what stays out.

What that also means

is that because we so choose to live on one side of a barrier,

we are by necessity being left out

of whatever's going on on the other side.

A gate is not just an entrance to a house,

but a passageway to the other side as well.

Robert Frost knew this

when he wrote a masterpiece of a poem called "Mending Wall."

He wrote,

"Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

what I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

that wants it down!' [1]

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Jesus told the story of a man named Lazarus,

a name that interestingly means "God helps,"

who found himself on the wrong side of a gate

at the end of his life.

You have to realize what a terrible situation Lazarus was in.

He may have been one of the original street people.

Scripture tells us that he was

"laid at the rich man's gate,"

which tells us he wasn't able to get there

without help from someone else.

The dogs who were licking his sores at the gate

were not house pets.

They were scavenger animals who were out for whatever they could find,

and like vultures,

they could probably sense that Lazarus was just about ready for their dinner.

He must have been very near death already

since he died so quickly on the street,

right there in front of the rich man's house.

The rich man was insulated from all that.

He didn't have to worry about scavenger dogs,

he didn't have to worry about where his next meal was coming from,

he didn't have to worry about that man out in front of his house -

at least for too long.

He could get the servants to carry him away.

As long as the rich man stayed behind that gate,

he was safe from any infection and disease that Lazarus might have,

safe from getting involved in any way with him,

safe from having to confront his own inner tuggings,

if there were any.

At some point down the road,

the rich man came to learn that everyone dies.

Even him.

When Lazarus died,

Jesus tells us that he was lovingly carried by Father Abraham

to his reward.

But the rich man found himself

on the other side of a huge chasm,

in a place that bore no resemblance at all to heaven.

Here he was again,

on the other side of a divide,

but this time not a divide of his choosing.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall.

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So what could this story be about?

Is Jesus trying to make us feel guilty

for not giving away all our money

and for not helping more?

Some level of guilt might not be all bad,

if we don't stop there

but instead use that guilt

to hear a truth that would change our lives.

But to stop there would be too easy.

Rarely are Jesus' parables so cut and dried.

Jesus is up to a lot more

than wanting us to feel guilty.

Jesus wants us to do something about it.

Guilt feelings in and of themselves

are worth the paper they're printed on.

But if guilt leads to true repentance and a change of direction,

well, that's more like it.

It didn't occur to the rich man

that he needed to make any changes in his comfortable life

while he was still living.

He only began to think about repenting after he had died,

when he found himself on the other side of the chasm.

That reminds me of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With The Wind,

when Rhett Butler says to her at one point

that she was like a thief who "isn't sorry he stole,

but is terribly, terribly sorry he got caught."[2]

The word "repentance," in both the Hebrew and the Greek,

is rooted in a word which literally means "turn."

Repentance is an occasion to change direction:

to go a completely different way,

not to continue down the same path

that got you lost the first time.

True repentance

requires a change of direction

and a change of action,

not just being terribly, terribly sorry to be caught.

This story is about so much more

than just the difference between the wealthy and the poor.

Scripture never says

that it's impossible to be rich and Christian at the same time.

That would leave too many folks outside of God's grace.

What scripture does teach,

over and over again,

is that whether it's money,

or a loaf of bread,

or our time and energy.

it's impossible to be rich and Christian

without at the same time being generous

and sharing what we have with others.

The rich man's problem

was not his wealth,

or not even wealth and faith, if he had any.

His problem

was that he would not go through the gate.

And that may be what Jesus is saying to us today, too.

Our problem is not that we are all wealthy by the world's standards,

no matter how much or how little we have.

Nor is it that we are wealthy and faithful.

Where we begin to get into trouble

is when we decline to go outside the walls of our own comfort

in order to help another child of God.

 "When we succeed at cutting ourselves off from each other,

when we learn how to live with the misery of others

by convincing ourselves that they deserve it,

when we defend our own good fortunes as God's blessing

and decline to see how our lives

are quilted together with all other lives,

then we are the losers."[3]

Garry Wills writes about what it will take

for us to find ourselves on the more desirable side of the chasm

when the time is right. 

Listen to this: he says that at the end of life,

"One will not be asked whether one voted,

whether one was a good citizen,

or even whether one dealt justly?

The simple test," he says,

"is this:

Did you treat everyone, high and low,

as if dealing with Jesus himself[?]

?Love is the test." [4]

Something there is - say it with me -

"that doesn't love a wall."

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My friend and colleague Joe Clifford

has been the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in downtown Dallas

for almost a year now.

If you know anything about First Prez Dallas,

you know that they have been running a ministry called "Stewpot"

for something like thirty years now.

They made a commitment back in the early 70's

to be a real neighborhood church

and to be a part of the "village" where they found themselves.

In a time when many urban churches

were voting to relocate themselves to the suburbs

where things were easier and safer and more convenient,

this was a pretty radical departure.

What started out as a daily hot meal for the homeless

has evolved into care for body and soul:

medical care,

social service assistance,

even voice mail to help them keep in touch with their families

and to give employers a place to contact them.

What they do there is remarkable.

In the last couple of months,

like Lazarus,

there were two homeless people who died on the streets of Dallas.

The powers that be,

like the rich man,

were disturbed by that -

not that people had lost their lives,

but that they'd had the audacity to do so in public.

And so the city began what they call "Operation Rescue,"

cleaning out the dwellings of the homeless,

supposedly for their benefit.

Backhoes were brought in

to clean out living places,

which meant not only that the homeless lost every meager possession,

but that they also lost "little" things like IDs and medication.

In the course of Operation Rescue,

it came to the attention of those in charge of it

that there were five or ten homeless people

who slept every night on the steps of First Prez. [5]

They called Joe and asked him

if it would be okay if they came to move them out as well.

Without even taking time to think,

Joe said, of course, "no."

They don't call it a sanctuary for nothing!

So word got out among the homeless

that if they were on church property,

the city wouldn't be able to move them.

By Monday morning,

there were fifty or so on the steps.

Tuesday morning, there were sixty-two, Joe said,

"as well as all the stuff that sixty-two people generate."

He hadn't thought about that!

The facilities operator arrived to find this around 6am,

and had only an hour

to clean up the mess they left

at the door where 125 children would soon be arriving for preschool.

After he got it done,

he arrived on Joe's doorstep upstairs

to say that Joe had two choices:

either call the city and apologize for being wrong,

and allow them to come pick up the homeless tonight,

or, make it work.

So they called a quick meeting

to decide who would be able to do what

in order to make it work.

Barry the facilities man

agreed that he would come in the next day at 5am instead of 6

to begin waking their guests up a little earlier.

Chris agreed that he would be there by 6am

in order to power wash the sidewalks

and the entry to the preschool.

Jerry agreed that he would call around

to find out about renting a portalet for the property.

What he learned, though,

is that having a portalet requires a permit from the city!

As if that would happen!

By Wednesday morning,

their numbers had grown to sixty-six.

Barry knew most of them by name

because many of them were regular clients at the Stewpot.

When Barry came around at 5am to wake them up,

he said to them, "You know,

this church is trying to help you.

Do you think there'd be any way

that you might help out some too

by picking up this area before you leave?"

By the time preschool began to gather,

the place was spotless.

The homeless folks had picked up every piece of garbage.

Except for one guy who left his newspaper behind -

and he was nagged by not one but three of the others

until he came back to pick it up.

I don't know how many people were down there

by the end of last week,

but I do know one thing -

I bet you could eat off the parking lot.

Joe and the members of First Prez Dallas

made the choice not only to open the gate,

but to walk through it and serve.

And as they offered shelter and hospitality,

they discovered the kingdom of God.

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We may not be the same size as that other First Prez,

and we surely don't have the homeless issues that they face.

But there are people in need

within a stone's throw of this church,

and probably within a stone's throw of every neighborhood in Bonham.

We're already doing some things,

things like the Kool Lunch program

and Habitat for Humanity.

But we can do more.

Only eight out of our two hundred and nine members

took advantage of going to ACT yesterday

to learn new ways to serve and to welcome others.

We can do more.

Sometimes we don't think we have enough money around here

to do what needs to be done,

and certainly not enough money

to do a lot of mission outside these doors

or outside Fannin County.

But remember our friends at Church Under the Bridge in Waco?

Many worshipers there are hungry on a daily basis.

And yet they give away more than fifty percent of their income

to do things like support missionaries in Africa.

We can do more.

Friends, gates swing both ways.

Chasms have two sides.

Keeping others out

puts us in danger of locking ourselves in.

It doesn't have to be that way.

True repentance

means that we turn and go a different direction.

It's not impossible to be rich

and be a Christian at the same time.

It's impossible to be rich and to be Christian

and to keep all the goodness of God's kingdom to ourselves.

Something there is that doesn't like a wall.

Amen.