I want to start with the questions I posed last week: What matters? What really matters?
What is sacred and what is Holy?
Bridges loom large for me.
I have always found them
both thrilling and frightening.
The one that first comes to mind
is a bridge of my childhood.
The Verazzano narrows is a beautiful piece
of suspension architecture
that goes
from the North end of Staten Island
to the West end of Long Island, dumping the unsuspecting driver right onto the Heavenforsaken
Belt Parkway. (A road where cars move sideways with astonishing ease—but
that’s another sermon.)
I remember my parents,
New Yorkers to the core,
proudly saying,
why it’s even longer than the Golden Gate.
(I didn’t know
what the Golden Gate was
but I knew I should be impressed.)
It was always
a much anticipated portion
of my childhood road trips
as we drove from Virginia to Long Island.
There was a thrill of being so high—
suspended on such thin wires
with the water far below
and the car, vibrating back and forth
on the grating of the deck.
There was my father
tensely holding onto the wheel of the car, instructing us in the back seat that we would no
longer be having any conversation—
and my mother
somewhat, but not totally, playfully covering her eyes.
Who cannot go
over a bridge
without internalizing
the thrill and fear of it all?
For years, (actually I still do it) I would roll down the windows of the car
—just in case--if we went off— so I could swim out.
I have come to the conclusion
that bridges are Holy objects,
physically and metaphorically,
— sacred thoroughfares
that lead us from one world to another
if we dare venture across.
It is bridges that we are called to cross.
They are frequently,
the only way for us to move beyond our zones
of privilege, power and comfort.
So---
There were two men,
about the same age,
from the same town,
apparently even from the same street
their paths converge for a time
and then divide for all eternity.
Lazarus and the rich man.
The rich man unnamed,
unknown now, but then with fine purple clothes
and rich Egyptian linen underwear.
A man who dines richly,
lives sumptuously.
A man who commands the respect of many
—and the attention of all.
A rich man surrounded by
gates and fences,
—elegant and genteel—
driving past the one at his gate
each day and noticing him
much as he might a shrub.
Then there was Lazarus
—the only named character
in all the parables.
Lazarus—
poor, oozing pus,
—the man who longed to fill his stomach
with scraps
from the rich one’s table.
Lazarus all alone
tended to only by dogs.
To be clear,
this is not the same Lazarus,
who came back from the dead,
called forth by Jesus from the tomb,
but given the poverty in which this Lazarus existed
he may as well
have been buried alive.
Lazarus is the first to die of the pair
and as biblical scholar Walter Bruggerman says,
“It was the only time in his life
that he’d had been first at anything.”
Carried away by angels at his last breath
—placed in the arms of Abraham
—Lazarus is finally at peace.
The rich man dies not too long after.
Buried he wakes
and from the fires of hades
he looks up to heaven above
and sees a man vaguely familiar--
who is it?
Then it comes to him
this is the poor wretch
who squatted at his gate.
The rich man calls out from his torment.
“Father Abraham—
have pity on me
—send Lazarus down
with a cool drop of water
that he may wet my tongue
and ease my suffering.”
Even from hell the rich one
bids people to do his will.
But Abraham
still comforting Lazarus—
states the reality of the situation
that seems to elude the rich man.
“In your life you received good things,
in his life Lazarus received bad—
now he is comforted and you are suffering
—and here’s the kicker—
there is a chasm—
a divide—a grand canyon—
a snake river size channel
—a chasm that is fixed
with no way to cross.
Says Abraham,
“You cannot join us up here
and we cannot aid you down there.
It’s a divide
as long as your driveway and as tall as your fences.
In death the chasms are fixed
—before
when they were both alive
there were narrow passages,
lithe, to be sure
little bridges
from one world to the next
available for those
with courage and vision to venture across
—the cultural, racial, class and economic divides—
but when we die—
so says the parable the—
the bridges are lost—
the canyons, uncrossable—
glaring crevasses leaving
even the best Alpinist at a loss.
One permanently separated from the other.
The key to crossing the crevasse
—bridging the great divide
between the insides of the rich man’s walls
and the outsides of the poor man’s sores—
— is to look beyond our walls
to venture forth on those
small, tremulous gateways
stretching between one world to another
while we are still breathing.
We have one of those bridges
—here at All Saints’ on Tuesday nights.
It’s not perfect,
it periodically wobbles
and gets blown about by the winds of the world.
But every Tuesday evening,
at our community kitchen and food pantry
people from different places,
different races,
different classes,
and religious beliefs
venture forth to address our basic needs:
for food, hope, and community.
On Tuesday evening,
whether we are packing grocery bags,
chopping vegetables
or sitting and listening to stories
from the margins of our community
we are engaged in a sacred endeavor.
A Holy moment of time
when bit by bit we span
the evergrowing chasms,
in this city and in our country
between people in need and people of means.
The chasms in this city of Chicago
where 30 per cent of our children
live below the poverty line.
The chasms in Illinois where one in five children live in poverty.
In our country where more than 37 million people are hungry.
It is one bridge where we bit by bit—fill in the gulf that divides the people in need from
people of means.
Our community kitchen and pantry is just one sacred bridge in our world. I am sure that
you can all name many, many more.
I am convinced that poverty and despair
will cease to exist
when unadorned statistics
become friends with stories,
and neighbors with names.
I am convinced
that those chasms can be crossed
that they are not yet fixed—
for bridges---bridges loom large for me.
And for you—when was the last time you were on a bridge?
When was the last time you ventured onto a sacred thoroughfare from one world to the
next?
Might it be time for you to venture forth again---while you are still breathing?
Amen.
Monday, October 11, 2010
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