Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time at Mississippi Abbey

Scripture Readings: Amos 6:1a, 4-7; 1Tim 6:11-16; Lk 16:19-31

Today Jesus is confronting the Pharisee’s for their pre-occupation with looking good. He recalls Amos’ warning of “woe to the complacent in Zion!” His story of Lazarus and the Rich Man is also a warning about complacency. Complacency is a barrier to knowing Jesus Christ.

The Rich Man is quite comfortable. His earthly needs are consistently met. He is invulnerable. He is complacent because he is confident in his decisions. He does not know that they are leading him astray. He does not notice that he has sinned against someone.

Lazarus is not complacent. He is very vulnerable. He has no earthly comfort. He is sinned against. He needs a savior…and he knows it. (That is about the only successful decision he has ever made.)

Abraham was also comfortable with earthly goods. His decisions were sound. He was not, however, complacent. His heart is set on God and the mission God has given him. He is able to be inconvenienced by Lazarus as he might have been by his three visitors. He is able to be compassionate, to be “FOR” others.

Jesus tells this parable about complacency to religious professionals. They are not paying attention to scripture, so He wants to shake their confidence in their decisions. This should rattle our cages! Are we willing to be inconvenienced for one another? Or are we impressed with the efficacy of our decisions?

The core of Jesus’ message to all of us is first that God, His Father, is unconditional love. Second is that the Father’s and Jesus’ goal is to bring all of us to eternal life in an unconditionally loving community. Sinning against each other is not part of that plan.

In a community, the welfare of the individual is inseparable from that of her community. An animal, cut off from the herd, is vulnerable to predators. So are we.It is only in and through community that one can live out the two great Love commandments. They call us to freedom from self for the unconditional love of the other solely for the good of the other. This call is issued to us who are wounded by self-centeredness.  If it is to be heeded, however awkwardly, then it cannot be done with complacency.

Lazarus is a symbol of how complacency leads community members to sin against the most vulnerable members, those who can neither retaliate nor defend themselves.

Lazarus was taken into the bosom of Abraham, into his heart. The heart of Abraham consoled the heart of Lazarus. We, too, must find our hearts because until we do, no prophet, no Rule of life, not even the One who rose from the dead will be able to persuade us to live for the good of the other.

The heart has an evaluative function. It seeks the worth or importance of things. It is formed by life experiences as they are interpreted by the story the community shares. So when God the Father wanted to redeem humanity He began by making the feminine heart: the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Following that model we must find in our hearts our own unique vulnerability.The way to find our heart is to return to our most haunting moments, those times when all the things we have kept hidden from ourselves seem on the verge of breaking through our long, laborious avoidance of them. Sinning against others in community is a way of avoiding awareness of our own vulnerability.

As one bishop wrote, “If we were God, we would have no need of loving  anything else for love would find its perfection within itself, as it does in God. We must love others because we are imperfect…”

We can learn something from our deepest wounds if we take time to reflect on them in the light of the story. And that reflection will join us empathetically to others in our community. 

Pope Francis has said that the Church is in an age when she no longer needs teachers. She needs witnesses. Witnesses share their experience, strength, and hope. Others identify with them. It is through that identification, that “heart speaking to heart,” that we become brothers and sisters.