PROPER 21 - September 26, 2004

If someone were to ask, I would have to admit that my all-time favorite preacher is the Rev. Will B. Dunn. In truth, Will is not a real preacher. He is a comic strip character by Doug Marlette. But the Rev. Will can say more in four comic strip blocks than most of us preachers can say in four minutes or even four hours.

One of my favorites has Will standing in the pulpit saying, "My sermon this morning is on 'Thou shalt not covet. Now everybody who has cast a covetous eye on thy neighbor's goods raise your hands.'" Will looks over the assembled congregation and says, "I see." "Correction. My sermon this morning is on 'Thou shalt not bear false witness.'"

Humorous, but I think so very, very true. Let's be honest, when it comes to admitting to specific sins, you and I have a difficult time. If I were to ask, "How many people here this morning are sinners? Raise your hands," we would all do so, albeit rather reluctantly. But we would all do it because we would have to do it because there is no denying the fact that we do sin, and do so everyday.

But if I then went on to ask: those who have committed adultery raise your hands; those who have ever taken anything that does not belong to them, raise your hands; those who lie and cheat, raise your hands -- what would happen is that we would all sit on our hands. We do commit those sins, at least some of them. But we certainly do not want to admit to doing so, at least not publicly anyway.

We are not as selfish as the rich man in the Gospel nor are we as good as Paul would want us to be. What we are, simply, is human. We are imperfect people, neither totally good nor totally bad: neither totally selfless nor totally selfish. And we like it that way. Perfect people, we have discovered over the years, have a way of getting crucified, getting nailed to some kind of cross or other. We have also discovered that the really selfish also find a way of getting themselves killed, usually because of their greed. We who are in the middle are happy, not deliriously happy, because of our good deeds, but happy. We get hurt because of our selfishness but don't get killed.

We are imperfect people in an imperfect world -- sometimes passing beggars by, sometimes throwing crumbs to them, sometimes opening our doors to them; sometimes coveting our neighbor and his goods and sometimes giving him the shirt off our back; sometimes lying to save our skin and sometimes telling the whole truth at the cost of much of that skin.

The good we do probably outweighs the bad. But that is not good enough. We are not called to imperfection but to perfection -- to do the best we can at all times in all circumstances: the best, not the second best. But to always do our very best, to begin to try to do our very best, what we first have to do is renew our lives. I know, "renewal" is a scary word. It does not mean that we have to start all over again. It simply means that we start from where we are and begin to change our lives for the better.

It almost seems that a month does not go by when another product -- a soap, a cereal, a car, a computer -- comes out with a fanfare telling us that it is new and improved. It isn't. It is simply renewed, changed a little, made better. The producers did not throw out the old computer and start from scratch. They just took what they had, changed it for the better, improved it. But nothing is made better, is improved, unless we are honest enough to admit that there is room for improvement in our lives and aware enough to know what to do. Like Rev. Will's congregation, we may simply believe that everything is well enough and we want to leave "well enough" alone. That is dangerous and can be fatal both to us individually and to us as a congregation.

There is a sign somewhere on the West Virginia Turnpike that reads, "Driving while drowsy can put you to sleep -- permanently." If you've ever driven the West Virginia Turnpike as I have many, many times, you know that the sign is absolutely correct. Driving demands our total attention especially driving long and windy roads. It would be a mistake, maybe even a fatal mistake, to drive them in any other way other than totally alert and awake.

The rich man in the Gospel made the fatal mistake of driving through life, if you will, asleep at the wheel. He completely misread the signs that God was sending him, that he was seeing along his life's journey. And when he died, he simply could not understand how he came to be in such a place. He thought his destination was heaven. He believed that all the road signs along the way were leading him to heaven. They were. But he fell asleep at the wheel and wound up in hell.

The first road sign the rich man misread was that he mistook today for eternity. In the parable he is pictured as having the best of everything: regal clothes, sumptuous meals, a spacious house. He had it all. The trouble was that the rich man began to think of this life as all there is. All his riches and pleasures blinded him to the fact that eternity awaits and that someday he would have to make an accounting for how he lived his life, how he used the gifts God had given him.

That led to his second mistake: he mistook opportunity for privilege. The rich man had a tremendous opportunity to ease the suffering of the poor, especially Lazarus who sat at his gate. That could have been done so easily. But he failed. He saw his wealth as a privilege rather than as an opportunity to help others.

The rich man's third mistake was that he mistook a neighbor for a nobody. He did not speak to him, comfort him, give him anything not even crumbs. In that day before there were napkins, people would use chunks of bread to wipe their hands after a meal. The crumbly chunks were then thrown out. That is what Lazarus longed for. Even garbage was better than what he had. The rich man could have done so much so easily, but he did nothing. For him Lazarus was simply a nobody. He didn't hate Lazarus. He was simply indifferent to his needs. And as someone once observed, the opposite of love is not hate. It is indifference.

Finally, the rich man mistook his possessions for his soul. He took care of his clothes, his home, his possessions, everything he had. He wanted the best of everything and wanted to keep it looking the best. But, as Jesus points out, he forgot to take care of his most important possession, his soul. He made the tragic mistake of thinking that his possessions fully comprised his life. The rich man made fatal mistakes in his relationships with other people, with God, and even with himself. His life, as the parable points out, is a warning to you and to me. It speaks directly to us.

The parable asks us to look into our very souls to discover just how blessed we are, individually and collectively. We have the opportunity to take the risk, for that is what it is, to take the risk to renew our lives, renew our commitment, to take a serious look at who we are and what we have: our talents and treasures. What are we doing with what we have been given? Are we using our gifts to help and serve others or are we, like the rich man in the parable, hoarding them just for ourselves? Are we, in fact, living a life of drowsy indifference?

All around us are road signs that God has put up to get our attention. We can fall asleep and miss those signs, as did the rich man in the parable. It was a fatal mistake for him. It could be just as fatal to us. It need not be and will not be if we begin this day to renew our parish and ourselves. Like cars and computers, to be renewed doesn't mean that we have to start over from scratch. All it means is that we realize that we can and must be better and then begin to work with who we are and what we have. But we must be intentional about it. We can't allow ourselves to fall asleep at the wheel. Our life and the lives of so many others depend upon our vigilance.