Don’t Be Garfield
Pentecost 18
September 30, 2007
Luke 16:19-31
By Pastor Tom Kadel
Do we have any Garfield the Cat fans here today? You know Garfield, don’t you? Garfield is the main character in the comic strip by that name. Garfield is a lazy, selfish, overweight, orange tabby cat who enjoys eating and sleeping. Garfield hates Mondays because of his consistent streak of bad luck on them. He hates diets because he believes it to be "die with a T on the end" and he hates February because he believes it to be "the Monday of months." He considers himself to be more intelligent than other animals and humans. A while back, there was a Garfield cartoon in which Garfield looks out the window on cold winter night and sees a shivering Odie the Dog peering in. Garfield thinks to himself, “This is horrible. Here I am in the comfort of a warm house, well fed, and there is Odie outside begging to get in, cold and hungry. I can’t stand it anymore. I just can’t stand it!” So, with that, Garfield goes over to the window … and closes the curtains.
Good morning, brothers and sisters. We are gathered today on the 18th Sunday in this Season of Pentecost and I suppose that our three Biblical texts today combine to say to us, “Don’t be Garfield.” The prophet Amos has harsh words for the self-indulged rich. The letter to Timothy, warns that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil and leads some people away from God and from God’s people. And our passage from Luke is the familiar and powerful story told by Jesus about a rich man and the beggar at his gate named Lazarus.
Did you know that this story caused a man with three doctoral degrees (one in medicine, one in theology, and one in philosophy) to leave civilization with all of its culture and comforts and depart to the heart of an African jungle? This story caused this man, who was also recognized as one of the finest concert organists in all of Europe, to go to a place where there were no organs to play, only human organs to try to heal. This story caused this same man, who was also a Lutheran pastor in Austria, to give up a lucrative teaching position in Vienna to go and deal with people who were so deprived that our minds can hardly imagine it. That man was Albert Schweitzer. This, friends, was one powerful story for that extraordinary man. Shall it be powerful for you and me, too? It says to us, “Don’t be Garfield.”
Over the years, this story has usually been read as a warning to us as individuals that unless we participate in justice – particularly justice for the poor – we are in for hard times in the hereafter. The reversal of fortunes hangs like a hammer over our heads to get us to do good things for the down and out or else. And that’s not an inaccurate reading, for that is surely in there. But it is only part of it. It is far more than a threatening account of what lay in store for the Garfields of this world. It also shows the supreme importance that God places on justice, fairness if you will. It, along with other stories of Jesus and also so much of the Old Testament, pretty much stakes out justice as God’s most cherished trait and God’s people’s most important activity.
And, as I said last week in my sermon, God’s justice isn’t about getting proper punishment for criminals. It is about making sure that all people are treated fairly, that all have food and medicine, that all have access to the abundant blessings that God created into God’s creation. These things have always been a part of God’s issues with his people and they remain so today.
And because of that, there is another way of reading Jesus’ story. Rather than reading this only as a warning to us as individuals, it is vital for us also to read it together as a community of God. It is vital for us to realize that the rich man is also the church and Lazarus is all who we ignore.
But there is even more to it than that. Jesus’ story suggests that we create hell for ourselves right here in this life when we ignore justice. This hell happens when our seeking for prosperity changes into a seeking always for more, more, more. It happens when our seeking for equity changes into madcap activity to protect our advantages. It happens when our seeking for security changes into a lust for more and more and more power over others. We create hell for ourselves when what God has already given us is never enough.
We are not told that the rich man in Jesus’ story was an evil man, he was a man caught up in a lie so enormous that he never even noticed Lazarus. He didn’t mistreat the man at his gate, he never even noticed him. The lie that he was caught up in was that life was all about him and all about adding more to his already needless level of prosperity, him and lavishing in his advantages, him and protecting his power.
And here is where we come in. We are the rich man. We’re not bad people, we are busy people – busy seeking more, busy protecting our advantages, busy lusting after more security – and each of these things we are creating a hell for us and maintaining a hell for those we wrestle our disproportionate share away from. We’re often so busy at these things that we can’t notice Lazarus.
Now I want you to understand that I am preaching this sermon as much to myself as I am to you. We are all caught up in a huge lie about life – a lie so huge that we take it as truth. We are part of a culture that busys us up so we never look down. And we think it normal. So did the rich man.
If fairness for the earth and all the earth’s people is God’s main agenda, how can we call ourselves God’s people if this isn’t even on our radar screens?
At the time of the Reformation back in the 1500’s a monk named Martin Luther defended his teachings with words that have rung strongly down through the ages. In the face of those who demanded that he recant his teaching that God was a God of grace, Luther replied, “Here I stand. I can do no other.” I cherish those words for their strength and for their power and for their boldness and unwavering focus. Here I stand. Great words.
It is time for us who call ourselves God’s people to take a good look at the lie we’ve been taught to be true, to see all those millions of Lazaruses laying at our gates and say with boldness equal to Luther’s, not “Here I stand,” but rather “There we go.” We go to where Lazarus needs food. We go to where Lazarus needs medical attention. We go to where Lazarus is deprived of what God has given for his own prosperity, equity and security.
“There we go” are the words of God’s people in this age of the profound misuse of prosperity, the selfish experience of equity, and the preposterous misuse of power. Only when we have finally made it to the gates where all the Lazaruses lay can we truly in our time say, “Here we stand. We can do no other” May God place the words “There we go” upon the hearts of all God’s people.
Don’t be Garfield.
Amen
The peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
