Br. Lain Wilson

Luke 16:19-31

Today’s Gospel lesson at first glance seems straightforward: you get what you give, Scripture’s guidance is clear, therefore you should change your ways. What more do you need? I for sure don’t feel myself to be living a life like the rich man, so I guess I’m doing okay?

But when I look at the shape of my life, when I examine my own actions and inactions, my thoughts and feelings and attitudes and prejudices, I find myself, inevitably and endlessly, falling short of the mark. I may not be the rich man lording my wealth and status over poor Lazarus, but I’m not innocent.

And I could say that I, and we all, participate in inescapable systemic evil, but that just disguises a simpler truth: countless times each day, each hour, I both know and feel myself to be mired in the endless array of “little sins,” of the kind that Saint Augustine confesses and likens to birdlime, snaring us unawares with the subtlety, we might say now, of Scotch tape.[1] These little sins, in aggregate, result in a growing distance in my relationships with God, with my neighbors, with myself, and with all of creation around me.

I’d like to think of myself as a good person, and I also know and feel the truth of this sin, of this distance. Saint Paul, in his letter to the Romans, expresses this better than I can: “I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do” (Romans 7:18-19). This feels exactly right, and not just in my body – which is Paul’s focus – but in my imagination and attitudes and emotions – in my whole self.

I know I can choose not to be the rich man in his grossest outrages, but I also know that my own will and agency are ultimately insufficient to rise above not only the systemic evil that we all swim in, but even, and especially, my own little sins. So as I hear again this parable this morning, I receive some comfort from Jeremiah: “Cursed are those . . . who make mere flesh their strength. . . . Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord” (Jeremiah 17:5, 7). We might easily substitute “will” or “power” or “self-sufficiency” for “flesh.”

My trust – our trust – is that this “great chasm” is not fixed and uncrossable, but that Jesus Christ has bridged it, has closed the distance in our relationships. “Wretched man that I am!” Saint Paul continues. “Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:24-25). My trust – our trust – is that God will be merciful to me, to us, sinners all, great and small, who come forth in penitence.

Amen.

[1] I am grateful to Peter Brown for sharing this modern image in a seminar decades ago.