Waving Through a Window

He’s 17. Awkward and anxious and alone. His mom is too busy to notice him. He doesn’t have any friends. His therapist tells him to write letters to himself. The topic? What will be good about today…no one sees him. Not really. So, he writes and he wonders, “Will I ever be more than I’ve always been? On the outside, always looking in, tapping on the glass, waving through a window. While I’m watching people pass, can anybody see? Is anybody waving back at me?”

His name is Evan, and he happens to be fictional, the title character of the musical Dear Evan Hansen. But, he is not pure fiction. He reflects, “We start with stars in our eyes. We start believing that we belong.” We all find ourselves pondering our impact on the world as he sings, “When you’re falling in a forest and there’s nobody around, do you ever really crash or even make a sound? Did I even make a sound? Will I ever make a sound?”

Hospice nurses will tell you that as people are dying their biggest concern is the impact they have made in the world. The number one regret that people have at the end of their life is doing what other people expected of them instead of what their heart passion was. The other regrets in the top 5 are similar. People wish they hadn’t worked so hard and had been present more with their loved ones, that they had been honest in their relationships instead of shoving down how they really felt to keep the peace, that they had made the effort to maintain their friendships, and that they had made the choice to be happy, to change what they were just pretending was ok and instead of trying to convince themselves they were content that they had chosen what would bring them joy.

We have a tendency to not really examine our lives, to not truly reflect on the impact we are making, until we face our last breaths and look back. To change we would have to let go of something we have been holding onto in order to grasp onto something new.

As Jesus was traveling and teaching, there were Pharisees who followed. Some were genuinely interested, some were just keeping an eye on him, sometimes, like when he taught that you can’t serve God and money, they mocked him. That day, he responded, “You people let everyone else know that you’re in the right – but God knows your hearts!” And then, he told them the parable that we read this morning.
It is an old story, the same pattern told with different characters and details. It comes from Greek mythology. There’s a rich man and a poor man. In life the rich man pays no attention to the poor man. In death, the roles are reversed. The now comfortable poor man is told he can’t help the now miserable rich man. And the now miserable rich man asks to warn his loved ones who are still alive. Only, as Jesus tells the story to a group of Pharisees, he names the poor man Lazarus. It’s like Jesus is highlighting something for us. It is the only time, in all of the parables that Jesus gives a character a name. The name “Lazarus” means in Hebrew “God helps.”

Let’s take a closer look at Lazarus. He lays by the gate of a rich man, who we later learn knows his name, but who even in death never addresses him directly. He is hungry…so hungry he would gladly eat the scraps out of the rich man’s garbage. And his skin is breaking down, and he’s covered in sores. The only compassion he experiences is from dogs; they are there with him. They lie beside him. They tend his wounds. Dogs weren’t pets – they were scavengers, the lowest of the food chain…and he is below the dogs. Whether he is too weak to keep the dogs from licking him, or their scratchy tongues and healing saliva are a relief, we don’t know. This is the character in the story that Jesus names Lazarus, “God helps”. Really? Because to the Pharisees, he didn’t seem like God was helping him. See, the Pharisees had an idea that if you had it good in this life it was because God favored you, and if you were poor, or sick, you were unclean, unworthy of God’s favor, and that worthiness or unworthiness of God’s favor was binding not just in this life, but in the life to come. So, what is going to happen to Lazarus, to God helps, when he dies? They can’t wait to hear what Jesus will say happens next. The pattern in the myth is supposed to be that the two switch places when they die, but the Pharisees didn’t believe that pattern.

Lazarus and the rich man die. Instead of the rich man in this life continuing as rich after death and the unclean man in this life continuing to be cursed after death, Jesus follows the pattern of the myth and the two swap places. The rich man calls out in agony, but the chasm is too great for Lazarus to be able to offer him any relief. The Pharisees must have just about tuned Jesus out…it’s a familiar story, of course he would tell it. Jesus is always taking up the cause of the poor and touching unclean people with sores all over. Yada, yada, yada. He continues with the familiar plea: “Father, please then, send a message to my family, to my brothers, to warn them so they can change before they die.”

Even we know what is supposed to happen – we all know the story of Ebeneezer Scrooge – the pattern is supposed to be that a message gets sent – a warning – and the rich, greedy characters are supposed to be saved from torment beyond the grave. Jesus changes the story. “They have all the warning they need,” he says, “They have the law from Moses and the prophets. If they don’t follow the guidelines for community that I gave through Moses and they don’t heed the warnings of the prophets, they wouldn’t be convinced,” Jesus says, “even if someone rose from the dead.” The Pharisees are the keepers of the law…which is why they would side with the rich man and not get dirtied by engaging the unclean man at the gate! How is he of worth? How could he matter to God? Jesus knows how hard it is for the Pharisees to see themselves, to hear his teaching and to let go of their purity rules and regulations that have led them to indifference to and devaluing of another person to grasp hold of the way of life he teaches and lives of love of neighbor. I wonder if his words echoed in their minds just months later as they learned his tomb was empty and heard rumors that he had risen.

Was it enough? Is it enough for us? We might be tempted to say that we aren’t really rich. I mean the rich man wore the robes of royalty – purple cloth was the most expensive color. He feasted in splendor every day. We don’t have the most expensive clothes, but most of us, when we get ready to wash what we have on today, will have something else to put on. An aside: Did you know that our Room in the Inn guests often don’t? We had a meeting this week of the churches that host at The Cottage, and we discussed the situation with the scrubs that we have there. We offer them to guests to wear while they wash their clothes and ask that they return them the next morning, but each year we find that our supply is gone within a couple of months. Well, anyway, we don’t have sumptuous feasts every day. Another aside about Room in the Inn, you might have noticed that when we have dinner together, I always encourage our guests and our volunteers to go ahead and get started eating as soon as the bus arrives and the guests have put their things on their beds. The blessing comes once everyone has gathered. Why? Some of our guests have waited all day to use the restroom. They want to do that before they eat. Other guests may not have had a space at Room in the Inn the night before, so it might have been more than a day since they have eaten, so they need to go ahead and eat that delicious hot meal in front of them.

So, we might not be wearing royal robes, but we are more like the rich man than we might readily admit. New Testament scholar NT Wright, starts his commentary on this passage, “We have all seen him. He lies on a pile of newspapers outside a shop doorway, covered with a rough blanket.” But, do we? Do we really see the person? Do we see Evan, the anxious 17 year old longing for someone to wave back at him? Do we engage the person at work that we know is struggling to hold it all together, or do we not really want to get involved? Do we stop and listen? Do we care? Their name is “God helps” – and you just might be the one that God sent to help.

I think this is the regret that so many express on their deathbed. They didn’t see. They didn’t look. Not at the poor. Not at the sick. Not at the immigrant. Not at the struggling. Not at their family. Not even at themselves. There are people that you pass every day that you don’t see, and the chasm grows. Sometimes that person is even yourself.

The good news is that Jesus’s parable is just a story. It’s not true that no one was sent to warn us, the brothers and sisters of the rich man. The man God sent even rose from the dead. It still remains to be seen whether we will follow his example and be used by God to help.

You know, perhaps the most interesting thing about the story is that Lazarus wasn’t asking to be the rich man or for the rich man to divide everything he had in half and share with him, and the rich man wasn’t asking Lazarus to trade places with him. Lazarus was asking for something to eat. The rich man was asking for something to drink. Each just wanted a compassionate response.

Who is Lazarus at your gate? One scholar argued that the verb tense for “laid at the gate” meant that Lazarus didn’t get there on his own – he was placed there. Who is the Lazarus, the one God helps whom God has laid at your gate? Whose story do you not really know, and don’t really want to know? Whose need do you try not to see? At the end of your life, when you look back at your life, who is waving through a window, tapping on the glass, trying to get your attention – look now, while you can before the chasm in your heart becomes too large to get across. Jesus points out the rift for the Pharisees and for us, listen again to his words as he begins this story, “You people let everyone else know that you’re in the right – but God knows your hearts!”