Living Among the Chasms — 28 September 2025

Living Among the Chasms

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Luke 16:19-31

[Jesus said:] “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in agony in these flames.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things and Lazarus in like manner evil things, but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’ He said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house— for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.’ Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’ He said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’ ”

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“Between you and us a great chasm has been fixed”—could have torn that out of the op-ed page of any American newspaper, under a big, bold, all-caps heading about “The Political Divide,” “The Great Sorting,”“The Polarization.” And the piece would be a lament, shaming one side or the other because we can’t talk to each other any more, because we’re all shouting into echo chambers, because there is no compromising anymore. And after the shame, the blame for someone else’s divisive rhetoric, partisan politics, evil threat to our lives. This looming chasm is fixed between us, Abraham said, and, in Jesus’s time it was: between rich and poor,between indigenous people and Roman occupiers, between religiously devout and “tax collectors and sinners.”The chasm is fixed between us and you, but in Christ, the good news turns us and you into neighbors; it’s outlined in Moses and the Prophets and finally begins to make sense in Christ’s rising from the dead.

A lot of times, in parables, we begin to try to understand them by figuring out which character is God, and which character is us. This is a parable where it is difficult to find ourselves. We, mostly middle-class Bloomingtonians, whatever that means, don’t look very much like the rich people of Jesus’ time. There weren’t many who were rich, who were politically powerful and consequential, who had land, who had gates to shut fast against the looming threat of their own poverty. Those who did were Romans and their collaborators—profiteers who charged Rome’s taxes and skimmed off the top, religious leaders who did Rome’s dirty workkeeping the peace for some relief from Rome’s oppressive rule. Few of us look like this.

Yet, I don’t want us to duck here, to think we’re somehow off the hook. We do live in the richest country in the world; nearly all of us are quite wealthy by the world’s definition. We cannot read this story and not think about the Lazarus at our own gate: people who live without adequate shelter, food, clothing, health care, and mental health care.

But—many people in our community, in our congregation feel politically powerless. We sleep in warm beds with full bellies, but we live in fear that we may loose our jobs, or are afraid to travel because we have a green card and not citizenship, or are fearful of the future.

And this parable is difficult to find ourselves in because there are great chasms between us that have nothing to do with wealth or shelter or position, but are chasms of philosophy, theology, ideology. Which is to say, we may struggle to find ourselves in this story, but not the chasms, looming large over our lives.

Living with a chasm, compassion is an afterthought. We get the Rich Man: in some way, surely he was frustrated that Lazarus was dumped at his gate, annoyed that someone must of thought it was his responsibility to help, even if somewhere he agreed (he probably always had something to give to someone panhandling on his commute). I’m sure, too, the Rich Man was afraid of Lazarus. Are his sores contagious? his poverty?

In an anti-racism training I took a few years ago, someone noted that we have little control over the first thought that springs to our minds. This thought is our culture, it may be how we are raised, or a reflection of the air we breathe every day, it is most likely to be a reflection of the chasm we’re living with. We may not be able to control it, but we don’t have to give it any air time. It is the second thought, the third, the subsequent thoughts,partnered with what we say and do, that determine the kinds of people we are. The chasms between us may be fixed, but we do not need to fuel them.

When we live with chasms, there is our side and there is the other side. There is the rich man and there is Lazarus, who, in the rich man’s mind, is like all poor people – lazy, incompetent, dirty, dangerous. He even bosses Lazarus around in death! In the shadow of the chasm, not only do we retreat into “us versus you” mentalities, painting the other side in broad strokes, each position the polar opposite of what we believe, but we hold the people, individual persons, responsible for our assumptions, perfectly patterned on the mold,punishable in our revenge. These are “us versus you” mentalities.

Here’s an example of this at work, in which I play the part of the rich man: un-compassionate, full of assumptions. In the spring, we camped at Spring Mill State Park, outside of Mitchell, in Lawrence County. It’s a great park—I know you know it—there’s the historical village, the beautiful southern Indiana hills and trees,and there is a really cool cave system, which you can explore with a guide in a hand-propelled boat as the guides walk their hands along the narrow walls of the cave. The caves are host to an endangered species, the blind cavefish. And the ecosystems in the caves are so sensitive, especially to what is happening on the surface.Ok, here’s the part where I don’t look very good at all. I assumed the people on the surface wouldn’t care about the endangered blind cavefish like I did, because of all my assumptions about politics and partisanship and rural folks (even though I’m from rural Hoosier stock—these are my people!). I know better than this! And then, in what I think was a real God moment, because I still have time to repent all my unkind and unholy assumptions, the guide said that they don’t salt the roads in the winter in Mitchell, because the community is committed to protecting the caves and the endangered blind cavefish.

In the time of chasms, fixed between us and you, there is only this accusation, this assumption that you fit the type, that you are just like my enemy is, that you are ever my opponent. But in Christ, that “you,” is my neighbor: the you whose eyes I know are brown, the you whose children I have cared for, the you whose heart I know is vast. The you who, in the name of Christ and by his example, I will cross chasms to love and care for.

Abraham was not about to send Lazarus to make the rich man feel better about his lack of compassion, the barred gates of his heart, his assumptions about his neighbor. But here’s the thing. Abraham says that everything we need is in Moses and the prophets, which is true, I think, because that is where we get “Love the Lord your God with all you heart and soul and mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

But somehow, despite the desire of our heart to be Christ’s disciples, to follow Jesus, we still draw our swords in the garden, we still deny we know him, we still mock his compassion, we still stand far from the cross and its shame.

But in all the sadness of Good Friday and the confusion of Easter morning, two of Jesus’ disciples were on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus trying to figure it all out when a stranger appears. We know that it is Jesus, but they don’t, which is also probably all the time true of us when it comes to the stranger in our midst. (You might be my enemy, but you’re probably Jesus). Anyway that stranger, the one we know is risen from the dead, opens to them Moses and the prophets, everything they need to understand. And then, and then, he breaks bread with them. Which is what finally convinces them of the resurrection, what finally assures them of this hope that can buoy us beyond our differences. What finally convinces them is what Lazarus was denied: a place at the table.

Beloved, I cannot stand up here with certainty and say this or that is what will overcome the incredible chasms of ours lives. If it were easy enough to be solved in a run-of-the-mill Sunday sermon, we would have done it already. The chasms between us are fixed, and yet here the risen Christ spreads a table in the presence of our enemies—who are all our neighbors, near and far. Here, hardened hearts are replaced, for a moment, with hearts that actually beat. Here, you are not required to explain yourself, to justify your choices, your first uncharitable thoughts, and yet here, too, are offered opportunities to see neighbors in a new light, in the light of Christ, and for you and us to be transformed. The chasm is fixed, and we are hoping for a miracle, and, somehow, what we get is a cross, and a tomb, and a rolled away stone, and some broken bread, and, somehow, it is enough. Amen.