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Guilford United Methodist Church, 221 Wilson Street, Guilford, MO (2026)

01/24/2026

Jesus is just beginning His public ministry and is moving to Capernaum. As He walks along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, He sees Simon Peter and Andrew, brothers who work as fishermen. He calls out to them, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of people,” and they drop their nets and follow him. Then a little farther down the beach, He repeats this process with James and John, the sons of Zebedee – also fishermen. And again, they immediately drop their nets, leave their father in the boat and follow Him. But what does this story look like from James’ point of view, for instance? Let’s go to the shore of the Galilean Sea and take a look.

Well, friends - Spring is coming and it’s beginning to warm up. I love being outside and just reflecting during the season of Springtime reading my books and listening to my music on my IPAD, and also garage sales, and just taking a gentle walk. God is so good and its important for us to embrace the creations that God has placed upon us. Hmm, But now, we are asked the question - who is that and why have they left their boat, and not finishing their work on the nets. They can’t possibly be finished yet. But there they are, and they’re waving at us. I know who that is – that’s that new Rabbi who just got into town, Jesus I think he’s called. Look at that preacher. There’s something about him. I don’t know what it is, but I can’t seem to take my eyes off him. Somehow it just seems like I ought to trust what He says. He just seems like someone a man ought to follow when he speaks. What is he saying? Come with me? Fish for people? I have no idea what He is talking about. “Dad. I’ve got to go. No. I don’t know when I’ll be back. Yes, John is coming too. I have to. I can’t explain it. I just have to. Tell mom we won’t be home for dinner. I know. I’m sorry. I love you. Good-bye.”

This discipleship thing is not so easy to explain – even with great story telling devices. James and John, sitting there minding their own business one minute and the next minute they’ve left everything they know – everything they own – and they’re off to follow an itinerate preacher with no known source of income. They couldn’t possibly have explained that to Zebedee. And imagine what the conversation must have been like in the kitchen with their Jewish mother that night. “They did what? They just left? Just like that? Who’s going to handle their jobs? What’s going to happen to the business without them? You’re too old to do this by yourself. Oy, what will we do? They must be crazy – and they’ll drive me that way, too.”

James and John didn’t know it then, but their “immediate” decision to drop everything and follow Jesus was going to continue to have such consequences. Just a few years later, king Herod Agrippa would have James beheaded for preaching about Jesus. And although John lived a long life, he did his writing at the end from exile on the island of Patmos because of his support for the Gospel of Christ. What makes someone leave everything behind to become a disciple? Simply put, it’s faith.

Faith is a belief in that which cannot be seen – or proven. James and John believed in God and in God’s incarnation, Jesus Christ enough to lead lives based upon that belief. But that kind of faith didn’t begin with them. Abraham had faith enough to leave his home and go to a land designated by God to be his new land. Moses had faith enough to lead a recalcitrant group through the desert for forty years, just because God said so. And fortunately, that kind of faith also didn’t end with James and John either. Now in Tarantino fashion, let’s cut to a seemingly unrelated scene in modern-day America.

A man is sitting with friends from the office, having a visit after work. He glances at his watch, sees that it’s almost 6:00 pm and he suddenly realizes that it’s Ash Wednesday. He can make the service if he hurries. Although there are churches closer than his own, they don’t enter his thoughts as he rushes away from his mystified colleagues and races to his parish church.

He slides into the pew just as the recitation of Psalm 51 starts. Even though he’s still a little out of breath from trying to get to church on-time and it all seems so rushed, the familiar words of the Psalmist take on new meaning. He knows that this time when he says “Have mercy on me, God, according to your loving kindness. According to the multitude of your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions,” all of his sins have been blotted out. He doesn’t hear the words of the Litany of Penitence at all. All he can hear are his own words, going through his head over and over again, “you want me to do what? Leave everything we’ve worked so hard for here and do what? Seek ordination why? What happens to my family? This is crazy.” And there is not a single answer to any of those internal questions except for the repeated, “because you need to.” He sat through the rest of the service, marveling at what had just taken place. In an instant he had decided to upend his life, to give up everything he had worked so hard for – and to give up everything on behalf of his family as well – and yet he felt completely at peace with that decision.

Discipleship is indeed a strange thing. When God calls us we know at a very primal level who it is who is calling. Unfortunately, we have grown so wary of what other people will have to say about our being in personal contact with God that we don’t tell people about these things. As St. Luke says about the mother of Jesus in his Gospel, and “Mary kept all these sayings, pondering them in her heart.” (Luke 2:19 WEB). That’s what we tend to do – treasure the times when we hear God’s voice, and ponder it in our hearts – out of fear of the unknown – rather than reacting and following the call to be a disciple.

So in all honesty, the moral of today’s story is a little twisted from what you might have thought. The moral is not that we should all drop our fishing nets and go and follow Jesus and become fishers of people. We are not all called to the same ministry. Even St. Paul – in all his greatness – wasn’t called to do it all. As we heard from him this morning, “For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the Good News.” No, the moral of the story this morning is this … we are all called by God. Some in very dramatic ways, some in very quiet ways; some to ministries that seem extreme, others to very understated ministries – but we are ALL called.

What is the discipleship mission God has in mind for you? Lent is coming. It is the perfect time to be still and listen for God’s voice, to see what God has in mind for you. Maybe it will be something big and seemingly risky, like stepping into a leadership role somewhere ot a career change. Perhaps God will call you to some involvement in a brand new and unfamiliar type of ministry, something that stretches your understanding of God and of yourself. Maybe God will call you to give of yourself more than you ever have, in time, talent AND treasure. But maybe God will just ask that you make a new commitment to prayer and to attending church every week of the Lenten season.

I don’t know what God will call you to. But I know that God calls, all the time. If we will listen, and trust that it is God we hear, amazing discipleship opportunities will open up for us. And like James and John, if we’re faithful enough to hear and respond, our lives will never be the same again. It’s scary, but it’s so worth it.

10/20/2025

A magazine cartoon has a little fellow kneeling beside his bed for his bedtime prayer and saying with some measure of disgust, “Dear God, Uncle Jim still doesn’t have a job; Sis still doesn’t have a date for the social; Grandma is still feeling sick – and I’m tired of praying for this family and not getting results.”

Praying was a problem for this little fellow and he isn’t alone. Prayer is a problem for many modern people.

If it wasn’t a problem, then why are there so few people who take prayer seriously? If it isn’t a problem then why do we find it so hard to set time aside everyday to spend with God in prayer?

If we took prayer seriously then we wouldn’t hesitate to be persistent and consistent in the time we spend in conversation with God.

If we really believe that God is a God of love, forgiveness, compassion and gentleness; that he can change us, heal broken lives and restore broken relationships, then we would really be serious about praying to him. In fact, if we really believed this then no-one and nothing would be able to keep us from praying.

If you think that this is a particularly modern problem, think again. It was also an issue back in Jesus’ day and so Jesus teaches his disciples about prayer through parables and words of encouragement?

Earlier in Luke’s Gospel, one of the disciples asked Jesus, “Lord teach us to pray”. It’s not that this disciple had never prayed before but that he had seen something different in the way Jesus prayed and wanted to learn more. Jesus obliges and gives us what we know as the Lord’s Prayer as a kind of model prayer.

Today in Luke 18 we hear Jesus’ teaching about prayer again. There is most likely something more to the background of this – perhaps one of the disciples had become frustrated with praying because it seemed that God didn’t hear or want to answer his prayers.

So Jesus tells a parable about a truly disgusting judge. This judge had no respect for justice and no feeling for the suffering of others. In Jesus’ day there were those judges who were notorious for accepting bribes, for being corrupt and obstructing the course of justice. We hear of a widow who has a case to bring to the judge, but since she is a widow she has nothing to offer as a bribe. Neither does she have anyone to speak on her behalf. She has no standing in the society of the time. She is a picture of helplessness.

But she does have one thing. She has the ability to pester the judge. Even though the judge wants nothing more to do with this woman, she doesn’t give up. She leaves messages on his answering machine, constantly appears in his office, writes him letter after letter, sends faxes, emails. She gives him no peace – she is persistent. She wanted justice and she wanted it now!

Finally this judge says to himself, “Even though I don’t care about God and I can’t stand this woman, I will give this woman what she wants just to get her out of my hair”.

There are two points that come out of Jesus’ parable.

Firstly, the widow was in a helpless situation she could have easily lost heart and given up. As someone who was a nobody in her community, too poor to resort to bribery and lacking in influential friends, the chance of her having any success was nil. And what is more she couldn’t count on the religious principles of the judge because he had none. She is a picture of helplessness and if she lost heart who wouldn’t blame her.

This is the case with much of our praying. One of the biggest challenges that we face as Christians, is that we don’t like to pray to God in time of our feeling of helplessness and with being so persistent like the widow.

If we really believed that God hears and answers our prayers, we would be hammering on God’s door constantly, asking, seeking and knocking, and waiting, our trust sometimes fainting, sometimes growing angry. In the face of every difficulty we would not lose heart, but consistently and persistently keep on going to God even though we have become discouraged.

The Bible records some of the prayers of people who have gone to God with their seemingly hopeless situations. Some of the bitterest complaints about God and his ways are to be found in the Bible. In the Psalms and the Book of Job the cries of bitter and angry people are recorded for us today. Rather than lose heart and give up on God they persistently called out to him,

“My God, I cry in the daytime, but you don’t answer;
in the night season, and am not silent”

We hear of Jesus praying on the night of his arrest, “Being in agony he prayed more earnestly. His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground”. Even though Jesus was in a hopeless situation, he didn’t lose heart. He prayed even more fervently.

It would have been easy for that widow to give up because the odds were against her of ever moving the corrupt judge to do anything in her favor. In spite of how things might look to you and how overpowering chaos and trouble are in your life, and even though the situation appears hopeless, Jesus urges us not to lose faith but to “keep on praying.”

There are two points that come out of our lesson today:

1). If we believe that prayer is important nothing should keep us from praying.

The second point is what this parable says about the character of God. If that sleazy and corrupt judge who had no real interest in the widow at his door, will open his hand and answer the requests of the widow, then how much more will our heavenly Father. It is our heavenly Father who has a deep and intimate concern with everything that happens in our lives, and has promised to answer our prayers and petitions.

This parable is about the trustworthiness and generosity of God. If a crooked judge can give what is asked for, how much more will God who is gracious and kind give us what we pray for. Jesus said something similar to this after the parable about the man who persistently knocked on his neighbor’s door at midnight. He said, “Who is there among you, who, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, who will give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him”.

You see, if sinful parents give good things to their children because they love them, then it follows that our heavenly Father who promised to love us as his own at our baptism and to walk with us throughout life’s journey, will never ignore our prayers, and will always answer them in the most loving way.

Our text today reassures us that God does hear our prayers, just as the judge heard the widow and her pleadings. We can take comfort in the knowledge that God is far more gracious than the dishonest judge is. He answers out of his goodness and kindness and grace. If his answers depended on us, on how well we pray, on how well we have lived as God’s people, then we could never expect to have our prayers answered.

I’m sure every one of us here this morning admits that prayer doesn’t have the place in our lives that it should. Even as we confess our slackness when it comes to praying, he answers that prayer out of love and reminds us that we belong to him and the blood of his Son has saved us. His answers are always good. His answers are never vengeful or vindictive. As God’s child you can count on that.

This parable of Jesus about the widow and the dishonest judge is a story about encouragement. Jesus is saying, ‘Take heart. Don’t give up praying just because the times are hard’.

‘Keep on praying!’ Why? Because of the relationship that we have with the Father through baptism.

Keep on praying because he is gracious and kind.

Keep on praying even if the whole situation looks hopeless in our eyes.

Keep on praying because he loves us and is waiting to answer our prayers in a way that will be for our benefit.

Keep on praying because we have a God who is willing and waiting to hear from us, and who wants to apply his loving answer to every request we bring to him.

Sometimes we may doubt, we may be angry, we may be upset, we may question “why?” but he is always ready to listen.

Let me finish with a quote from Philip Yancey, ‘Persistent prayer keeps on bringing God and me together … As I pour out my soul to God, I get it off my chest, so to speak, unloading some of my burden to One who can handle it better. Little by little, as I get to know God I learn that God has nothing in common with an unjust judge, though at times it may seem so. Persistent prayer changes me by helping me see the world and my life, through God’s eyes. As the relationship progresses I realise that God has a clearer picture of what I need than I do.”

As we pray, we bring God our specific, actual, everyday needs. God becomes more real to us, nearer to us; God’s will for us becomes clearer. Don’t give up on God. Don’t lose heart but keep praying. Be a “squeaky wheel.” Talk to God as your best friend who knows you even better than you know yourself. God will give you what you need. Amen.

10/06/2025

Billy Graham went to see President Dwight Eisenhower in Walter Read Hospital when he was on his deathbed. After their visit, Dr. Graham started to leave the room. Eisenhower said, “Wait a minute. I want to ask you a question. Do you think an old sinner like me will get to heaven?”

Billy Graham turned around and answered, “General Ike, I know you have accepted Jesus Christ as your savior. You are a man of faith, and you have asked the Lord to forgive all your sins. So when you die, as far as my knowledge goes, you’ll get into heaven.” As Billy Graham closed the door, he looked back saw tears streaming down the old general’s cheeks.

Men and women of faith, you do not need to doubt your salvation in Jesus Christ. Those who believe and are baptized shall be saved. God so loved each one of you that God sent His only Son, Jesus, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Repent of your sins, turn back to God, and receive the good news that your sins are forgiven, you are God’s child, the promises of God’s kingdom are yours. When you die, you will go to heaven. Now live out your faith in this world knowing that the blessings of the world to come are certain. You are Christ’s women and men, disciples of Jesus, apostles of the Lord. As you believe, so do.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is instructing his followers. His teaching is for all who bear his name, who are brothers and sisters of one another in Christ. In the text just before our lesson, Jesus is warning his disciples not to be a stumbling block to others. The Greek word is the same from which we get our word scandal. We should never be a stumbling block, a scandal, a snare, a trap – that’s also what the Greek word SKANDALON means. Jesus says it is better to have a millstone around one’s neck and be tossed into the sea, to die even, rather than cause others to fall away from their faith in the Lord. It is a hard saying.

The gospel lesson from Luke today tells of two churches that existed in the time of Jesus, and that still exist today. The first one appears when the disciples come to Jesus and ask him to increase their faith. They give evidence of a church that is all about faith and following. There has been criticism throughout the ages that the church is always about itself…a private club…if you will. We sing together. We pray together. We fellowship together. We drink coffee together. And then we go home and do it all over again next Sunday. We’re a little bit like the tavern called “Cheers” where everybody’s knows our name, and everybody’s glad we came, and everyone’s problems are all the same. And we like it that way! There is a sense of community when one is a member of a congregation…a sense of belonging and caring, and we value it deeply. But the critics are right; for often, church is all about us, and not about others. “God, give us greater faith, and greater blessings, and greater fellowship with our friends.”

But when Jesus tells the disciples a parable, he describes another kind of church. It is a church where the people work. They work at feeding the hungry, and clothing the naked, and visiting the sick and the imprisoned, and reaching out and touching the untouchables of our world. And these churches do this, not simply because they are compassionate people, but because they believe it is expected of them as followers of the Crucified One. Remember Jesus’ words in the parable? “The slave doesn’t think he or she can come in from the field and sit down for a dinner. Rather, the slave comes in, puts on an apron and serves the master. So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done.'”

It’s not a comfortable image for Christian people, and perhaps that’s why this is not one of our most loved parables. We don’t like to think of ourselves as “worthless slaves;” we prefer to see ourselves as “special lambs.” But we cannot ignore the obvious expectation of Jesus in this parable; Jesus calls Christians to pack a lunch pail, put on a hardhat, and spend themselves by serving others.

Two churches, two different agendas. One church sees its mission as to care and be cared for by the members of its congregation. The other church sees its purpose as to reach out to a world in need; to be the hands and lips of Jesus in every age. So which one is it? Are we called to care for one another in our congregation, or are we called to reach out and care for others? Yes. Yes. The Church is called to do both, and the Church becomes unhealthy whenever its focus drifts toward just one or the other.

It has often been said that the only Bible the world will ever read is the lives of Christians. This is a warning to us that our Monday through Saturday selves should reflect our Sunday confession of faith. It is what Jesus is saying to the disciples in our Gospel text. We are not expected to be perfect people but we are called to live out our faith in daily life. We are to live in such a way that others may come to faith too. At our baptism, we hear the charge, “Let your light so shine forth before others, that they might see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” As we say, we do; we show the love of Christ. We are called to forgive one another, accept one another, love one another. We are called to care about each other so much that we are even willing to call one another to task for wrongdoing. We show our faith in Jesus as we live our daily lives as Christian friends, brothers and sister of each other in Jesus Christ. We become the Bible the world reads.

Jesus tells us, “If another disciples sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive.” Even seven times in one day, we are called to forgive. What God for us in inviting us to repent and confess our sins and be reconciled to God, is also our model for our relationship with each other. Secret sins must be confessed not glossed over. There can never be growth in Christ’s Church when there is sin at the heart.

What Christ is telling us in our text is very clear. We must repent. We must confess our sins and shortcomings. Only then can we accept the repentance of others and receive forgiveness. Remember the prayer we were taught? “Forgive us our trespasses,” and the Lord’s own words to remind us, “As we forgive those who trespass against us.” Even seven times each day we are asked to forgive.

How did the disciples respond to their instruction? They said, “Increase our faith.” It is not easy to recognize one’s own failings – so much easier to see the sins and shortcomings of others. It is not easy to ask for forgiveness either. We need more faith. But Jesus reminded them, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea’ and it would obey you.” The faith of a mustard seed – the smallest of all seeds – if it be genuine is able to move mountains. Mulberry trees, sycamore trees have very deep roots that are never toppled in storms. But faith can replant them in the ocean. Even small faith in Jesus is enough to grant us power to seek forgiveness for ourselves and receive God’s promised gift of forgiveness. It is faith enough to accept our neighbor, to so love that sister and brother that we are willing to put ourselves on the line to rebuke, but not cast off, to admonish but not to scold, to seek that neighbor out to call him or her to task with the result that the neighbor is reconciled to God and to the community. We could cry out, “Increase our faith,” just like the disciples in Jesus’ day. It is a difficult thing our Lord asks of us – even to interfere in the life of our neighbor for that neighbor’s sake.

“If we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” We are sinful and fall short. We repent and ask for forgiveness and we receive pardon for the sake of Jesus Christ who died for our sin. And then we seek out our sister and brother. We share what we have – we forgive as we have been forgiven. We love because God first loved us.

Oh, we will never be perfect. Until our dying day, we will look at ourselves as unworthy servants, worthless slaves. No matter how much we do in response to God, it is never enough to pay off the debt we owe to our Savior. But we have the power to be God’s people, to be the Bible the world will read, to be Monday morning Christians, to have even that little faith like a mustard seed that can uproot trees and move mountains and bring us to eternal life.

The church in our hands, the congregation in this place, is a vibrant, growing Body of Christ. But now is not the time to circle the wagons and celebrate our accomplishments. There are people within these walls whose needs are great. And there are people beyond our walls who are dying to find out if Christians really walk their talk. You people of warm hearts…you people of calloused hands; don’t give up, don’t ever give up being the Church that God has called you to be. Thanks be to God. Amen.

09/29/2025

Sometimes we come across a statement that jumps out at us as a deep and obvious truth. Today’s Gospel is a dramatic story about how one man fails to redeem the present moment in which he finds himself. This man is what we know biblically as “The Rich Man”. This is the story Jesus told…. “There were these two guys,” Jesus said. One of them was very wealthy. He dressed in the finest clothing from around the world, he ate elaborate spreads of food and drink every day, and for him, becomes imprisoned in his own conspicuous consumption and does not fear the righteous judgment of God. A poor man lies literally on his doorstep, and he knows it, he knows the man Lazarus by name. The Rich Man refuses to redeem the present, though he has the means and opportunity to do so. As a result, he ruins the future for himself, an eternal future.

We may not refer to ourselves as rich or that we have a lot of money, but each one of us is very rich. But your wealth and mine is not limited to money. We all enjoy many good things, not all of them material.

—Each of us is healthy enough to have made it to church this morning.

—Each of us is free enough to come to God’s house today.

—Each of us is safe enough to make our way here. We are not threatened by aerial bombing, or by land mines buried in the earth.

—Each of us is privileged enough in all these ways that we are in danger of becoming Dives and refusing to recognize the Lazarus who lies on our doorstep.

The problem is not these various forms of wealth in themselves. Money and health and freedom and safety can be used to good effect. The problem is when these advantages cause us to allow our hearts to harden. The problem is when we assume that our wealth in its different forms is a sign that God is pleased with us, and that the poverty many people experience is a sign that God is displeased with them.

We can easily to slip into this bankrupt theology, but it is dangerously false. The Gospel never blames anybody for being rich or being poor, but how we use whatever we have—that is what comes under the judgment of God.

The matter is made worse because the world is insistent on propagating the wrong set of values. Archbishop William Temple of Canterbury put it this way:

“The world, as we live in it, is like a shop window
into which some mischievous person has got overnight,
and shifted all the price-labels
so that the cheap things have the high-price labels on them,
and the really precious things are priced low.
We let ourselves be taken in.
Repentance means getting those price-labels back in the right place.”

The Rich Man is aware of Lazarus on his doorstep. He knows the poor man by name. There’s reason to believe he employs him as an errand boy. But he never welcomes him as a brother. Never sits him down at that rich table where he stuffs his own face each and every day.

Even after death, when he’s in torment, The Rich Man still does not get it. He talks about Lazarus as though the poor man is still available to be his errand boy. He talks about how he has five brothers back home. He still doesn’t see that Lazarus and every beggar is his brother.

The greatest mistake of The Rich Man was that he failed to close the social distance. He failed to close the distance between himself and Lazarus. He refused to see him as a person.

Closing the distance is not easy, yet it is essential. Closing the social distance is what we mean every time we renew our Christian commitment, when we pledge ourselves to love our neighbors, to respect the dignity of each person.

A true story. Rabbi Joshua, the son of Levi, traveled to Rome in the third century. He was astonished at the magnificent buildings he saw. He was especially struck to see how the statues were cared for, because they were covered with fine cloth to protect them from summer heat and winter cold. As he admired these statues, a beggar pulled at his sleeve and asked for a crust of bread.

“Here are statues of stone covered with expensive clothes,” thought Rabbi Joshua. “Here is a man, created in the image of God, covered with rags. A civilization that pays more attention to statues than to people shall surely perish.”

Rabbi Joshua was right, of course. The decline of Rome had already begun.

Any wealthy society faces the danger of moral collapse, destruction from within. The events of September 11, 2001 demonstrated that America can respond magnificently to many a Lazarus in trouble. The outpouring of support for those who died, those who grieved, those who risked their lives proved to be tremendous. Gently America took each Lazarus by the hand and brought him to the table of abundance.

This behavior cannot be restricted to times of national crisis. It must be an everyday occurrence. We need to recognize people of many sorts and conditions as the Lazarus on our doorstep. We need again and again to take him by the hand and bring him to the table of abundance. This is not something the high do for the low. It is simple justice. The way things should be. What one brother does for another. This is how we are to redeem the present and insure the future.

Today’s Gospel tells us nothing about how it came about that The Rich Man was wealthy and Lazarus was destitute. What it announces in no uncertain terms is the moral imperative that The Rich Man, while he lived, needed to fulfill to care for Lazarus as his brother, of reconciling with him, of bridging the gap before it was too late.

The Rich Man dresses up and eats well one day after another. He’s quite a consumer. So preoccupied is he, in fact, that he simply does not notice poor, sick Lazarus lying outside his front door, there on his freshly mowed lawn. The Rich Man’s pet dogs find their way to Lazarus, they lick the poor man’s sores, but the Rich Man is still very blind to notice his neighbor in need. Oh, he may see the figure of Lazarus and even know his name, but all to no avail; he fails truly to recognize him. It’s not that Dives oppresses Lazarus, or cheats him, or exploits him; he simply does not notice him.

The face of that other figure looks familiar. Then The Rich Man recognizes that this is the bum who once sprawled over his lawn and was such a nuisance for the dogs.

The Rich Man has lost nothing of his haughtiness. He hails Abraham as one might signal a less-than-competent waiter. “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to cool my tongue with a damp fingertip; these flames are frightfully uncomfortable.”

Same old guy here - Absorbed with himself. He thinks he deserves this special treatment, and that Lazarus is available to serve as his personal lackey.

The answer is “no,” but Abraham gives it to him easy.

First, the universe does, however slowly, bend toward justice. The Rich Man’s whole life was a holiday; Lazarus, on the other hand, had it lousy. The death of both of them brought about a great reversal. Now it’s Lazarus’ turn to sit at poolside enjoying a drink with the big boys, while The Rich Man is doomed to sizzle like fat in the frying pan.

Second, Abraham points out that where he is and where Dives is are separated by a great gulf, an insurmountable no-man’s land. So Abraham finds himself unable to have room service visit The Rich Man. That’s just the way it is.

The Rich Man, however, is not in the habit of taking “no” for an answer. So he makes another request, one where he sounds like a good family man. “Then I beg you to send Lazarus to my father’s house and warn my five brothers to clean up their act; otherwise all six of us will sizzle together.”

Abraham replies that the brothers can get on the right track if they read and heed the Bible.

The Rich Man counters with a suggestion, a plea, and an original idea. He knows his brothers. The whole lot of them are a sad sight when it comes to ethics, religion, or just plain decency. But if someone were to come back from the dead–heart thumping again inside the shroud–then even those morally challenged, self-indulgent boneheads would sit up and take notice.

Once again what The Rich Man proposes is shot down by Abraham. The old patriarch responds:

“You’ve missed the point by a mile. This resurrection business is not about reviving corpses so they’re good for another 100,000 miles. This kingdom of God is not the old life you remember, great meals and fine tailoring, but done in more brilliant colors. If we send Lazarus off to your brothers, he’ll startle them, but their hearts won’t change. They’ll still play by the same crooked rules, and they’ll assume the game goes on forever.

“Try to understand, you man of wealth - What we’re about here is a whole new order, and strange to say, it works through failure, loss, and death. Nobody struts their way in. To enter you must fall backward, eyes closed, believing you will be caught.

“Lazarus is here beside me, and I’m picking up the tab, because he’s somebody who knows how to take a fall. His whole life amounted to one big shove, but he closed his eyes, and trusted that the arms were there to catch him. He died into life.

“You, on the other hand, the man of wealth–sorry to say, you lived into death. It wasn’t the money that was the problem. It was you. You could never accept loss or failure. Not even the tiny ones you were dealt in your well-endowed existence. You always had to be a winner, and you succeeded, you won big. But really, you lost even bigger. You refused to die, because you didn’t believe that arms were there to catch you. Even when you closed your eyes as your body shut down, you refused to let go and fall into life. I’m sorry, Dives, I really am.”

With that Abraham sighs, turns away, and walks off, his arm round Lazarus’ shoulder. The Rich Man never sees him again.

Brothers and sisters, we are here at this banquet in honor of Jesus Christ. He tells us this story, but more than that, by his own example he shows us what it means to die into life. He is not afraid to close his eyes, let go, and fall backward, because he believes that arms are there to catch him. He tells us those arms are there for us as well.

By his word and example we learn that the kingdom is not a place into which we strut. If we are to enter, we must close our eyes, let go, and fall backward, believing we will be caught. This needs to happen at the end of earthly existence and many times before.

One way a community can insure the future is by redeeming the present.

The price of redeeming the present is steep. The cross tells us that.

Insuring the future, redeeming the present, requires that we exercise moral imagination. We need to recognize Lazarus as our brother.

Who is the Lazarus on your doorstep?

Who is the Lazarus on the doorstep of our nation?

What are you doing to help?

One way a community can insure the future is by redeeming the present. More than that, redeeming the present is the only way to insure the future.

Our Lazarus waits for us.

It’s all a trust experience. We can live into death as The Rich Man did. Or, like Jesus and Lazarus and every saint, we can die into life. Close your eyes. Lean back. Let go.

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Guilford, MO
64457

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Guilford United Methodist Church