Last Sunday I could not explain the appointed Gospel Lesson to you without first “locating” it.  I could not make sense of the Gospel Lesson without telling you about what Jesus had said before He told the parable of the business manager who was given notice.  . . . Well, it’s happened again today.  I can’t explain the parable of the rich man and Lazarus . . . unless I first tell you what Jesus has said beforehand.

    You will recall that last Sunday the final word of Jesus on the subject of mammon (the word “mammon”, you might remember, is a Semitic word meaning those things you acquire for the sake of having them, such as wealth; . . . but mammon need not be only money, . . . a good snit for the sake of having a good snit can be mammon, . . . or a grudge that goes on forever); . . . anyhow, the final word of Jesus on the subject of mammon last Sunday is that “No servant can serve two masters . . . You cannot serve God and mammon.”  . . . Now, . . . the very next thing that happens, Saint Luke tells us, is that some Pharisees, who had been listening to Jesus teaching His disciples, . . . some Pharisees, upon hearing these words, scoff at Jesus.  . . . And Jesus, hearing them snickering off to one side, lifts up His eyes to these Pharisees who are scoffing, . . . and Luke tells us that Jesus says to them,

“The law and the prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and every one enters it violently.  But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away, than for one dot of the law to become void.  Every one who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.  There was a rich man, who was clothed in purple . . .”

Now, to our twenty-first century ears that discourse sounds rather like the ranting of a lunatic, . . . doesn’t it?  First Jesus talks about the kingdom of God . . . and then, without any logical transition, He asserts that remarriage of divorced persons is adultery . . . and then He tells an irrelevant story about a rich man and a poor man at his gate.  . . . The apparent lunacy of what sounds as if it were an erratic set of dominical sayings is embarrassing.  It is so embarrassing that the Standing Liturgical Commission of the Episcopal Church has purged the text from our Lectionary, so as not to trouble us with it, . . . they purged the difficult dominical saying and left us with only a pleasant story.

    But let’s take the time to attempt to understand what Holy Scripture is trying to say to us.  . . . Some people think that Luke has used Christ’s saying about the Law at this point in his Gospel to slip in a stern word about divorce and remarriage.  But that misses the point of the text altogether.  You see, what Jesus is explaining to the Pharisees chortling off to one side . . . is that until John the Baptizer came preaching the kingdom of God to the Jewish People; . . . until John the Baptizer . . . the Law of Moses and the sayings of the Prophets were meant to govern an earthly community of faith.  . . . But since John . . . and with the advent of Jesus . . . the Kingdom of God . . . a heavenly community . . . is being preached.  . . . And a heavenly community is different from an earthly one.  . . . In Heaven, you can’t have your own way; . . . you can’t do violence to the sacred will of God.  In Heaven you can’t erase a single dot of the sacred and eternal Law of God.  In the Kingdom of Heaven you are united to your God in a spiritual union, Jesus says; . . . you are united to God in a spiritual union that is very much like a marriage.  In Christ you are married to God in heart and mind and will and substance; . . . Christ Jesus, the Incarnate Word, has adorned you with grace as a bride is made ready for her bridegroom, . . . and by your entry into the divine Kingdom by Water and the Holy Spirit you are joined to your God so that He is your husband and you are His beloved.  . . . And anyone, Jesus tells the Pharisees who have interrupted Him with their laughing; . . . anyone who is joined to God . . . and divorces himself from God in order to marry themselves to mammon . . . commits adultery; . . . and anyone who admires and desires the lifestyle of someone who has divorced herself from God . . . also commits adultery!

    It is as if, Jesus says, . . . it is as if a rich man got up one morning, perfumed himself and put on fine, clean linen, over which he adorned himself with a purple robe, and went to take a sumptuous breakfast of wine and sweet breads and fruit.  While he was so occupied, one of his servants comes in to ask what he should do about a notoriously ulcerous and destitute invalid, named Lazarus, who has been dumped by some drunkards outside the rich man’s gate . . . and is unable to leave because he can neither walk nor crawl.  . . . And the rich man thinks:  . . . “well, I guess the rules of charity given by God to Moses require me to bring him in off the street, give him a little something to eat, and to use one of my nice linen sheets to have him carried to a brothel where the whores can look after him.  . . . But no!  If I do that, the louts who brought him here in the first place will most likely notice and bring another destitute person to annoy me, and I will expend all my wealth (not to mention my sheets) on human rubbish!”  . . . And so, the rich man says to his servant, “Do nothing.  Perhaps the drunkards who brought him will return to tote him off somewhere else.”

    Now, Jesus doesn’t make much of it, . . . but He is very specific about where Lazarus “had been thrown” the text says.  Lazarus lay at the gate of the rich man clothed in purple.  And what Jesus intends for us to imagine is a fairly typical residential compound, . . . consisting of a residence, with perhaps other buildings, surrounded by a high wall in which is set a gate -- a gate leading, from the street, into a large, open courtyard which is apart from street noises (and dangers).  . . . And Jesus says that Lazarus “had been thrown” not along one of the walls surrounding the rich man’s house, . . . but he “had been thrown” so that he lay at the rich man’s gate; . . . at the place where Lazarus might have been brought to the gate’s other side . . . so that a servant might toss him a crust of bread or a heel of cheese . . . and he wouldn’t be bothered by those cussed dogs who voraciously foraged about the city.  . . . Lazarus might have had the peace and safety of the rich man’s enclosure, . . . but the gate keeps him out as if it were a great chasm that Lazarus cannot cross.

    Lazarus lay outside the rich man’s gate.  . . . And that is why when the rich man dies some years later and discovers he has outlived his mammon and is in an arid place . . . where nothing of his life has survived to abide with him and he knows only the torment of desiring to have something; . . . because Lazarus lay outside the rich man’s gate . . . Abraham cannot send Lazarus to bring anything to the man who had been rich, not even a drop of water.  . . . Because Lazarus lay outside the rich man’s gate and the rich man chose not to open it for mercy’s sake, . . . “a great chasm has been fixed,” Abraham says; . . . “a great chasm has been fixed because that’s the way you wanted it.  You have divorced yourself from the mercies of heaven for the sake of your mammon,” Abraham says, . . . “and so, you have placed yourself beyond Heaven’s reach.”

    Do you remember how Jesus concluded the parable He told to us last Sunday?  . . . He said, “I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal habitations.”  . . . And here today Jesus makes His point clearer.  We who are the Church; . . . we who are espoused to the God of Mercy and Grace by Water and the Holy Spirit . . . we must nourish our fidelity to Him, Who is the Church’s husband, by expending what is earthly in order to participate in the mercy and grace which is divine; . . . we must expend the things that entice us to have them for their own sake and so divorce ourselves from God; . . . we must expend our money and time and liberality so that each of us might be an open gate into the peace and safety of the enclosures of Heaven; . . . so that there is never any chasm to separate us from the bosom of God.