Preaching Thoughts on a Non-Preaching Sunday

Charlotte, NC is my hometown, and so I've watched the events unfolding there closely. I also have friends there, along with many more Facebook friends. That means I've seen a deluge of reactions on social media from people who live in or around Charlotte, as well as posts and comments from people all over the country.

There is much to be troubled by in the events of this past week, but I don't know that the conversations on social media are all that helpful. I would include my own contributions in that judgment. In fact, social media seem to be contributing to the divide around issues of race, police actions, and more.

There certainly are plenty of thoughtful posts online that do a good job of discussing the issues, but even these tend to prompt a stream of comments that frame everything as us versus them, good and bad. Individual people disappear into the group they are associated with, and then are labeled as good or bad with little in the way of nuance. Protesters, police officers, city officials, the media themselves, white, black, and more are depicted as monolithic entities. They are called thugs, biased, trigger-happy, untruthful, racist, and lots of other terms I won't repeat.

All of this makes me wonder if people, at least those of us waging dueling posts and comments on Facebook, really see one another. Or do we only see sides? And once we slot someone on a particular side, we simply assign to them all the behaviors we attribute to that side.

In today's gospel reading, the division of rich and poor is highlighted, but the parable Jesus tells runs counter to the way people typically talk about such groups. We are told the poor man's name while the rich man is anonymous. Not the way that usually works. And the rich man's wealth seems not to be a blessing, but rather a curse.

The parable also implies that the rich man never really noticed poor Lazarus. No doubt he saw him when he passed him in the street. But he was just another poor man. The rich man only notices Lazarus after they've both died, and then he sees Lazarus as someone who might assist him. The parable doesn't say whether the rich man simply assumes that that's what people like Lazarus are for. But I'm left wondering if the rich man ever really sees Lazarus, the person, at all.

The labels we use for each other are often excuses not to see. They make life easy and simple for us by allowing easy judgments and easy decisions. Which of course means that our judgments and decisions are very often wrong.

I wonder what could happen if we learned to see, really see, the other.