Luke 16:19-31
Vision Problems
James Sledge September
29, 2019
Early
on during the sabbatical I took over the summer, I camped at Big Bend National
Park, in west Texas, for several days. One afternoon, I decided to check out a
hiking trail right by my campsite. As I walked along I came around a curve with
a five-foot-high, rock, retaining wall. And there, stretched out on the rocks,
was a rattlesnake.
He
seemed oblivious to me. I got quite close to take some pictures, but he
remained motionless. I was a little disappointed that he didn’t shake his
rattle, but I didn’t want to provoke or bother him too much, so I went on my
way.
As
I continued on, I wondered about someone on the trail who was not paying much
attention. How easy might it be to put a hand on that wall for support, right
where my rattlesnake friend was sunning himself? And so I alerted any hikers I
met along the way.
Have you ever thought about the things we see
and the things we miss? As a motorcyclist, I’m keenly aware of other
motorcycles. I can scarcely recall a time when I was suddenly startled or
surprised by the presence of a motorcycle I had not previously noticed.
Yet
all too often, motorcyclists are injured or killed by a driver who never saw
them. I’ve read of accidents where the driver says over and over to the police,
“I never saw him. I never saw him.” For some people, motorcycles seem to be
nearly invisible.
What
things do you see or notice? What things do you miss? Are there things that are
invisible to you?
Being
poor can make someone nearly invisible. Or maybe that has it backwards. Perhaps
it’s that having wealth can make one blind. Back when David Letterman was still
hosting the Late Show on CBS, a prominent politician who’d grown up in a
wealthy family was a guest. During a commercial break, a woman who worked for
the show came out to go over something with Letterman. As she leaned over his
desk, this politician reached out, grabbed the hem of her long sweater, and
proceeded to clean his glasses with it. It was such an odd scene that Letterman
showed a clip of it the next night.
I
doubt there was any malice or ill intent by this politician. He simply did not
see a person. He saw something he could use to clean his glasses. Perhaps this
is why Jesus so often speaks of money as a curse rather than a blessing. It can
cause such blindness.
Just
prior to the parable we heard this morning, Jesus has said, “You
cannot serve God and wealth.” The Pharisees, described by the gospel writer
as “lovers of money,” ridicule Jesus for this statement, and today’s parable is
part of his response to them.
The
main characters in the parable, a fabulously rich man and a poor, homeless man,
were drawn from daily life in Palestine, but they are still regular features of
our world. There is a huge oddity in the story, however, something quite
backwards from the real world. The poor, homeless man is identified by name, while
the rich man is anonymous.
I
suspect that this unnamed rich man never really noticed Lazarus lying outside
his gate. He passed him every day, but he didn’t really see him. I don’t think
the rich man was a terrible person. At the end of the story, he’s concerned
about his brothers and wants to keep them from making the same mistakes he did.
But his wealth has cursed him, blinded him to people like Lazarus. As a Jew he
had a religious duty to help the poor, but he was a busy man with important
things on his mind. Lazarus was just unnoticed, background noise.
In
Luke’s gospel, Jesus has already taught his disciples about the curse of
wealth. In the Sermon on the Plain, which roughly parallels the better known
Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, Jesus says, “Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours in the kingdom of God… But woe to you who are rich, for you have
received your consolation.” In
the parable we heard today, Jesus further explains the woe or curse of wealth.
It can make one blind to the very things God cares most deeply about, to the
very ones to whom Jesus brings good news.
What are the places where our wealth,
our privilege, the many advantages that most of us enjoy, have blinded us and perhaps
put us on the wrong side of Jesus’ parable?
_____________________________________________________________________________
Perhaps
you’ve heard stories about a young child whose disruptive behavior in the
classroom stopped when he was fitted with glasses. It is all too common for
children as late as middle school to have undiagnosed vision problems,
sometimes problems that are no longer correctable because they were ignored for
so long. I don’t suppose that anyone wants to find out that their vision needs
to be fixed. I wish I could see like I could when I was younger and didn’t need
contacts or glasses. I certainly didn’t want to have cataract surgery, but I am
still grateful that my problems can be diagnosed and corrected.
The
vision problems suffered by the rich man in Jesus’ parable, that politician
cleaning his glasses, or us who are oblivious to all the advantages we receive
from white privilege, wealth, having easy access to good education and
healthcare, and so on, are not problems that an optometrist can diagnose. But
there are ways to detect such problem.
A
reliable exam for this sort of spiritual blindness involves looking at your
bank statement, checkbook, credit card bills, and calendar. That is because
where you spend your money and allot your time provides a good assessment of
where your gaze if focused, of where you’ve set your priorities.
We all have necessities. We all need
food, shelter, transportation, and other items, although most of us are prone
to confuse wants with necessities. Many of us must spend a fair amount of our
time working or attending school. But beyond time at work or school, beyond
necessities, what do your Amazon orders, your bank statements, your calendar,
your debit cards, your payment apps say about what has captured your gaze? And
what do they say about what has been crowded out of your field of vision?
_____________________________________________________________________________
One
of the many wise and quotable statements by the late Martin Luther King, Jr. is
this. “Life's most persistent and urgent question is: 'What are you doing for others?'” Dr. King’s
words are profoundly Christ-shaped. But we live in a consumer culture that
works diligently to shape and form us along different lines. It encourages a
kind of spiritual myopathy that often struggles to see beyond one’s own wants
and needs. In the most extreme cases it says, “Life’s most persistent and
urgent question is: What more do I need? What more can I get?”
When
you examine your spiritual vision, what problems do you find? I dare say it is
nearly impossible to live in our culture without it damaging our vision to some
degree. But perhaps an even more pressing question might be, “Dare we trust the
good news that Jesus has the cure to what ails us?”
All praise and
glory to the God who comes to us in Jesus to show us the way of life.
No comments:
Post a Comment