32 Sunday Ordinary Time, C, 10 November 2013, Luke 20:27-38

Model of the Second Temple in Jerusalem

You know, they say that, when we’re in the pub, we shouldn’t speak about religion or politics. The folk wisdom of our time suggests that these aspects of life are what divide us, and that the time we have a few drinks on us is not the time to sort these divisive issues out! No, the place to sort these things out is in their respective places – religion belongs in the Church and politics belong in the party offices (so, the wisdom goes).

Of course, that really isn’t true because both religion and politics are fundamentally about people. So, perhaps the proper place for any discussion of religion or politics is wherever people are. That leaves us back in the pub then… Maybe it is one of the places where we should discuss religion! I don't know.

Either way, today’s gospel story takes place in the temple, a very important religious centre for Judaism at the time of Christ. Jesus was teaching the people in the temple, probably in the courtyard around it. Various groups attempted to challenge his teaching, mainly because the people were amazed by him and wondered at him.

The chief priests and the scribes and the elders have arrived to listen to him, and they have sent in a few ‘questioners’ in an attempt to trap Jesus. The question about whether the people should pay taxes to the emperor had just come up. Jesus gave a fantastic answer: "whose face is on the coin? On the denarius? The emperor’s? Well, then, give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God, what is God’s!"

Orthodox icon of the Resurrection

Then we get to the gospel story for this morning. In the temple, teaching the people. Causing both a religious and a political disturbance. People are talking, not just in the temple, but down the road in the inns and in the boarding-houses of Jerusalem. Who is this man? What does it mean?

One of the titles that we have for Jesus is ‘Teacher’. This part of the gospel is not the only part where Jesus occupies the place of teacher. There is the sermon on the mount in Matthew’s gospel, from which we have the beatitudes. And many other places besides.

This morning, Jesus is challenged about ‘resurrection’. It comes in the guise of a question about marriage, but the real issue is the resurrection. Do you believe in the resurrection? From the gospel, we know that the Saduccees don’t believe in the resurrection. But, they are very religious. They take religion very seriously. And, either they want Jesus on their side, or they want to scapegoat him and show him up as a false teacher. But that doesn’t happen. Instead, Jesus takes them very seriously, and proposes a ‘right-teaching’ for them on the doctrine of the resurrection.

And so, right teaching comes into the arena. It is brought out by the Lord who calls all people to himself. If we have right-belief, and if we live from it, then hope is ours. No matter what happens, the future, especially the future that lies beyond this world, cannot be taken from us.

The resurrection is central to our faith. Can we prove that there is a resurrection? No. Our faith is not built on proofs. Our faith is built on hope. Our faith is built on life. Our faith is built on the rock that is Christ. And, if we believe in the resurrection, then we believe that there is a future for us. There is a future for all people. If we believe this, our lives will never be the same again.

This is about death and life. Do we deal in death or celebrate life? Are we hopeful for the future, conscious that the future is in God? Are we at rest in our souls about what the future holds? Or, do we listen to the script about the horrors of the present time, and the horror of the time to come? Are we people of hope? Or people of despair? Are we people of life? Or are we people of death? Do we believe in the resurrection promised us in Christ? Or do we stubbornly hold onto our belief that there is nothing after this life? 

31 Sunday Ordinary Time, C, 3 November 2013, Luke 19:1-10

Defining his work, Alfred Hitchcock once said that “some films are slices of life. Mine are slices of cake.” He went on: “what is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out.” (http://www.ajkeen.com/2006/01/27/life_with_the_d/)

The TV series ‘Love/Hate’ is achieving incredible viewing figures at the moment. Almost a million viewers tuned in to the first episode of the latest series. The fifth episode of the series will be on tonight.

Good story-telling that people can relate to, makes ‘Love/Hate’ a very successful production. Whatever we may think of the violence, the series appears to be real to life. We hear every day on the news about gang violence on the streets of our cities. ‘Love/Hate’ gives us the safe, dramatized, insider view of the violence on the streets of Dublin. We see people getting killed or attacked, and become immersed in the story of why that happens. The drama of the story is the drama of real-life.

The gospel this morning is something like that. We can connect with Zacchaeus because he is this flawed, human character. If the gospel is a drama, a representation of real-life, then today we are introduced to Zacchaeus. Key pieces of information are offered: name, profession, and wealth. He is short and can run. He can climb trees. Already he is a complex character. He is keen to impress. He is impulsive.

He seems to be a career-driven, wealthy, young man, who imagined himself going places. Maybe tax collecting hasn’t turned out the way he imagined that it would.

Zacchaeus is a wonderful character in the story of the gospel. We are all characters in the story of the Christian journey. Our lives are complex, comfortable, sinful, rich. But, perhaps, like Zacchaeus we are not really alive. Not really whole. Maybe the perfect life that we dreamed up for ourselves hasn’t quite worked out. Like Zacchaeus, we ache for the fullness and freedom of life that is salvation in Christ Jesus. Our hearts ache for the fulsome salvation that is offered by the Lord.

Zacchaeus is ‘anxious’ to meet Jesus. He has heard of this man. And, in his anxiety, his heart overtakes him. He finds himself running ahead, climbing up the nearest sycamore. If Jesus was coming here today, wouldn’t you climb a tree to see him? When will Jesus arrive?

Real encounter with Jesus is a life-changing moment. Someone once described prayer as subversive. If we really pray, then we will encounter the Lord Jesus. And if we really encounter the Lord Jesus, then we will be changed by that. And if we are changed by that, our lives will speak loudly to the world. Evangelisation is nothing less than sharing with everyone the joy of having encountered the Lord.

So, you may ask, how are we to encounter the Lord Jesus? If we were Christians of another denomination, we might say that the real encounter with the Lord is to be found by reading the Word of God. We would carry our tattered, worn out Bible with us everywhere. We would seek to immerse ourselves in the Word of God, and offer the Word to other people, so that they too might encounter the Lord.

As a Catholic, we may feel that the answer to encountering Jesus is to be found in Eucharistic adoration. If we have made a pilgrimage to Fatima or Medjugorje, perhaps we will feel that we need to listen to the messages of Our Lady, in order to encounter the Lord. Or, maybe we are devoted to the prayer of the Rosary; or perhaps a devotion to St Anthony or St Jude. Maybe St Pio (Padre Pio). Or maybe we take time to pray through meditation.

For us in the Catholic tradition, we believe that it is in the Church that we encounter the resurrected Lord. “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” (Matthew 18:20) We are baptized into the Church. We hear God’s Word in the Church. We celebrate Eucharist together as Church. Bishops and priests shepherd the Church. The Lord walked among us to gather us as one, in the Church. The word ‘Church’ means ‘gathering unto the Lord’ (ekklesia tou theou in the greek).

When we gather together, and encounter the Lord, we are moved to do what Zacchaeus promises to do in the gospel. We give away our material wealth to those who need it, because we realize that money in the bank is nothing compared to our wealth in Christ Jesus. It is no use being rich, if I cannot share my riches with others.

We are also moved confess and to make recompense for our wrongs. For Zacchaeus, his sins of cheating others came, perhaps, from a sense that he had to put himself first. Before his encounter with the Lord, perhaps he felt that he deserved the good life, and anyhow, who cares if that meant cheating a few people along the way. We know this element of the human story well. The encounter with the Lord not only changes Zacchaeus’ heart, he resolves to make recompense four times over! Zacchaeus is a character who discovers real freedom, real wealth, in the encounter with Jesus. He can afford to give up everything in the face of this moment. Like many of us, Zacchaeus impulsively and excitedly makes rash promises to Jesus. Does he keep them? Who knows.

“what is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out.” Maybe we need to be a bit silly, a bit impulsive. Move beyond the comfort zone. Fail. Succeed. Fail. Try again.

“And Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because this man too is a son of Abraham; for the Son of Man has come to seek out and save what was lost.’”

30 Sunday Ordinary Time, C, 27 October 2013, Luke 18:9-14

When we approach God, we must do so as the poor man with a begging bowl.

God does not measure out his love based on our goodness, or on our capacity to live by the rules. However we might find ourselves saying with the Pharisee: ‘Look what I have done for you, look at the sacrifices I made, or the money that I gave away, or the rules that I have kept.’ We’re looking for brownie points.

But I am never in a position of strength when I come face to face with God. I am always in a dependent position, in a poor position, in a vulnerable position.

How can I convince you of this? Of the reality of our poverty before God? Perhaps life itself is a good place to start.

We cannot grant ourselves the gift of life. We were reliant on our own parents for life. Without them we would not be here; but they are only parties to a mystery. Even with all of our biological knowledge, we cannot understand fully the transmission of human life. It remains a mystery.

If life itself is a mystery, and we are alive – then each of us, and all of us, are a mystery. We stand as living statements of the mystery of human life.

And if we think like this, then a chink opens up in our armour. What is the ground of my being? Who am I really? Where did I come from? What is this that I share in as a human being? The fact of my own life points to something greater than me, greater than us.

And that is a hugely important spiritual fact. There is something greater than me, than you, than us. And maybe that’s where we stop: do you believe in something greater than yourself? A higher power?
Our faith is not a way to try to understand the mystery of life. Rather, the mystery of life opens us up to the possibility of God. But, it was God who chose to reveal himself to people. God revealed himself as the mysterious relationship of Father, Son and Spirit. And more, God became one of us. He crossed the divine-human divide; God let go of his greatness, in order to reveal himself to us.

God’s act, God’s revelation of himself is always in the first place. Our faith is always in the second place, always a response to God who has chosen to share his own life with us. So, our faith is not man-made; and nor is it individual, private belief.

Listen to that first line from the gospel today: “Jesus spoke the following parable to some people who prided themselves on being virtuous and despised everyone else”.

A fundamental of our faith is that we must love one another. I cannot be religious on my own. I may be able to keep some rules, to say some prayers, even come to Sunday Mass. But, if my faith is a participation in the true faith of Jesus Christ, then I never stand over others, I never despise others. Rather, I seek to serve others. The true faith of Jesus Christ calls us beyond attempts at perfecting our own individual virtue. Instead, we come more and more to recognize that it is with and through other people that we come to that deeper encounter with the Lord.

Why does the humble sinner, the tax collector in the gospel, go away at rights with God? I think he goes away at rights because he knows that he does not live the perfect relationship of peace, of service and of love towards his neighbour. And so, he approaches God seeking God’s mercy for that – and God, by whose grace it is possible for us to live in peace; God grants the humble sinner righteousness. It is God who brings him into right relationship with himself and with others.

The Pharisee, on the other hand, displaying his supposed virtue by compare and contrast to other people, is not open to that grace of God that would put him at rights. Instead his heart is full of his virtue, his generosity, his moral uprightness.

We can learn from both of them. Our starting point earlier was about the mystery of where we came from. We realised that God is greater than us. But also, we realised that God wishes to be in relationship with us. Now, however, we realise that it is only by the action of God, by God’s grace, that we can possibly fulfil that relationship of faith with himself and with other people that he calls us into.

We need God’s grace to be at rights. We must acknowledge our brokenness before the Lord: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” And through our brokenness, through our sinfulness, God’s grace enters erupts in our hearts. And once that happens, once we are aware of what God has actually done for us in Christ Jesus, then we cannot but respond.

Indeed our heart, bursting with faith, hope and love, has already bounded ahead of us with joy in the Lord. We become ready to give generously, even foolishly, to charity, to the Church, to society, to other people – we begin to desire to give generously of our time, our talent and our treasure. Not so that we can show off our good deeds to God or people. No. But to really give thanks to God for all. For life and creation; for faith and the Church; for redemption and salvation in Christ Jesus; for family and love in our lives. From this perspective we can learn from the Pharisee. The good life is important. We must live virtuously, but only as a sacrifice of thanksgiving to the Lord for all that he has done, in the hope of the salvation, mercy and forgiveness that he wishes to give us.

When we approach God, we must do so as the poor man with a begging bowl.

29 Sunday Ordinary Time, C, 20 October 2013, Luke 18:1-8

A good friend of mine told me this story about his grandmother. Her husband died when she was in her early seventies. The week before he died, he said to his son, as he watched his wife walking up the street with the groceries, that she wouldn’t last much longer. She would outlast him by some thirty years.

One evening, my friend was visiting his granny, and he noticed that she was sitting down in silence. He offered to turn on the telly: ‘if you want to son, you go ahead, but not for me.’ So he didn’t turn it on. He sat and read some of his books for college. She sat, sometimes twirling her thumbs, one about the other, sometimes thumbing through her prayer book, sometimes fingering through her rosary beads.

Annie, my friend’s granny, died at age 104. She had outlived many of her children, her husband, and many friends, acquaintances and neighbours. Annie wasn’t too interested in telly; she probably wouldn’t be too concerned about the internet or facebook or any of that.

Annie liked to sit in silence. Sometimes praying, sometimes not. Who knows what went through her mind, and through her heart, sitting in that chair.

A great story is told of how, when the barricades were on the streets of Belfast in the 1960s and 70s; Annie and the old Canon climbed up onto them and dismantled them in the face of very tough opposition.

Or another time, when she was collecting her pension, and armed robbers arrived to hold up the post-office. Annie chased them out with her umbrella and her handbag. ‘How dare you take my pension; out! Out!’

Annie was a lady with great hope. Great resilience. Amazing determination. Incredible fortitude.

Where did Annie get her courage? Her hope? Her strength? Perhaps those moments, quietly sitting, thumbing her rosary, twirling her thumbs. Moments of profound daily connection with her God. Grace-filled moments. Pain sharing moments. Endurance creating moments.

The parable that Jesus tells today of the unjust judge and the persistent widow exhorts us of “the need to pray continually and never lose heart.” It is not God who needs to relate with us. It is we who need God! It is we who benefit from the daily exercise of prayer; the daily exercise of showing our heart to the Lord, appealing to him for his concern, his mercy and his help. We can share our burdens, our daily, weekly, yearly or even our lifelong burdens; we can share them all with the Lord. And ask him, for the courage, to never lose heart.

28 Sunday Ordinary Time, C, 13 October 2013, Luke 17:11-19

http://www.stgeorges.nhs.uk/

Some years ago, from April to July of 2006, I spent a few months at a hospital in London undergoing training for chaplaincy. The course was quite unusual in that, from the very first day, we had to go into the wards and visit with the patients. We were appointed as student chaplains, and assigned particular wards to look after. I was appointed to the Cardiac and Neurology wards. Many of the people that I met were very ill, and very shocked to find themselves in hospital. Stroke victims, people who had suffered heart attacks, and many other minor and major ailments were among the people that I encountered.

Of course, it being London, about 1 or 2 out of every 10 people that I met were Catholic. So, for the vast majority of my time there, my ministry was to non-Catholics. Many of them were Christians of one denomination or another. Some attempted to ‘convert’ me. Others would not speak to me. But many were glad to meet with me and share a part of their journey.

A key question that developed for me, and perhaps it is developing for you now as I speak: How can a Catholic offer ministry, offer pastoral care, to a person who is not a Catholic?

In our gospel this Sunday, Jesus walks along the border between Galilee and Samaria. I guess the equivalent today might be walking the so-called ‘Peace Wall’ in Belfast, or the wall that divides modern-day Palestine into Jewish and Arab areas. The border is not an easy place to be. It is out on the periphery; the place that Pope Francis has proposed as a key site of our ministry.

These periphery areas, these border areas, can also be rich places, rich in culture, rich in different traditions, rich in different foods and language, and theatre, and so on. They are places where people take refuge if their own community has disowned them. And so, they can also be places of darkness, of sickness, and places of ill-repute. This is the place where Jesus goes.

And there, he encounters an isolated group. Bound together by their common illness, these ten lepers are of differing nationalities. Somehow, they know who Jesus is. They call him by name: “Jesus! Master!” So they also accord him his status “Master!” Master of our lives, Master of the Universe, Master of everything that is. . . “Take pity on us.” Pity, feel our pain, know what it is like to experience what we experience, lift some of this burden from us, because only you can.”

How can God heal a foreigner? A non-Jew? How can a Catholic minister to a non-Catholic?

Ephesians 4:4-6
"There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all."

Our being Catholic challenges us to reach out to every human being, no matter their faith, their gender, their ethnic group, their sexual orientation, their riches, or their poverty. No matter what divides us, we reach out to the other, because that is what the Lord himself has done.

Maybe they, maybe us, maybe we, will be surprised by joy, and turn, and run to the feet of Jesus, and praise and thank God.

27 Sunday Ordinary Time, C, 6 October 2013, Luke 17:5-10

Perspective

Perspective is Everything

I had the wonderful privilege of spending a part of the summer in Florida. I have been to the same place on a number of occasions. It is the parish of St Christopher in Hobe Sound.

One morning after Mass, I was waiting behind in the sacristy for some reason or other. I was talking to a few of the ‘seasoned’ gentlemen of the parish, who decided to share some of their collective wisdom with me about taxes, and other weighty public matters. They explained to me that ‘gas’ (petrol as we call it) had become way too expensive.

From their perspective, the price of petrol had gotten way too high, and the main culprit was taxes. They explained that Florida was supposed to be a low-tax state. They explained that many people move to Florida because there are no city or state taxes. The only tax is a tax on sales, or as they call it, ‘sales tax’. This is added onto the price of everything when you bring it to the till.

For Floridians, any other form of tax is unacceptable. After all, they moved to Florida in order to avail of low taxes!

I explained to them about how petrol and diesel in Ireland is approximately double the price that it is in Florida. I also explained that we have high income tax, as well as many other hidden taxes. We take this for granted. You cannot have all of our public services without taxes. For them it is also a no-brainer, the sales-tax is all that public services can call on to fund themselves.

Perspective is Everything

For the disciples in our gospel today, their perspective is quite religious. What one of us, also disciples, would not ask the Lord to increase our faith? But which of us would expect the Lord to give the snappy, almost cheeky, answer that he gives!

"Were your 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."

Perspective is Everything

The disciples want ‘magic’ Jesus, and we are not that different. They want Jesus to wave a magic wand over them to increase their faith. Very often, so do we. They want Jesus to do the Lion’s share, while they sit back and lap it up. Its a little bit like our European sense of government. We don’t live in the do-it-yourself culture of the United States. Perspective is everything. Jesus knows that we human beings have to work at it in order that we might ‘own’ it. And so, he effectively rebukes his disciples. He then tells them the parable of the Master and the Servant finishing with that wonderful sentence:

"So with you: when you have done all you have been told to do, say, 'We are merely servants: we have done no more than our duty.'"

So, my friends, a tough question bears down upon us this Sunday: Whose perspective am I seeking to adopt: my own, or the Lord’s? The gospel today poses not just the question of faith for us, but also the question of the source of our faith, which is both the Lord himself, and our duty as servants of that same Lord.

Around about six years ago, I was preparing for ordination as a priest. At the beginning of the final year in seminary, I was asked to type up my goals for the year. These goals had to be related to my life-history, and they had to include a plan for my final year in formation, taking account of all of the areas of formation. Finally, this plan had to finish with a theological reflection based on a passage of Scripture of my own choosing.

I chose the passage that forms the first line of our second reading today:

"I am reminding you to fan into a flame the gift that God gave you when I laid my hands on you." 

It is from 2 Timothy 1:6.

I chose that passage, because it reminded me of my ordination as a deacon a few months prior. Also, I was conscious that I was in preparation for the final step of my time in formation, which was to be ordained priest. That line spoke greatly to me of the position that I found myself in, between the two ordinations, as it were. It is rooted in remembering, but directed towards the future, as I was. Paul exhorts Timothy to remember the gift that God has given him, not at any old time, but at the time when Paul laid his hands on him.

I first came across this passage in the writings of the German Jesuit, Alfred Delp. In his book Advent of the Heart, Delp ponders on his own ordination with the assistance of this text from 2 Timothy.

Some months later, best plans made, some resolutions kept, others not, I was in final preparations for my own ordination. I made my retreat with the Benedictines at Rostrevor in Co. Down. There, on the first night, at the Office of Vigils, on the evening of the 3rd June 2008, in the middle of a rather long reading from Scripture, I heard that sentence being read out by the reader:

"I am reminding you to fan into a flame the gift that God gave you when I laid my hands on you."

I was stuck to the seat. The line echoed deeply in me, bookending my year’s preparation, and confirming the Lord’s call in my heart. I was stuck to the seat, as if I had been struck by lightning. Any doubts that I had about the Lord’s call were suddenly, unequivocally, and finally, dispersed. I knew that I was in the right place at the right time.

Perspective is Everything

"I am reminding you to fan into a flame the gift that God gave you when I laid my hands on you." 

That day I was ready to say:

"I am merely a servant: I have done no more than my duty."

The gift of faith is a gift. It is given to us, much like a packet of seeds. It needs planting, watering, nurturing, care and attention. It needs an investment of time, money, talent, energy. Finally, for it to really develop into a prize-winning shrub, we have to go the whole way, and invest our complete person. We have, finally, to give ourselves to the Lord who has created us, redeemed us, and offered us salvation, not with magic tricks but in and through our own humanity.

26 Sunday Ordinary Time, C, 29 September 2013, Luke 16:19-31

I was in Croke Park yesterday for the replay of the All-Ireland hurling final. Shouting for Cork, I was disappointed that they did not win. I was delighted for Clare though. They were definitely the better team on the day, indeed on both days!

Thinking of the hurling final and this Sunday’s gospel, I remember the story of Ambrose Gordon. Ambrose is a Galway man, a bit of a ladies’ man by his own claim, and also something of an entrepreneur and a rogue.

From 1982 to 1989 Ambrose ran a very profitable business. He tells the story in interview with RTÉ radio. You can listen to it yourself. The documentary is called ‘Sex, Flights and Videotapes’. Narrated by Mícheál Ó’Muircheartaigh, the story is told of how Ambrose developed a lucrative business, delivering pirate copies of RTÉ's The Sunday Game to pubs in London, from 1982 to 1989. Before then, on All-Ireland Sunday and many other Sundays throughout the year, Irish people would gather on one of the the highest points in London, Hampstead Heath, to tune in their pocket radios to Radio Éireann.

Ireland and Britain

At a time when Irish television was not available in the UK, Ambrose would find a way to bring televised football and hurling to London. He would fly to Dublin on a Monday morning. There, he would visit a lady whose house had been turned into a recording point for his business. There a bank of video recorders would have recorded copies of The Sunday Game. Picking up the fresh copies, Ambrose would turn on his heel, and fly back to London. The first showings would be at lunchtime on Monday. Pubs and Clubs paid him £20, £30, £50 to rent a copy. Punters would queue up to watch the precious shows over a pint and a sandwich.

At a time when the boundary between Ireland and England was much greater than it is now, Ambrose Gordon found a way.

We live at a time when there are few geographical boundaries. For a relatively small amount of money, compared to a few decades ago, world travel is within reach of many people here in Ireland. Even when loved ones are far away, on the other side of the world, the boundary between us is blurred by the use of technology. Mobile phones and Skype mean that we are in contact regularly, and cheaply.

Collapse of the Berlin Wall - 1989

Other boundaries in our world seemed to be insurmountable a few decades ago have come crashing down. The collapse of the Berlin wall in 1989, and with it the collapse of Communism in the USSR, signalled a new beginning for the relationship between East & West. It would gradually mean that the threat of nuclear war diminished as well.

Landing on the Moon - 1969

A couple of decades before then, the moon landings signalled that a boundary between our world and space had been crossed in almost miraculous fashion.

There are many boundaries that our world has crossed, and remembering those crossings is a kind of food for our journey. Remembering those crossings gives us hope that we can continue to push beyond the boundaries that still exist.

Pope Francis - 2013

It seems to me that Pope Francis has crossed many boundaries since his election as Pope. He is teaching us a new way. He is reminding us what is of primary importance, love of God and of our neighbour.

His actions speak louder than words. I think of the car that he uses, a Ford Focus; I think of him paying the bill for his hotel room after his election as Pope; I think of him phoning the lady whose child was born from a relationship that she had with a married man. The Holy Father promised her that if she could not get a priest to baptize her newborn, that he himself would baptize the infant.

The key thing about many of the boundaries that Pope Francis has crossed is that they are human creations. There may be good reasons for this, and yet, the Pope is showing us that these human boundaries, and the reasons for them, are secondary to the people whom they actually effect.

It is humanity that creates the boundary that our gospel is focused on today – that between the poor and the rich. Lazarus tried to help himself by coming right up to that boundary in the gospel. That boundary is a closed gate, erected precisely to keep away Lazarus and his ilk. Yet even the dogs take pity on him as they licked his sores. The dogs in the story symbolize the animal kingdom, and all of creation, being on the side of the poor man. And remember, as the verse from second Corinthians goes: “Jesus Christ was rich, but he became poor for your sake, to make you rich out of his poverty.” We might ask the question: why would Jesus become one of us? As the Sheryl Crow song went a few years ago: “What if God was one of us, just a stranger on the bus, trying to make his way home?”

The richest man, Jesus Christ, gave up his position, gave up his inheritance, so that we might all be rich. Rich in recognizing that no matter how much money we have, or how much stuff we have, or how much food we have; rich in realizing that our real wealth is life, health, love, family, community, the Lord himself, and the poor. Sharing our knowledge, our wealth, and our lives, with the poor, actually enriches both them and us. The gift that the poor offer is is the gift of being more completely human, more divinely human.

Maybe, as it is in the gospel, maybe the really wealthy person turns out to be Lazarus, the poor man who lay at the rich man’s gate.