There you have it. If my dad had known this was related to a Catholic saint, he might have thought twice. Nah, probably not.
Similarly, he collected knives, and his favorites were Case knives. We were raised to see pocket knives as indispensable tools, and he made sure all his kids had at least one. To this day I feel like a pretender if I have any pocket knife that is not a Case knife that is razor sharp, and yes, I do carry one still, including some I inherited from him.
But there were also superstitions about knives. You could never ever ever give anyone a knife. Knives had to be purchased. So when my dad would give one of us a knife, he would require us to give him a nickel, to make sure that this was a transaction. He would often attach the nickel TO the knife, given that we kids often didn’t have any money. We would just have to immediately give the nickel back. Apparently he believed that a knife that was a gift that would sever the relationship between the giver and the receiver.
You also could never hand someone an open pocket knife. We also knocked on wood, threw spilled salt over our shoulders, NEVER walked under a ladder. Lucky pennies were absolutely a thing in our house.
The fact is, there are misfortunes that could happen lying all around, and often we have no ability to figure out why bad things happen to us. Superstitions like these pretend to give us the illusion of control in the face of uncertainty. For a country that likes to extol the self-made person all the time, we sure do also talk a lot about good luck—and bad luck, about blessings and curses. We hate uncertainty. It’s human nature.
Our readings today all deal with uncertainties. Judah is under siege—yet the prophet is encouraged to buy a piece of land, as a visible reassurance to the people around him that they will eventually make it through the time of war to the time of peace. Likewise Psalm 91 is thought by some scholars to be a so-called “amulet psalm,” one that would be repeated to ward off evil or bad luck. The last two readings scheduled for this weekend deal with rich people and poor people. That means the actual topic is luck, since the folks of Jesus’s time believed that being rich was a sign of God’s love you, and vice versa s regards being poor.
The verses we hear from Psalm 91 radiate hope and trust. They comfort us in times of grief, when we are anxious or afraid. The fill us with the warmth of the love of a God who is gracious, whose loving-kindness never fades. They invite us to trust in God with our whole being.
Some days it feels like we have the world on a string. Other days are filled with struggle and loss. Psalm 91 resonates on both kinds of days. Its promises of God’s love and protection ring true, and hold up to us our reliance on God and God’s companionship with us in all seasons. There are some beautiful images used for God in this psalm. God is described as our shelter, our habitation—our safe home, a place of rest. Four times we are reminded that God is our refuge—and even more than a refuge, a stronghold. God is a mighty mother bird, with strong pinions and sheltering wings to draw her children close to Her and envelop us in safety.
The first verse we will read reminds us of the encompassing love of God:
This psalm calls us to draw in a breath, and let it out. Feel that? The more mindful we are of our breathing, the more we are aware of the blessings God has given us, starting with our very breaths, given to us in creation, give to us from our births. As we breathe, we feel the sheltering wings of the Almighty, which provide us refuge and respite as we catch those breaths, as we gather strength and are clasped within the embrace of the One who is beside us always, who never sleeps. Our lungs as they inflate even more our ribcages out and back like wings on a bird being flexed.
That shadow we rest under is the cool shade of the garden, the underside of every green leaf warmed by the sun. It is the promise of being bound to God in love-- Love which is also the Name of God that echoes in our hearts. We then are led to remember why we need God’s protection and shelter—war and plague are circling overhead. Do not trouble yourself in thinking about that, the psalm reassured us. Dangers like serpents and lions lie in wait—figuratively for us, nowadays, than fully. Translator Robert Alter cites a scholar who believe that this psalm is an “amulet psalm.” An amulet is a lucky token, often worn around the neck. The idea is that anyone who would recite this psalm would be gathered in God’s protection.
Similarly in our gospel, we see a reversal of fortune between one who was considered lucky, or blessed, and one who would seem unlucky, even cursed, in the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man. For once, it is the person most likely to be among the invisible of the world who gets a name, while the “rich man” just gets a description. However, the name Lazarus means, “the one God helps.”
This Lazarus is NOT the same person who is Jesus’s friend and Martha and Mary’s brother. But he is, to the rich man, an invisible man. That’s why the irony is so delicious that unlike many Bible stories, the poor man actually gets a name while the rich man in the telling is made anonymous.
When I went to Cuba in 2017, one of my dearest hopes was to visit an Episcopal Church there—yes, Cuba is a diocese in the Episcopal Church, in our actual province, and obviously, it has been hard for them to maintain contact with us due to the political situation there. When I finally snuck away from my tour group to visit one, the first thing I saw on the doorstep was a tiny figurine that looked like this with coins all around it.
This is San Lazaro—St. Lazarus. Figurines of him are actually very common all over Cuba. Now the actually St. Lazarus is the one who is Jesus’s friend who was resurrected—but for some reason the figurine is based on our gospel character today. See the wounds? See the dogs?
It is a custom in Cuba to place coins around statues of San Lazaro to ask for healing. Both Christians and practitioners of Santeria, which is a mix of Catholicism and African folk beliefs, do this. And indeed, the shrine of the Virgen of Cuba has an entire wall covered with walkers and canes and braces left by people who believe they have been cured by her intercession.
If you remember, last week's gospel ended with the warning that no one can serve both God and money. But there's a missing verse in between the end of that gospel and beginning of this one. Jesus as opponents hearing him say these harsh things about wealthy people grew angry and mocked him. Jesus responds by saying that people may justify themselves in the sight of others, but God knows everyone's heart. “What is prized by human beings is and abomination in the sight of God,” Jesus concludes, and then he tell our story.
The characters in the story of course are exaggerated. Lazarus is not just a beggar, he's covered with sores. The rich man is not only dressed in fine purple robes the finest that money could buy, but his neglect of the poor is so entrenched that it is made clear that Lazarus lies right at the open gates into the man's house. The rich man literally has to step over this poor sick beggar in order to go into his feasts. so there's no way that he can claim he doesn't know that he has closed his eyes to the need that is around him in favor of his own comfort and pleasure.
Eventually, both men die. Jesus uses a Greek term for the underworld, hades, and says that that is where the rich man is, being tormented. Meanwhile Lazarus is actually lying in the embrace of Abraham himself the great patriarch. While the rich man had his feasts while he was alive, Lazarus now receives his feast throughout eternity.
Apparently part of the rich man's torture is his ability to see that the nobody that he probably found disgusting lying at his gates is now receiving all the good things that he was denied in life, including honor as well as comfort. And he still doesn’t get it!
It's one thing to ask for help. But notice in our story, even as he is supposedly being tormented the rich man still treats Lazarus like an object, rather than a person. He doesn’t speak to him at all. Instead he asks Abraham to order Lazarus to serve the rich man—to leave his place of comfort, the only comfort he has probably ever known, as the story insists, and run around doing errands for the rich men. Notice how much the rich man talks and thinks about himself: my agony, my suffering, my brothers. Never a thought about who Lazarus is as a person, even now.
Even at this point the rich man still perceives of Lazarus not as a person but as a thing-- as a tool so that the rich man can help his own family avoid his suffering in the afterlife. He still expects Lazarus to serve him. Abraham rebuffs this attempt and tells the rich man that his brothers have the same opportunity to listen to the prophets and sages in Israel scriptures, to the commandments to take care of the poor, the sick, and the needy. such commandments alone should be good enough, rather than relying upon celestial visitors like some form of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.
It's often that way. We all recognize the tendency to see those who are on the margins of society by their misfortunes, not as complete persons. Yet every person you see who is struggling with something—which means everybody, but especially those who are visibly dealing with misfortune, was once someone’s precious child, or sibling, or spouse, or friend. They have names, and we have obligations to really see them and honor their dignity.
The chasm that is stretched between Lazarus and Abraham on the one part and the rich man in Hades on the other part is not just part of the landscape. It is created by those who preference their own comfort and and status over their obligation to others that is fundamental to all great faiths, but especially Judaism and Christianity.
The point, once again, is not that wealth is necessarily evil. The evil lies in where one puts their concern. The rich man only served his own pleasure and his own belly. Lazarus was less than nothing to him during life even though it would not have taken much to feed him and to comfort him. Because the rich man never served the poor, he never served God in life. So once again we are reminded that the point of the Torah as well as the point of the gospel is to learn how to live a fully human, fully compassionate and engaged life. Our resources are meant to be tools we can use to bridge the chasms between us.
Devoting ourselves to being compassionate, empathetic, mindful persons is actually God's greatest blessing to us. It cultivates within us the blessing of love, compassion, peace, and well-being-- what is known as shalom in Hebrew.
Believing that we only depend upon ourselves is denying our need to trust in and depend upon God. It's a denial of the idea that everything that we have comes from God at its beginning. And worse by cutting ourselves off from dependence on God we actually make ourselves more prone to fear and insensitivity as well as isolation.
God is our help--through each other. God cares for us and protects us most immediately through calling us to see each other as one body, one community. That's the blessing of living acknowledging our dependence upon God, end up on each other.
The fact is, there are misfortunes that could happen lying all around, and often we have no ability to figure out why bad things happen to us. Superstitions like these pretend to give us the illusion of control in the face of uncertainty. For a country that likes to extol the self-made person all the time, we sure do also talk a lot about good luck—and bad luck, about blessings and curses. We hate uncertainty. It’s human nature.
Our readings today all deal with uncertainties. Judah is under siege—yet the prophet is encouraged to buy a piece of land, as a visible reassurance to the people around him that they will eventually make it through the time of war to the time of peace. Likewise Psalm 91 is thought by some scholars to be a so-called “amulet psalm,” one that would be repeated to ward off evil or bad luck. The last two readings scheduled for this weekend deal with rich people and poor people. That means the actual topic is luck, since the folks of Jesus’s time believed that being rich was a sign of God’s love you, and vice versa s regards being poor.
The verses we hear from Psalm 91 radiate hope and trust. They comfort us in times of grief, when we are anxious or afraid. The fill us with the warmth of the love of a God who is gracious, whose loving-kindness never fades. They invite us to trust in God with our whole being.
Some days it feels like we have the world on a string. Other days are filled with struggle and loss. Psalm 91 resonates on both kinds of days. Its promises of God’s love and protection ring true, and hold up to us our reliance on God and God’s companionship with us in all seasons. There are some beautiful images used for God in this psalm. God is described as our shelter, our habitation—our safe home, a place of rest. Four times we are reminded that God is our refuge—and even more than a refuge, a stronghold. God is a mighty mother bird, with strong pinions and sheltering wings to draw her children close to Her and envelop us in safety.
The first verse we will read reminds us of the encompassing love of God:
Those who dwell in the shelter of the Most High
abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
This psalm calls us to draw in a breath, and let it out. Feel that? The more mindful we are of our breathing, the more we are aware of the blessings God has given us, starting with our very breaths, given to us in creation, give to us from our births. As we breathe, we feel the sheltering wings of the Almighty, which provide us refuge and respite as we catch those breaths, as we gather strength and are clasped within the embrace of the One who is beside us always, who never sleeps. Our lungs as they inflate even more our ribcages out and back like wings on a bird being flexed.
That shadow we rest under is the cool shade of the garden, the underside of every green leaf warmed by the sun. It is the promise of being bound to God in love-- Love which is also the Name of God that echoes in our hearts. We then are led to remember why we need God’s protection and shelter—war and plague are circling overhead. Do not trouble yourself in thinking about that, the psalm reassured us. Dangers like serpents and lions lie in wait—figuratively for us, nowadays, than fully. Translator Robert Alter cites a scholar who believe that this psalm is an “amulet psalm.” An amulet is a lucky token, often worn around the neck. The idea is that anyone who would recite this psalm would be gathered in God’s protection.
Similarly in our gospel, we see a reversal of fortune between one who was considered lucky, or blessed, and one who would seem unlucky, even cursed, in the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man. For once, it is the person most likely to be among the invisible of the world who gets a name, while the “rich man” just gets a description. However, the name Lazarus means, “the one God helps.”
This Lazarus is NOT the same person who is Jesus’s friend and Martha and Mary’s brother. But he is, to the rich man, an invisible man. That’s why the irony is so delicious that unlike many Bible stories, the poor man actually gets a name while the rich man in the telling is made anonymous.
This is San Lazaro—St. Lazarus. Figurines of him are actually very common all over Cuba. Now the actually St. Lazarus is the one who is Jesus’s friend who was resurrected—but for some reason the figurine is based on our gospel character today. See the wounds? See the dogs?
It is a custom in Cuba to place coins around statues of San Lazaro to ask for healing. Both Christians and practitioners of Santeria, which is a mix of Catholicism and African folk beliefs, do this. And indeed, the shrine of the Virgen of Cuba has an entire wall covered with walkers and canes and braces left by people who believe they have been cured by her intercession.
If you remember, last week's gospel ended with the warning that no one can serve both God and money. But there's a missing verse in between the end of that gospel and beginning of this one. Jesus as opponents hearing him say these harsh things about wealthy people grew angry and mocked him. Jesus responds by saying that people may justify themselves in the sight of others, but God knows everyone's heart. “What is prized by human beings is and abomination in the sight of God,” Jesus concludes, and then he tell our story.
The characters in the story of course are exaggerated. Lazarus is not just a beggar, he's covered with sores. The rich man is not only dressed in fine purple robes the finest that money could buy, but his neglect of the poor is so entrenched that it is made clear that Lazarus lies right at the open gates into the man's house. The rich man literally has to step over this poor sick beggar in order to go into his feasts. so there's no way that he can claim he doesn't know that he has closed his eyes to the need that is around him in favor of his own comfort and pleasure.
Eventually, both men die. Jesus uses a Greek term for the underworld, hades, and says that that is where the rich man is, being tormented. Meanwhile Lazarus is actually lying in the embrace of Abraham himself the great patriarch. While the rich man had his feasts while he was alive, Lazarus now receives his feast throughout eternity.
Apparently part of the rich man's torture is his ability to see that the nobody that he probably found disgusting lying at his gates is now receiving all the good things that he was denied in life, including honor as well as comfort. And he still doesn’t get it!
It's one thing to ask for help. But notice in our story, even as he is supposedly being tormented the rich man still treats Lazarus like an object, rather than a person. He doesn’t speak to him at all. Instead he asks Abraham to order Lazarus to serve the rich man—to leave his place of comfort, the only comfort he has probably ever known, as the story insists, and run around doing errands for the rich men. Notice how much the rich man talks and thinks about himself: my agony, my suffering, my brothers. Never a thought about who Lazarus is as a person, even now.
Even at this point the rich man still perceives of Lazarus not as a person but as a thing-- as a tool so that the rich man can help his own family avoid his suffering in the afterlife. He still expects Lazarus to serve him. Abraham rebuffs this attempt and tells the rich man that his brothers have the same opportunity to listen to the prophets and sages in Israel scriptures, to the commandments to take care of the poor, the sick, and the needy. such commandments alone should be good enough, rather than relying upon celestial visitors like some form of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.
It's often that way. We all recognize the tendency to see those who are on the margins of society by their misfortunes, not as complete persons. Yet every person you see who is struggling with something—which means everybody, but especially those who are visibly dealing with misfortune, was once someone’s precious child, or sibling, or spouse, or friend. They have names, and we have obligations to really see them and honor their dignity.
The chasm that is stretched between Lazarus and Abraham on the one part and the rich man in Hades on the other part is not just part of the landscape. It is created by those who preference their own comfort and and status over their obligation to others that is fundamental to all great faiths, but especially Judaism and Christianity.
The point, once again, is not that wealth is necessarily evil. The evil lies in where one puts their concern. The rich man only served his own pleasure and his own belly. Lazarus was less than nothing to him during life even though it would not have taken much to feed him and to comfort him. Because the rich man never served the poor, he never served God in life. So once again we are reminded that the point of the Torah as well as the point of the gospel is to learn how to live a fully human, fully compassionate and engaged life. Our resources are meant to be tools we can use to bridge the chasms between us.
Devoting ourselves to being compassionate, empathetic, mindful persons is actually God's greatest blessing to us. It cultivates within us the blessing of love, compassion, peace, and well-being-- what is known as shalom in Hebrew.
Believing that we only depend upon ourselves is denying our need to trust in and depend upon God. It's a denial of the idea that everything that we have comes from God at its beginning. And worse by cutting ourselves off from dependence on God we actually make ourselves more prone to fear and insensitivity as well as isolation.
God is our help--through each other. God cares for us and protects us most immediately through calling us to see each other as one body, one community. That's the blessing of living acknowledging our dependence upon God, end up on each other.
Preached at the 505 on September 24 and at the 10:30 am Holy Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.
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