People of faith, whatever their religion, share a vision of a world in which love is the guiding principle…a world in which all may feel respected, valued, accepted as a full member of the human family; a world in which there are no hungry people, none who fall sick and can’t afford to see a doctor, a world in which the scourge of war is forever banned. Some we meet outside these walls would stress the impossibility of there ever being such a world. They would call it Utopia, literally meaning “no-place.” Some others would call it “the Kingdom of God,” and hope to find it someplace beyond this world. But,. I believe that it is possible to achieve at least some semblance of what has been called the “beloved community” right here on earth. Our belief that such a world is possible is reflected in the sixth of our Unitarian Universalist Principles, “The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.” We all yearn for a world of peace and prosperity, but we also know that without justice there can be no peace. Economic justice is an absolute requirement for such a world and, with this in mind, I’d like to share with you a parable from the 16th Chapter of Luke:“There was a rich man who dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, ‘father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’” (Luke 16:19-26)Like the rest of Jesus’ parables, this story conveys far more than a simplistic moral story about a rich man finding himself on the short end of the stick in the afterlife. This story is about something that continues to plague us in our modern world and has implications far beyond any of the merely personal concerns that we may have. It speaks to us not only as individuals, but also collectively. Indeed, it would appear that we ARE required to be our “brother’s keeper.” That is at least one measure of what it means not only to be “human,” but what it means to be “civilized.” Despite those who would have us believe otherwise, we are all responsible for one another’s welfare.Indeed, throughout the Bible, there appears a recurring theme that, if we were wise, might be instructive. From each of the prophets, be they Isaiah, Amos, Micah, or Jeremiah… take your pick… you’ll find the very same injunction that we seek justice as the highest and most important virtue. Though it isn’t given much priority these days, this idea of justice is especially required in regards to the poor and the dispossessed among us. The situations of widows, orphans, the elderly, the sick, the poor, all these are in a special sense, seen as a measure of how well we’re doing, not only as individuals, but as a society. A society, we are told, is judged not by the number of wealthy individuals we find there, not by the richness of their houses, nor by the fine furnishings placed in their houses of worship. A society is judged by the way those on the bottom are treated.Whether that judgment comes from God, by humanity, or by the fickle hand of fate is of little import at this point because the end result is the same. There are consequences that sooner or later come into play. Whatever we do or don’t do in any given situation leads to consequences. Though we may ignore the warnings of prophets, seers, and oracles or even think tanks and scientific studies, consequences do come sooner or later. Well, let’s go back to the parable and see if we can draw any conclusions that we can apply to our lives. Right off the bat, I can see at least one thing, Lazarus was living, as are we, under the “trickle-down” theory of economics and lacked two basic things: food and health care. Surely there’s a message in here somewhere for us today. The “trickle-down” theory didn’t work then and it certainly doesn’t seem to be working today. We see that clearly in the faces of those people at the freeway entrances carrying signs saying “homeless” and “hungry.” And no, I don’t believe that they’re all simply lazy and won’t work or that they prefer living that way.Nothing in the parable indicates that the rich man was a dishonest or mean person. Nothing indicates that he was unthankful for what he received. He seemed to be a person who enjoyed life and who shared what he had with his family and friends as he feasted sumptuously every day. Nor is there anything in the parable that indicates that he mistreated the poor man Lazarus who was at his gate. He did not insult him or abuse him. In fact, it seems that he never even noticed him.This is what I would suggest is the failure of the rich man: he did not notice Lazarus at his gate. Even though the two of them were close, with Lazarus sitting at his very door, he lived his life isolated from the poor man like many of us, safely locked away in his gated community. There was a gulf between them, and the rich man lived his life without ever noticing the poor man who was so close at hand. Now after his death, the rich man certainly noticed Lazarus. Not only did he now notice him, but he now wanted to bridge the gap between them. He begged that Lazarus would bring a bit of water to cool his tongue. But the gulf had now become a chasm, and it was no longer possible to cross it. Obviously then, the point of the parable for us is to notice Lazarus at our door and to reach out and cross the gulf between us while there is still time.Yes, Lazarus is at our gate. He is one of the more than one million children who are homeless in America, who sleep every night on our streets. He is one of the many fellow Americans who are afflicted with and dying from AIDS. Lazarus is at our door. Lazarus is one of the forty million Americans who have no access to health care, who must choose between buying medicine and putting food on her table. Lazarus is at our gate. He is an acquaintance who lost his job and is in danger of losing his home. Lazarus is the young man in the ghetto with no job prospects and no way out except by joining the military. He is the homeless man sitting on the curb outside the gas station asking for spare change. Lazarus is at our door.The vision of the “blessed community” calls upon us to notice Lazarus at our door, and to reach out and cross the gulf that isolates us from him. It calls us to do this in a very personal and specific way. It calls upon us to recognize his suffering as our own because we are all in this together. We are all a part of the interdependent web of life and we will all ultimately either sink or swim together. This may seem like a daunting task, but is it? It is important to notice in the parable that the rich man was condemned not because he ignored all the poor people in Israel of his time. For all we know, he, like most of us, regularly gave to any number of charities to help people like Lazarus. He probably gave a tax-deductible donation to his time’s version of the United Way. The parable doesn’t say. He was condemned because he ignored one beggar, the one named Lazarus who sat at his door. He did not recognize his inherit worth and dignity as a human being, something that we UU’s call for in the first of our principles.We cannot be expected as individuals to reach out to each of the millions of people without health care or the tens of millions who are hungry around the world. But we can be expected to notice the collective Lazarus at our gate and do what we can to bridge the gap between us. We can’t save each and every Lazarus as individuals, but we can do something. We can be expected to notice that we as Americans have a Lazarus at our gate and realize that we will face the consequences sooner or later.While our government refunds money to our most affluent taxpayers, it is busy cutting benefits and programs that help the poor. Just as the poor are not noticed, so they are not needed except as fodder for the war machine or the sweatshop. While this goes on, there are regular messages from the religious hucksters on TV and radio, baptizing riches as God’s blessing, who see wealth as rewards for being part of the “right” religion and being a “righteous” person. Still, there’s a certain meanness of spirit in the air which allows us as a society to discard and despise the poor of the earth as undeserving and merely envious of the rich, and “our way of life” and the very thought of questioning this is considered subversive.Lazarus is usually informed that he needs to pick himself by his own bootstraps because “God helps those that help themselves.” Interestingly enough, the name Lazarus means “he whom God helps.” In the rich man’s view of things, popular in “Prosperity theology,” it is Lazarus who would be in Hades and the Rich Man in paradise, and between the two there is as well a great gulf fixed. Each stays in his place, securely fixed by the class system. Today we might well call it a “caste” system in that we are usually born into the class we inhabit and through no effort of our own, either inherit wealth or poverty. Those in the middle are getting fewer and the gap between Lazarus and the rich man is getting wider.It should be obvious that a major cause of poverty in the United States is not laziness or simple “bad luck.” It is that there are so many who are working for very little income with few or no benefits. Wages have not kept up with inflation over the last 20 years for workers in the bottom 40 percent of employment. Well-paid, and unionized manufacturing work has been exported to the third world where people are thankful to work for a dollar an hour instead of starving, where governments are glad to forget about environmental degradation so that they can receive some trickle-down from the big profits of the few.While the business section of the news paper tells us about a variety of statistical improvements, we are also continually reminded of what a wonderful thing it is that the wages of everyday working people are not going up and therefore not causing inflation. They warn us that unionization is a bad thing and that it will drive up costs and prices. These stories never tell us that the incomes of CEO’s and other economic elites are going up at a crazy pace and no one ever talks about their income as a threat to inflation. Meanwhile, the poorest among us can no longer even file bankruptcy to gain any measure of relief from their debts. They are to be hounded to their graves by creditors and banks while those same CEOs and executives take advantage of ever more complicated schemes to insulate themselves from any responsibility for the common good.The spirit of exploiting low-paid labor is just the same whether it is in Tanzania, Bolivia, or even Columbus. Those at the bottom of the ladder, call out, not only to be noticed, but for salvation from their misery. Sooner or later, something has got to give. By the way, I’d suggest that whenever we read the word “salvation” in the Bible, we read “liberation” instead. Then we can see the scriptures through the Third World eyes of the people who originally wrote it, and by extension, we can see ourselves through the eyes of much of the world.I heard on the radio that half the population of the world is living in absolute poverty with incomes of less than $3.00 a day. One point 3 billion people survive on incomes of less than $1.00 a day. Today we can certainly recognize that many people and nations around the world are plagued and enslaved by poverty and debt. Not only does debt bind individuals in servitude as they struggle to pay high interest rates, but it also binds nations in endless cycles of poverty. I read recently that in Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, that for each $1 million diverted from health and education to pay the debt, 24 more women will die in childbirth and 159 more infants will die during their first year. In Mozambique, one in four children dies before age 5, yet the government spends four times as much money on servicing the debt as it does on health care.There was an article in National Geographic a while back describing slavery in modern India where children can be bought for as little as $5 each to work in factories making bracelets and baubles sold for a tidy profit in the US and other industrialized nations. This is immorality at its highest and yet, for the most part, Americans don’t notice.For decades, we have been using the School of the Americas to train the armies of Central and South America in counter-insurgency warfare. Commonly these “insurgents” are the labor leaders, teachers and clergy, the kind of people who speak out against the deals cut between wealthy elites and multi-national corporations in the name of trade or development. First, the multi-national corporations cut deals with oppressive regimes and then we train their generals to make sure that no one can object effectively. We’ve seen this played out time and again. Then when the oppressive regime no longer pleases them, our own under-employed and poor are enlisted to overthrow their government so as to replace it with one more to the liking of our own economic elites. Lazarus is truly at our gate and there will be consequences. Make no mistake about that. The prophet Amos still warns us across the centuries: “You think to put off the day of misfortune, but you are hurrying the rule of violence.” (Amos 6:3)The world we live in is much like that of the one in which Amos lived. It is a very ugly scene, no different than the ugliness of Pharaoh to the Jews, no different than the ugliness of slavery and share-cropping in the United States, of company towns in West Virginia, and of children working in sweat shops in India when they should be playing.Let me be clear. We are living in a time of empire, a time of monopolies that make a mockery of human dignity and threaten to engulf us all in the flames of hatred and violence. We have become the richest nation in the world, and have built up the greatest system of production that history has ever known, yet we have misused our gifts. There is a great economic disparity between people. Do you know that Michael Eisner makes nine thousand dollars an hour, but Disney Corporation workers in Haiti make ninety-eight cents an hour? We have failed to notice Lazarus at our gate. The world is at our gate, and we have the means to help. We only need the collective will to do so.In Leviticus 25:10, we read that we are to “…proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants; it shall be a jubilee for you.” Just what is this all about? The concept of the jubilee is the most radical concept in the whole scripture. Every seven days is a Sabbath day. Every seven years is a Sabbath year when you don’t plant so the land gets to rest one year in seven. And after seven of these seven-year cycles… the 50th year… comes the year of jubilee. In this year all debts are cancelled. All people are released from their debts and their bondage. You can read about this in Leviticus 25. They talked about it, particularly in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. They thought about it. But they didn’t do it.Imagine what would happen if the poorest among us were to be freed of their debt to the richest among us. Imagine what it would be like if Lazarus, rather than having to beg at the rich man’s gate, were invited in to join in the feast. Imagine what would happen if the Third World, rather than mortgaging the lives of their children to keep up with the interest payments, were to be able to use that money to improve the health and education of their own people. Would that be of any help? Would that in any way relieve the tensions and resentments that fuel so much of the violence we face today? I dare say that it would. But to actually implement such a thing would mean some serious structural changes in the way we do things both at home and abroad.For too long, we’ve been led to believe that there simply isn’t enough to go around. The truth is that there is more than enough. We merely need to reorganize our priorities. I wish everyone could see this little chart I carry around in my pocket. It shows vividly where America’s priorities lie. Right now the United States spends a whopping $399 billion per year on the Pentagon. Meanwhile only $41 billion is spent on children’s health, $34 billion for K-12 education, $10 billion on humanitarian and foreign aid, and $7 billion on Head Start! Out of a $491 billion dollar budget, most goes to defending ourselves against Lazarus. We can do better than that. We MUST do better than that. Justice demands it. Quoting Thomas Aquinas, “A starving man has a right to his neighbor’s bread.” Private property is always subject to the needs of the society as a whole, as they are defined especially by the needs of the poor. We still have time to invite Lazarus in for the feast, but we’d better hurry because, just as the rich man discovered, there will be consequences.Until we as a society decide to do this, may we take heart in the knowledge that, at least as individuals, it is in our power to reach out to the Lazaruses among us, not as an act of charity, but as we would do for one of our own family members. When enough of us decide that duty to humanity is more important than self-interest, Lazarus will no longer be sitting outside our gates or even by our freeway ramps; he will be valued and welcomed as a full member of our common human family… part of the “Beloved Community.”The “trickle-down” theory of economics has been with us for a long time. It didn’t work in ancient times and it doesn’t work now. In the words of Martin Luther King, “Yes, America, there is still the need for an Amos to cry out to the nation: “Let judgment roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.” Each of us is called upon by the simple demands of justice “to bring good tidings to the afflicted…to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives…to comfort all who mourn” Isaiah 61:1-2).Our actions and ethical beliefs do have effect in future generations and eventually we will, like the writer of Revelation be able to say, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, … and I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God…Behold, the dwelling of God is with men” (Rev. 21:1-3).But, one final thought… it is we who must build this world. Step by step, stone by stone, heart by heart… WE must build the world of which we dream.If you want to do something about this situation, don't waste time protesting or praying... ACT. The system can't be fixed, it must be replaced!!!
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