I thank Nate for taping our church Service.  Through no fault of his, the battery in the receiver linking my mic to the camera died toward the end of the Service.  This is what caused the squeaking sound during the Time with Children and which is also the reason why the sermon is not included this Sunday.
​I am including the printed sermon here, but for anyone at church on this Sunday you'll recognize that it's not the same sermon I delivered.  Sometimes what is written is not what is preached. 


“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” (Ps 19:14)

No one knows anything at all about the timing of the coming of the Son of Man.  Today’s Gospel makes this absolutely clear.  The angels of heaven didn’t know.  Even Jesus didn’t know.  It’s going to come as a surprise.  That’s all we know. 

Ours is a God of surprises.  God doesn’t operate under the same parameters and expectations that we do.  So we shouldn’t be surprised by the surprises.  We should learn to go with them as part of being faithful. 

Friends of ours were looking forward to their two daughters coming home for Thanksgiving.  One was taking the train from New York City to New Haven, Connecticut and was going to be picked up there by her mother.  The other daughter was going to fly in from Colorado, but then a blizzard intervened.

Her father called her up at 6AM just after she had gone to bed – she works as a bartender.  He told her that she better get over to the airport as soon as she could to get on stand-by because it looked like all the flights were going to be cancelled later in the day.

I don’t know how this works, but her luggage somehow got on a flight to Bradley, but she couldn’t.  She had to bounce her way from airport to airport for 18 hours to get home.  But since the luggage made it on that other flight, my friend had to drive down to Bradley to pick up her bag, but not his daughter.  She wouldn’t get picked up until several hours later when her mom and sister were coming home from New Haven.

He's telling me all of this on the phone while driving to pick up just her luggage.  That’s when I told him that I was upset because on the way to Northampton the next night to meet them all for dinner we were going to have to stop off at the car rental agency in Northampton to drop off the car my daughters drove from Boston.  That added another probably a whole two minutes to our travel time.

I don’t think he was too sympathetic.  But the point of all this is that there are surprises in even our ordinary lives, and when we get out of the routine of the ordinary, if only for a Thanksgiving holiday, then surprises shouldn’t surprise.  

And that’s all that Jesus is asking us to do today.  Go with the surprises.  Don’t make them into roadblocks.  Follow God’s detours.
 
Jesus used the example of Noah in today’s Gospel to express the idea of God’s surprises.  It’s not like there were no hints and God just flooded the world impulsively.  According to the story, the people of Noah’s day mocked Noah when he warned them about God’s anger and God’s coming judgment. 

They simply went about their lives and ignored not only God, but this huge boat that was being built at God’s command.  They went out of their way to ignore Noah’s warnings and then they were really surprised according to the story.  

Or take Isaiah’s prophecy.  First of all, it was and still remains a huge surprise to imagine a time of world-wide peace.  It’s as strange now as it was in the prophet’s day to listen to God’s message that we should be beating our swords into ploughshares and our spears into pruning-hooks. 

We should give less energy to preparing for war, says God.  God has warned us about this – repeatedly.  It’s like Noah all over again.  It’s in our face as big as the ark.
 
The late physicist Stephen Hawking wondered if the lack of signs of intelligent life in the universe were a result of the fact that when a civilization got the point of being able to annihilate itself, it did.
 
That’s the point we are at now.  War could soon be a matter of no winners and losers, but only of complete destruction.  God warns us, and His call for peace surprises us, but it shouldn’t.  We have to learn how to live together or else we’re all going to die together. 

Isaiah also says that the nations will stream to Jerusalem because that is where God dwells.  But here comes another surprise.  When God’s messenger of peace came into our world in Jesus, He didn’t have the time or the inclination to wait for people to come to Him.  So Jesus brought God to them. 

God surprised us with a humble Bethlehem birth.  God surprised us with Jesus’ ministry and message.  God surprised us with Jesus’ death and resurrection.  But through all of these surprises Jesus brought God out into our world. 

And even though the world was mean, savage and violent, Jesus was as peaceful as Isaiah foretold.  You can’t force people to be peaceful, but you can set them an example.  You can surprise them by being peaceful even when everyone else is turning their ploughshares into swords and their pruning-hooks into spears. 

Jesus is like Noah building the ark.  He’s plain to see.  His life reveals the will of God.  It’s a surprise, but we shouldn’t be surprised by surprises. 

Today we lit the first candle of the Advent Wreath, the candle of hope.  Hope is the surprise that God springs on us constantly

Maybe God’s surprise is that in Jesus, God has entered our world as us, to show us exactly what we can do.  That we can be so grieved or even terrified by violence that we choose peace.  That we can get so sick of the killing that we work for peace.  That we can finally realize that it’s up to us, in God’s name, in following Jesus’ example, to surprise the world and start taking seriously about hope.

May this be our prayer as we begin our season of Advent longing.  In Jesus’ name we pray.  Amen.  

“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” (Ps 19:14)

Last week the New York Times released classified documents of the Chinese Communist Party.  China is extremely worried about its Muslim citizens.  Anything, including religion, that challenges the absolute rule of the Communist Party is regarded as a threat.  Christians have faced this same kind of persecution in China.

According to these secret documents, up to one million Muslim citizens are imprisoned in what are called re-education facilities.  The documents were instructions to local officials on how to deal with students who were coming home from college for vacations only to then discover that their families were no longer there. 

One particular instruction advised that if a returning student asked if their relatives had committed a crime, the response was to answer that they had not.  Then they were supposed to say, “It is just that their thinking has been infected by unhealthy thoughts.  Freedom is only possible when this ‘virus’ in their thinking is eradicated and they are in good health.”

In other words, freedom is to do and say whatever you want as long as whatever you want is what the authorities want.  What kind of freedom is that where different is illegal?  

​I bring this up today because Jesus is proudly different.  And we shouldn’t try to tame that difference. 

That carpenter from Nazareth, says Colossians, “Is the image of the invisible God, … in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell ...”

This is why Jesus defines different.  Why would we imagine that God has to fit into our molds?  This begins to explain why God enters into the world so strangely as a Nazareth carpenter, and then preaches to us as an unemployed wanderer.  For non-Christians this is so different as to be preposterous.  And Jesus has upset governments and institutions and even churches for longer than He has been called the Christ.  Jesus is God’s disruption of the world’s normal.

And it gets even more so.  While Jesus’ life was strange, His death was even more strange.  Back to what is written in Colossians:  “And through [Jesus], God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.”

And this is why, seemingly out of season, we share a Gospel story about Jesus’ crucifixion.  The cross wasn’t defeat.  The cross is the triumph of salvation.  No matter what others did to Him, Jesus remained consistent and true.  Even as they executed Him, Jesus would not succumb to hatred. 

His commitment to what He preached never wavered in life or death, and it has shown us a completely unexpected path of righteousness and hope. 

This is why Jesus defines different.  

And again, it gets even more so.  Jesus doesn’t die only for those who are saddened by His suffering.  Colossians has one of those astoundingly strange lines that stands out in the Bible and has led to generations of thoughtful speculation. 

What does it mean when Colossians reveals that “through [Jesus] God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things”?  This implies not only the good and holy, as we would expect, as we would define fair, but all things are reunited with God in Jesus.

This moves beyond deservers and touches on the unequivocal, unconditional love of Christ.  Salvation is what God wants for “all things.”  And this is just plain different. 

If you have a pew Bible in front of you, I’d ask you to open to Luke 23:34. 

When you get there, you’ll see that the verse is in double brackets, and there’s a footnote that explains that in some ancient manuscripts this verse is missing. 

The verse reads:  “Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.’”

It’s in double brackets because some biblical scribes, way back in the earliest history of the church, just could not handle this kind of forgiveness.  They wanted Jesus to speak of punishment like so many other biblical passages do. So they never bothered to record this verse in their manuscripts.  They tried to remove it from sacred Scripture.

How could God forgive the ones who crucified His Son?  This prayer of Jesus had to be a mistake.  We all know how good revenge feels.  How could Jesus ask that the ones hammering the nails into His body be forgiven?  How could He take revenge away from us?

And because even in our Bibles we see how hard it is to appreciate this strangeness of Jesus, we have to remember to keep the door open to our imagination when we think who Jesus is and what He expects of us.

The Chinese communists explain different as in infection that needs to be cured.  As Christians, Jesus’ different is our freedom to let Jesus out of the box, the cage actually, where we try to keep Him locked-up so that we’re not surprised by faith.

Jesus’ different encourages a freedom in us too, one that errs on the side of compassion and forgiveness.  

This allows faith, and us the faithful, to be supportive of all kinds of people just like Jesus is.  It gets church out of the business of condemning anything and especially anyone who seems different, and instead encourages us to become compassionate like Christ, that is without reservation.

What a great message with which to bring another church year to a close, that we are as free to be as different as Christ, which means to be as free to forgive and show compassion as Jesus.

​For this may we pray in His holy name.  Amen.

I don't have a sermon this morning.

Instead, I have a few moments to speak as an introduction because the Church Council has invited Dr. Ira Helfand of Physicians for Social Responsibility to address our congregation.  He will speak to us about nuclear disarmament. 

Dr. Helfand is the Vice-Chair of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War organization.  This group is a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and Dr. Helfand has brought that Nobel prize with him here today!

This ties in with a resolution passed at the General Synod this past Spring and which was presented to that body by Rev. Peter Kakos, who many of you know as the previous pastor here in Hatfield.

One of the hallmarks of our church is that we govern ourselves democratically.  All members of the congregation are invested with the authority that comes from the Spirit, but we don’t throw everything on the Spirit and walk away without any personal responsibility to lead the church.  We don’t have a hierarchy that speaks for us.  We speak, instead, as the inspired and informed membership of the church, as church. 

This is why the Church Council has invited Dr. Helfand here.  It is to help us become more acquainted with the topic of nuclear disarmament.  Then we have two months to discuss the topic.  This is when we can and should, as church, look at it through the lens of Jesus’ gospel. 

And I hope that our faith helps us to hold this discussion in a way that is respectful of each other’s opinions.  Then at our Annual Meeting we will have the chance to vote for or against signing onto the resolution about nuclear disarmament.

As we begin this process, I ask you to keep in mind today’s two readings.

The 66th and final chapter of the Book of Isaiah, written while Israel was in exile, speaks powerfully and poetically against God’s need to have a temple re-constructed for Him:  “Heaven is my throne and the earth my footstool.  What is this house that you would build for me?” 

Then only a few years later, once Israel has returned from exile as is beginning to reestablish itself in Jerusalem, the prophet Haggai wonders why it’s taking so long to rebuild the Temple. 

These two prophets are saying two different things.  It seems that there is more than one way to look authentically at the complexity of God and what God would have us do.

Please keep this in mind as we listen to Dr. Helfand and consider what he has to say.

Moving quickly on to the Gospel story, we heard today of Jesus’ encounter with the Sadducees.  It’s a revelation that God sees things differently than we would often expect. 

We tend to imagine God’s reality as an expansion of our own, but Jesus’ testimony reveals that there is a radical difference between the two, between our expectations and God’s reality. 

I ask that we keep this idea in mind as well as we think about the proposal at hand.  Let’s try to think beyond our own expectations, our own politics, and let’s try to envision what God would have us do as church.

Let’s listen, in other words, with open minds and Christian hearts.

So without further ado, I invite Dr. Ira Helfand to come forward to speak to us as he has to conferences in Norway, Mexico, Austria, Geneva, at the United Nations ... and now as well at Hatfield Congregational Church.

[We do not have a video of Dr. Helfand's remarks, but we do share with you his thoughts as they were shared at a TEDx Talk offered recently in Vail.
We thank Dr. Helfand for joining us on a Sunday morning to share his concerns about nuclear war and his hopes about what we can do to prevent it.]

“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” (Ps 19:14)

[The first story was shared only with those who were at the Service].

I wanted to watch the game because I love the underdogs.  Washington started the season off terribly.  They almost fired their manager Dave Martinez it was so bad.  They were 19 and 31 in mid-May.  They climbed back.  Won the Wild Card.  Won the Pennant.  And I hope they win the World Series.  I love the underdogs.  

One of those small, independent films has come out about Dr. Jim Allison.  The closest it ever got to Hatfield was this past week in Cambridge.  To see it now I’d have to travel out to the West Coast.  Jim Allison was and is an iconoclast.  In his rural Texas high school science class, his teacher didn’t believe in Evolution and wouldn’t teach it.  Allison objected and was constantly being punished.  But he stood alone.

He made it into college.  Got his PhD.  Worked in a cancer lab.  But again, he bucked the accepted thinking and studied how to treat cancer unconventionally.  He was ridiculed and sidelined by many in his field, but he persisted.  Last year he won the Nobel Prize for Medicine.  In the movie, they interview the woman who was almost dead because of her cancer and is now cancer free.  When Dr. Allison talks about her, his eyes tear up.  When she talks about him, the same.  I love underdogs.

Today’s Gospel is special.  Can’t go into now, but we could in Bible study.  Keep that in mind.  Today’s passage is the finale of ten chapters worth of specifically Lucan material in the Gospel.  These are stories that Luke adds because for him they are too important not to tell.  They help us better understand who Jesus is and who Jesus expects us to be.  And it’s a story about underdogs.

“Tax collectors and prostitutes.”  “Tax collectors and sinners.”  “Tax collectors and Gentiles.”  “Even tax collectors came to be baptized.”  These phrases from the Bible may sound familiar to you.  It’s a recurring theme in the Gospels.  Tax collectors are a meme.  As soon as they’re mentioned, everyone listening to Jesus had an image and a story in their head, and it wasn’t flattering.  Tax collectors were despised, and they were outcasts. 

Tax collectors stood anonymously as a group.  Who they were as people didn’t matter.  It’s like “All immigrants are bad.”  “All Democrats are bad.”  “All whatever … are bad.”  And one of these despised-ones sneaks into the Temple.  He stays toward the back.  He never raises his head.  He needs to be there, but he knows he’s not welcome.  He’s hoping no one recognizes him. 

He’s even afraid to talk to God.  And all of the baggage that others had thrown upon him as a tax collector weighed him down.  Whether he was or was not, he has been forced to see himself as a sinner.  He has come to believe what all the others have said about him.  “All tax collectors are bad.”

The Pharisee in the Temple, however, is in his element, and he knows it.  He struts around confident and proud of all that he does, and he makes sure that God and others now all about it.  But he’s not satisfied with all that he does.  He feels that he must drag others down to make himself seem even higher. 

In a prayer said loud enough for everyone to hear, with eyes unashamedly looking directly at God, and with a sideways glance at the tax collector to make sure he hears too, the Pharisee prays, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax-collector.”

And the weight on the tax collector’s shoulders bent him over even further to the ground.  

The Pharisee regarded this other person with contempt.  He ignored him as a person.  And in doing this, the Pharisee, for all of his praying, and fasting, and giving, showed himself to be unrighteous – in the story that Jesus tells.  His words were meaningless to God because his actions were so much convincing.

And this parable is how Luke closes his special ten-chapter addition to what we know about the life of Jesus.  Now Luke can return to telling the received story of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem, to Jerusalem where it will be Jesus who is the outcast in the Temple. 

Did you hear the outcast prayer of Esmerelda that we shared with the children?  She prays in her equivalent of the Temple and asks Jesus, “Were you once an outcast too?” Were you the underdog? From Luke 2,000 years ago to Walt Disney today that image of Jesus as the outcast, the underdog, who is the advocate for the outcast and the underdog, was and always will be compelling.  Jesus is God made humble so that even the most humble can feel close to God.  I love underdogs.

Think about the passage Michael read for us.  Paul is in prison.  He may die there.  He is a perfect example of the outcast.  And yet when he should have felt defeated, when everything is pointing to failure, Paul remains strong.  Not because he was strong enough on his own, but because Jesus was an outcast just like him, and he writes, “But the Lord, [the Lord Jesus, He] stood by me and gave me strength.”  

As people of faith, we hear in today’s readings the warning against thinking ourselves too important, that we matter more to God than others.  Faith is a blessing not a boast.  Esmeralda sings, “I thought we were all children of God.  God help the outcasts when no one else will.” 

And He does.  This is when we hear the amazing and powerful message that the outcast, the underdog Jesus, stands with us and gives us His strength.  He knows what it is to be on empty.  He understands what it’s like to be overwhelmed.  He gets it when others would try to define us rather than to know us.  And this is why faith is a blessing not a boast.  I love the underdogs.  And I love that our God was willing to be one so that we could always count on Him by our side, and always count on His strength.

I close with a prayer that I often encounter in the UCC and it comes from the prophet Micah:  “What does God require of us but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God?"  Amen.

“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” (Ps 19:14)

A friend’s daughter’s friend works on commercials in New York City.  She was up for a visit a while back and we met them for pizza in Northampton.  I told my friend’s daughter’s friend that I would volunteer happily to be on one of those focus groups for commercials.  I wanted the chance to tell the ones who make them that commercials are terrible, absolutely terrible. 

I get so frustrated with commercials that we just hooked-up something behind our television so that we can watch streaming services without commercials.  Well, actually my daughters were home last weekend and they had to set up for us.  It costs some money, but we’re going to either cut back to the most basic subscription for cable or just get rid of it completely. 

The ones who write commercials must think we’re not very bright.  Not all of the time, but most of the time.  Take Liberty Mutual for example.  Some agency was probably paid a truck load of money to come up with Doug and a sidekick emu, an ostrich-like bird.  It’s so stupid I have to hit the mute on the television when it comes on.  

What makes it worse is that not long ago Liberty Mutual ran a wonderful commercial about paying it forward.  The camera tracked a single, unspectacular act of kindness as it was passed from one person to the next.  I went looking for that commercial on YouTube and that’s when I ran into Life Vest Inside instead.  

I think I found the first video they ever produced.  It dates back eight years.  And it’s been watched 31 and half million times.  I wanted to show it here, but we don’t have any wifi, but you should check it out at home.  The link will be posted with this morning’s sermon later today after the CROP Hunger Walk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwAYpLVyeFU 

We can’t watch it, but we can imagine.  If you feel comfortable, close your eyes and try and imagine this story.

It begins with four kids riding skateboards down a city sidewalk when one of them falls.  A construction worker is coming out of a coffee shop.  He puts down his coffee for a moment and helps the kid to his feet. 

The same kid then helps a woman struggling with her groceries to cross the street.  That woman then sees someone searching fruitlessly for change at a parking meter and gives it to her.  That person sees a businessman drop his wallet and she rushes to pick it up and give it back to him. 

The well-dressed businessman takes a couple of moments to help another guy carry something heavy out of his car and over to his doorstep.  That guy goes to buy a hot dog from a vendor with a cart on the sidewalk. 

That’s when he sees a homeless guy resting against a building.  He grabs two dogs instead of one.  As he walks over to the guy, the hotdog vendor grabs him by the shoulder and gives him a water too.  The hotdog and water are shared with the guy who has nothing.

While the homeless man is really enjoying that hotdog, he sees a young woman get up and start walking without noticing that she has left her cell phone on a window’s ledge.  He rushes over, taps her on the shoulder and gives it back.  She’s surprised and then she smiles. 

This woman then notices another woman sitting by herself at an outdoor café.  She’s sitting there alone watching a mother with her two young daughters at a nearby table.  She looks so lonely.  The other lady buys a small bouquet of flowers and gives it to her, and the woman sitting by herself holds that woman’s hand to her cheek.

The lady selling the flowers sees this and gives a single rose to the lady who did this act of kindness.  The lady who had been sitting by herself sees a waitress getting reamed-out by her supervisor.  She leaves the café.  The waitress comes over to clear her table and that’s when she notices a hundred-dollar tip.

Then the waitress goes and gets a cold glass of water and shares it with a construction worker who is sweating as he’s working hard on the street outside the café.  He smiles.  He’s the same construction worker who first helped the kid who fell off his skateboard.

You can open your eyes now.

The video is called Boomerang because the act of kindness that we choose to do may spread in ways unexpected and may even come back to reward us.  Life-Vest-Inside produced this video and it closes with the message:  “Because kindness keeps the world afloat.”  And the music and the lyrics behind this whole video are beautiful.  If you have the time, check it out.

This idea of paying it forward is also found in today’s Gospel.  We’re told that Jesus is in the border region between Galilee and Samaria.  I know it’s a different parable, but I think we’ve all heard the story of the Good Samaritan so often that we probably know that the Jewish people were not at all fond of the Samaritans.  This comes into play again in today’s Gospel.

Lepers suffered terribly.  They must deal with the pain of their disease, but they also had to endure social isolation.  2,000 years ago, the only way to treat leprosy was to isolate the ones afflicted.  They could have no contact with anyone except other lepers.  Family, friends, neighbours – they were cut off from all of them. 

Then, on top of the disease and the isolation, lepers also had to process the teaching that they were morally unclean, that God also had a problem with being around them. 

These are the ten who from a required, safe distance yell over to Jesus for the miracle of healing.  The miracle is granted and they are understandably overcome with joy.  In their celebration, however, only one, a Samaritan, takes the time to come back to Jesus and say “Thank you.” 

The only one who is grateful is the most unexpected one, the Samaritan.

We never know how our acts of kindness will affect others, even Jesus was surprised that it was only the Samaritan who came back to say, “Thank you.”  We will never know all the blessings of what doing something like, for example, being a part of today’s CROP Walk may lead to, but we don’t have to.

That’s the message of the video about paying it forward.  We don’t know how our acts of kindness will travel.  We don’t have the benefit of an all-seeing camera watching as an act of kindness is payed forward, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t hope that they make a difference, and that it may even come full-circle and make a difference for us. 

Cynthia read for us from Second Timothy today.  This Epistle is one of the later writings of the New Testament.  And already we can hear about disagreements among believers who are “wrangling over words” that does no good.

Christians have been divided ever since there were Christians by “wrangling over words.”  We emphasize the silly differences that would separate, but when it comes right down to it, Jesus is most concerned about how we live. 

Nine may walk away with no thought of paying it forward, but the one makes all the difference.  Let us pay it forward in our lives and let us pray that our random acts of kindness may help to make this a better world.  And I think that’s probably the opposite of “wrangling over words.”  And I think that’s a very special “Thank You” to Jesus.

In Jesus’ name we pray.  Amen.

“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” (Ps 19:14)

A friend of mine is a Jewish guy who grew up in Manhattan and then moved up here to Massachusetts.  He has a quirky sense of humour that I really enjoy.  He’ll send me a YouTube clip of a guy like Lenny Bruce, for example. 

Once he sent me a clip of Dave Chappelle, who is an African-American comedian, playing a blind Klu Klux Klan leader. 

In the clip, his character was born blind.  The family that adopted him didn’t want him to feel doubly-cursed by letting him know he was blind and black, so they never told him.  He grew up hearing constant prejudice, and he learned it and accepted it 100%.
 
This led him into the Klu Klux Klan.  He became a leader because he didn’t know he was black and the others couldn’t tell because he was under the Klu Klux Klan sheet and hood.  You hear him yelling all sorts of ridiculous things about blacks and Mexicans, and Asians and liberals, and after every statement he yells, “White power!”  And the crowd erupts.

The comedy, for the audience watching all of this, is the absurdity of a black man spewing all these prejudices again black men because he doesn’t know he’s a black man, and of all these bigots clapping for a black man because they don’t know he’s a black man. 

But Chappelle is making a point with his comedy.  Prejudice is like this absurdity all the time.  I shared a bit of this absurdity in October’s newsletter article about apple pies. 

More personally, there’s only one generation between me and my immigrant grandparents.  My paternal grandparents came from Spain and my maternal from Poland.  Both faced prejudice when they came here as different. 

They couldn’t speak English; their customs were unfamiliar; they were different.  If I turned around and now acted with prejudice against the new newcomers, I’d be just like the black KKK member shouting “white power!”

We all share similar stories in our lives or in our history.  We hold more in common than we often want to admit, and when we attack others as different, we’re just mimicking Dave Chappelle all over again. 

Keeping Dave Chappelle in mind, let’s now talk about today’s Gospel.  I already shared with the young people the important message of compassion that Jesus so powerfully conveys in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.  That was the point of the alarm clock and the snooze button.  We can only postpone the gospel command to care for one another so long, and then eventually, at some point, we run out of time.  It’s just too late.

When we heard that Gospel parable, or when we listened in on the children’s sermon, I hope we gave some thought as adults to this morning’s offering for Neighbours in Need or the CROP Hunger Walk in just two weeks.  These put the gospel words into gospel action.

Neighbors in Need helps the church to spread justice and compassion in our communities, especially in those places where it is most lacking.  

Money helps, there’s no way around it.  Money makes a huge difference in these sort of efforts.  But in two weeks we can do a bit more.  We can walk with others to show solidarity with those who have very little. 

When other people see these marchers, when they see us, they are confronted with the reality that we are trying to make a difference together.  It’s more than making a donation.  It’s the giving of our time and our steps so that others will become aware.
 
The CROP Walk slogan is “We walk because they walk.”  It refers to the need in many impoverished communities to walk for something as common as clean water.  Our Walks bring us together by trying to empathize with their situation.

Compassion like this is Jesus’ priority for us, but there are only so many opportunities.  If we ignore them repeatedly, there’s the chance that it will become too late, so Jesus tells us today, don’t ignore them.

But now I want to delve into another message that confronts us in Jesus’ parable.  Lazarus dies and is rewarded with heavenly bliss.  The rich man dies and is condemned to eternal flames.  The message is be sure to be compassionate while you can because at some point it’s too late.

But then some commentators go a step further and tell us that Jesus is also talking about heaven and hell.  I think that imagery is only to make a greater impact on the sole message of compassion. 

The reason I say this, the reason I don’t think Jesus was really giving a description of sinners in eternal flames, is because if that were the case, it would be like the comedy of Dave Chappelle, about the black man making fun of black men.

What do I mean?

Please take a look again at your bulletin cover. The first picture shows the rich man ignoring the plight of Lazarus.  His apathy is going to get him thrown into hell.  In those merciless flames, the rich man begs Lazarus for a drop of water.  That’s what’s going on in the second picture.

From the glories of heaven, Abraham and Lazarus look out and see his torment – just like the rich man saw Lazarus every day at his gate.  Abraham and Lazarus can hear the rich man’s plea.  But they can’t do anything to help.  God has created an afterlife where it is simply impossible.  Think about this for a moment.

Can you sense the irony?  The rich man is condemned for eternity because he would not help the suffering Lazarus during a single lifetime.  God, if you push the analogy of this parable too far, won’t help all the people suffering in hell, forever.  They can be seen and heard from heaven, but it has no effect on paradise.  Does that sound right?

Could you enjoy paradise while watching so many others wreathing in eternal flames?  God was offended by the callousness toward Lazarus.  Can the saints be just as callous toward the sinners in hell?  Can God?  It doesn’t make sense to me.
 
A couple of weeks ago there was a story about a young man who was beaten up to the point that he was dying on the ground.  All of these other kids around him videotaped it on their phones to remember and share, but no one did anything to help him, and he died. 

Everyone was repulsed by this callousness.  It was disgusting.  Are we going to imagine the same thing happens when the saints watch the sinners burn forever, and then still frolic in heaven?  Do we really want to pin that message to Jesus and His gospel?

I can’t. 

I think the message of today’s parable is be compassionate while we can, and that we should do it because it’s the right and righteous thing to do, not because God is less compassionate than we are.

The Jesus of the parable is as compatible with the God of eternal flames as the blind black man leading the KKK rally.

Let’s do what we can while we can, and may this be our prayer in Jesus’ name.  Amen.