Chasm and Community
Luke 16:19-31; John 17:11, 22; Colossians 3:11
Gettysburg Presbyterian Church
Harry G. Winsheimer
October 5, 2008

Fear creates chasms!  Whom can we trust?  In the news we learn of terrorist blowing up crowds.  Carnage!  We feel safe here in Adams County, yet criminals prowl.  We could be victims.  I walk along the street and come upon a young man who looks rough, unkept, and I become alert.  My stereotyping makes me feel safer meeting a man wearing suit and tie. The stranger, the different looking, the stereotypes, make me cautious.  Yet, what is in the heart of that stranger?  As we have learned these past two weeks, the threatening person may be highly-educated, esteemed, praised in the past, and wear expensive suits, yet hurt me. 

We can hurt each other in a thousand ways, some deliberate, some thoughtless, some unaware.

The estate owner is dressed in purple and fine linen – signs of a very well off and powerful man.  He has means.

Lazarus is dressed in sores.  He lies at the gate, his survival dependent upon the stewardship of the homeowner.  He just wants some garbage.

A few feet apart, but between them is a chasm.

This is a very disturbing story.  Those who think of Jesus as a wimp should read this parable.

Jesus did not name the estate owner.  Tradition has, calling him Dives, from the Latin for ‘rich man’.  Dives is used to Lazarus.  Dives probably had habituated.  Habituated is a term psychologists use for adjusting.  Maybe you have heard of the frog in the tea kettle.  Drop a frog into boiling hot water and what will it do?  It will instantly hop out.  Drop a frog into comfortable water though, and increase the temperature of the water very slowly and the frog will be swimming around in boiling water before it realizes it.  It habituates.

I bet Dives habituated.  He no longer even saw Lazarus.  He lived with his people.  He had his community.  It was not that he didn’t care about Lazarus.  He just did not think about him.

Is there a Lazarus in your life?  Think.  Is there someone whom you shut out, because he/she makes you uncomfortable, makes you afraid, is boring?  Is there someone who has sores like Lazarus and not pleasant to look at?  This is not easy thinking.  It is emotionally trying.  Is there a person whom I no longer see?

+++++

The temptation roars through our land for us to stay in our estates, on our side of the chasm, and to give up on the dream.  What dream?  That Dives and Lazarus sit at the same Table.  What dream?  The dream about which Jesus prayed in John 17, when he asked that his followers may “be one, as we are one.”  John 17:11, 22  What dream?  The dream voiced by the Apostle to the Ephesian church: “to gather up all things in [Christ], things in heaven and on earth.” Ephesians 1:10

The temptation is to give up, because the dream is so hard to actualize.

The temptation is heard in this cynical quote:
Over dinner in his six-bedroom house, Mr. Chestnut talks about how “people like us would get involved if they had any confidence that it would make a difference.”  A few moments later, he adds, “The track record of people who’ve given of themselves for the past 25 to 30 years is that they’ve been shown to be suckers.”

No, Mr. Chestnut!  No!  You are wrong!  The dream lives.  It is compromised by every one of us.  You’re right.  It is shot to rags in congregations.  You’re right.  Cynicism stalks us.  The easy route is to let the chasm be.  Ignore Lazarus.  But, Mr. Chestnut, we feel sorry for you.  You miss the excitement, the energy, that the dream generates.  The dream of Lazarus and Dives at the same Table will never die, because it is God’s dream!  It is the plan of God, implemented through Jesus Christ, that we span the chasm that separates us.  What a building project that is! 

Mr. Chestnut, activities do not all have to succeed to be worth doing.  Think of Christian bonding as like a house.  Charlotte and I built our house two years ago.  The contractor met with us.  We chose plans.  They dug and poured and laid block.  They pounded and sided and roofed and painted.  We moved in.  It was done.  Well, not really.  You see, Charlotte gets ideas.  The north side of the house looks bare.  Let’s put some plants along that wall.  Wonder how the dining and living room would look with chair rail and crown molding.  You could do that.  Yea, I could, but I am working now, you know.  We need rugs to cover some of the hardwood floor.  Does it never stop?  [Please keep me working!  That gives me an excuse to put off some house projects.]  We have owned houses for 38 years, and never have finished a house!  Does that mean that we don’t keep at it? 

Some things are never finished, but are worth doing. 

What will happen if Dives comes to know Jesus Christ as his Lord?  Then, will he see Lazarus?  Certainly should!

When Jesus Christ gets into us, we are renewed.  We are renewed at the time of our conversation.  We drift back into old ways.  We forget the use the “mind of Christ” and use our natural ways.  We have to be renewed often.  Reminds me of our parking lot.  Our parking lot was getting pretty dull.  There were cracks.  This winter, moisture would enter those cracks and maybe split loose asphalt. The stripes were almost gone.   On winter’s dark evenings, no one would have been able to see where to park.  It was sealed and stripped this week.  It was renewed.  Had it been done before?  Yes.  But, over time it needed it again.  Being renewed in Christ is like that.  Every so often, we need a fresh experience of Christ, a refreshing of the soul.

The renewing is a change of heart, of thinking, of self-identity, of social consciousness.  You are being renewed, wrote the Apostle.  Renewed!
In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!   Col. 3:11

Christ!  Christ is the center.  Christ is the motivator.  Christ is the educator.  Christ is the lover.  Christ influences our thinking.  Christ influences our decisions.  Christ empowers us to trust.  Christ empowers us to forgive.  Christ empowers us to be generous.  Christ empowers us to be comfortable with strangers at the Table.  Christ is everything.  Christ is in everyone.

It is because of Christ that we see not only the cantankousness or greed of the neighbor, we see Christ loving him.  We see not only the indifferent clerk, but are aware of Christ loving that person.  We see not the pigment, but Christ in the person.  We see not only the greedy multi-millionaire risking our investments, we see a sinner loved by Christ, a sinner for whom to pray.  We see not the nationality, but Christ in the stranger.  “Christ!  Christ!” the Apostle shouts to us.  Christ has a miraculous ability to make us see people as through different glasses.  Christ can even make a habituated Dives see Lazarus.  Christ can bring Dives and Lazarus to the Table.

Let the Spirit of Christ give us eyes to see:
            Eyes to see the Lazarus at our door
            Eyes to see Christ in people         
Eyes to see the people of Christ everywhere
Eyes to see the people of Christ at the Table with us.

The great symbol of God’s vision is the Communion Table.  Here we gather as a community around Christ, offer our thanks and respect, and are nourished as brothers and sisters of Christ.  That is true of all communion services.  It is a community event.  That is why in the Presbyterian Church we never have private communion, except for those physically unable to gather with the community. 

For over half a century we have observed World Communion on the first Sunday of October, sharing the experience with Christians in several denominations in many nations.  It is a dream that with Christ as our common Lord and Savior, we come together in a single mystical community.  I imagine the Lord’s Table stretching out of this room, through the doors, across the street, and on and on around the globe.  At this table sits Jesus Christ and millions and millions of his followers.  Beside us sit Euroamericans, African Americans, native Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Chinese, and Indians, and Kenyan, and French, and Columbians. 

I think of individuals whom I have known from many continents sitting at the Table. Whom do you know that you imagine to be with us in spirit at the Lord’s Table?  [Close your eyes and imagine for a moment.]  What about someone in Iraq, or in Afghanistan?  What about a relative now living far from Gettysburg?  Dozens of you have gone on mission trips over the past six months; are there any Christians whom you met who probably are at the Table today?

I imagine Gideon and Mary Jane Schaeffer in Tucson, AZ.  Gideon chaired the search committee who nominated me to National Presbyterian Church in D.C.  They moved to Arizona several years ago.  I thought of them on Tuesday.  Hadn’t talked with them for nearly a year.  Gave them a call.  They have had health issues.  I am glad that I phoned; they seemed to be pleased at hearing from me.  With aches, pains and worries over the economy, they are at the Table in their Presbyterian church today.

Yesterday Charlotte and I went to Alexandria in Huntington County to celebrate the 50th wedding anniversary of John and Donna Dean.  Three days after Charlotte and I were married, we moved into a miniscule seminary apartment across the hall from the Deans.  We have kept in touch for 49 years.  Yesterday I presided at their renewal of vows.  Today they are at the Table in the Alexandria Presbyterian Church.

Whom do you picture at the Lord’s Table today?

And here we are.  Together.  Sharing the same Lord and Savior, spiritually fed by the same broken body, drinking from the same cup.  We may feel very close to each other.  We may be squabbling with each other.  But, we come to the same Table to be renewed by the same Jesus Christ.

It is a mystical Table.  Pretty fragile.  It is a dream Table.  Only glimpsed.  Not fully actualized.  Here at the Table we sample the heavenly banquet with Christ, when all that has cursed humanity is no more. 

Likewise, we are commissioned to bring people together, to make peace, to cross the chasm, to see Lazarus, to invite people to experience renewal by Christ, to welcome them to Christ’s Table.

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