"Rich and Poor"
Jer. 32:1-3a, 6-15; Ps. 91:1-6, 14-16; 1 Tim. 6:6-19; Luke 16:19-31
Dr. George R. Sinclair, Jr.
Pastor
September 30, 2007
“There was a rich man who was 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.”
Rich and poor. They are kind of like boxes, aren’t they? In the box labeled Rich go the well dressed who live behind gates and have plenty to eat. In the box labeled Poor go the rag-covered who live in slums or on the street and have little or nothing to eat. Rich and poor. We know these boxes like the back of our hand. We know who belongs where and who doesn’t.
Perhaps the word “belong” is the wrong word but I don’t think so. When I say Paula and I “belong” to the Oakleigh Garden District Society the word “belong” suggests we’re a good fit. Paula, after all, drives a Volvo. We have a front porch painted red with black wicker furniture. We vote in every election. And we enjoy walks under shady trees. We belong. Oakleigh “suits” our lifestyle.
To say we “belong” to the Garden District also implies we have paid our dues or at least we’ve kept up our mortgage and insurance payments. Some people of course were born in Oakleigh. They grew up there. So they have a different sense of belonging than we do. We bought into it and maybe someday we will feel like the people who were born there. They have, I am sure, a different sense of belonging than we do. But still we “belong.”
We know who “belongs” in the box labeled Rich and who “belongs” in the box labeled Poor. Belonging in one box or the other means we are suited for our box, we deserve our box. We are, well, we “belong” there. These are age-old assignments—rich and poor—and they come with certain assumptions. Rightly or wrongly, we have certain assumptions about Rich and Poor.
People in the box labeled Rich we assume are greedy. They are selfish. Like the man in purple and fine linen, the rich are also indifferent. People in the rich box think they are better than others. They believe they deserve to be rich. After all, they “belong.” They belong either by an accident of birth or hard work or sometimes a combination of the two.
The poor of course also “belong” in their box. We assume people are in the box labeled Poor because they are lazy. They are wasteful. They lack ambition. The poor don’t really mind being poor because poverty is all they have ever known. And if they had any sense at all they wouldn’t be poor to begin with. Like the rich, the poor “belong” in their box. There are rich people and there are poor people. Jesus knew that. We know that.
So, who are the poor? According to Federal standards, 37 million Americans fit into the box labeled Poor. The official US poverty threshold for a family of four is $20,000 a year or just under $14 per person per day.
The World Bank has three boxes for the poor. According to the World Bank, 1.1 billion people subsist on a dollar a day. One in six people worldwide live on a dollar a day. The World Bank names this box Extreme or Absolute Poverty. Extreme poverty means that households cannot meet basic needs for survival. Residents of Extreme Poverty are chronically hungry. They lack health care, safe drinking water, sanitation, and cannot afford to educate their children. Ninety-three percent of the extremely poor live in three regions, East Asia, South Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa.
People in the moderate poverty box subsist on $1-$2 per day. According to the World Bank, the same three regions contain 87% of the world’s moderately poor or some 1.6 billion people. The moderately poor fair only slightly better than the extremely poor. They may have basic needs for food and shelter but only barely.
Relative poverty is generally construed by measuring household income against average national income. In higher income countries, the relatively poor lack access to cultural goods, entertainment, recreation, quality health care, education, and those conditions which favor upward social mobility.
So, who are the poor? It depends on your definition of poverty. Could you live on $14 a day? 37 million Americans do. Could you live on $1 day? 1.1 billion people worldwide do. Could you live off $2 a day? 1.6 billion people worldwide do. So, who are the poor? At least a third of the people on the planet are poor. And in relative terms one in twelve Americans are poor.
So, how does that compare to the rich? In the year 2000, President Bush toured Botswana, Nigeria, Senegal, and Uganda. That same year 161 million people were living in Botswana, Nigeria, Senegal and Uganda. When the President visited, the combined income of Botswana, Nigeria, Senegal and Uganda was $57 billion. That’s a pretty big number - $57 billion. But listen to this. According to the IRS, that same year the top 400 US taxpayers had a combined income of $69 billion dollars. Now who is rich, 400 Americans with $69 billion or 161 million Africans with $57 billion?
“Oh,” but we say, “the U.S. gives so much foreign aid to countries like Botswana, Nigeria, Senegal, and Uganda. We might be a rich nation but we’re generous.” But really, how are we doing?
Let me put it this way: for every $100 of GNP, the United States gives 15 cents to foreign aid. That’s 0.15 percent or $15 billion a year. That’s a lot of money but by comparison, we spend $450 billion a year on our military.
That doesn’t sound right, does it: $15 billion on food and shelter and medicine for the poor and $450 billion on guns and bullets and bombs? That’s a 30 to 1 ratio and it puts us dead last among developed nations.
In 2001, a survey was conducted by the University of Maryland. The Program on International Policy Attitudes wanted to see how Americans saw themselves. So they asked folks like you and me to estimate how much America gives in foreign aid each year. The study found we typically think America gives 20 percent to foreign aid. The actual total is twenty-four times less than that. We give 15 cents on every $100.
Right in the middle of writing this sermon I had to go to a meeting. It bugs the stew out of me to have to stop in the middle of writing my sermon. I lose my train of thought, which is easy enough under normal circumstances. But I thought I should go to this meeting since it was on homelessness and we serve a good many homeless and poor here everyday. I came away from that meeting thinking that some folks in Mobile would just as soon the homeless disappear. The poor are a real nuisance. And it’s true. They are.
A month or so ago some people came to our church and wanted a tour. So I showed them around. I took them through the sanctuary and I wanted to show them the front porch. And I’m walking and talking—and it’s a good thing I’m not chewing gum—because when I open the front door and step out, I step into a puddle of vomit where some homeless guy had slept the night before. Thing is, it made me really mad because I had on brand new Magnanni’s—two hundred bucks for those shoes.
We put signs out there on the porch—“If you sleep here you will be subject to arrest.” Why can’t the poor get jobs like everybody else or if they have to vomit, why can’t they do it somewhere else? Pretty soon we’ll have dogs licking up the stuff and then we’ll have real problems.
“There was a rich man . . . and there was a poor man.”
I wish Jesus had qualified the parable. I wish he had sorted out the truly deserving from the mostly-not-so-deserving. That would have helped. I mean was Lazarus an alcoholic? The Bible says he had sores that the dogs licked, so we know he didn’t take care of himself. Or was he just out of work? Was he laid off and maybe once had a job? Or was he just sorry? Jesus doesn’t say. Jesus just says he was poor. I really wish Jesus would have said, “Lazarus deserved help. He couldn’t help himself.” But Jesus doesn’t do that. He just says he was poor.
I also wish Jesus had said more about the rich man, not that he doesn’t tell us some things. Jesus tells us the rich man ate well every day and that he was a fancy dresser and that he lived behind a gate. He also tells us the rich man considered himself a child of Abraham. And it’s true enough; Father Abraham calls the rich man his “child.” So the rich man must not have been a bad man. I think he was probably a pretty good man, a decent tax paying citizen. He is called a “child” of Abraham, but even so, he ended up “tormented.”
And I really wish Jesus hadn’t said that. I’m a Presbyterian and we don’t like to talk about hell. But it sure sounds like hell is where the rich man ended up. He ended up in “agony” and what is worse a “great chasm” was fixed between the rich man and the poor man, a chasm wider than the gap between the 400 richest Americans and those 161 million Africans.
Here’s the thing: we don’t hear anything else about the rich man. We don’t know if he was good to his wife or if he was even married or if he had children and was a good father. The only thing we hear about him is how he treated the poor man. And that bothers me because there are a bunch of other commandments like honoring your father and mother and not committing adultery that seem equally important, but the only measurement Jesus focused on was how the rich man treated the poor man.
The rich man wasn’t without merit—he at least wanted to warn his brothers back home “in his father’s house.” Luke’s aiming that right at us. We are “in the father’s house.” That’s who Jesus is talking to. We’re the five brothers, aren’t we? We’re the ones being warned. Anyway, the rich man was not without sympathy. He worried about his brothers. He worried about us. And this is the part of the parable that troubles me the most.
I want to believe that people can change, but the parable doesn’t offer much hope of that happening. When the rich man begs Father Abraham to warn his brothers, Father Abraham answers that they’ve already been warned. They have “Moses and the prophets,” he says. We know all about Moses and the prophets. The Old Testament is full of stuff about welcoming the stranger, providing hospitality, taking care of the poor, giving justice at the gate. You can’t read the Law and the Prophets without realizing God has big plans for the poor. And Father Abraham reminds the rich man of that. So the rich man comes back saying, “Yeah, you’re right Father Abraham, the Law and Prophets do teach that but people like me are hard to convince, but if ‘someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’”
Here’s the really tough part of the parable, Father Abraham replies to the rich man in hell, “If they don’t listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”
Father Abraham is talking about Jesus isn’t he? We all know that. Jesus is the witness beyond all witnesses—greater than Moses and the prophets—but even Jesus can’t convince rich folks to do right by poor folks. And if he can’t then no one can.
So, I’m wondering how to preach this parable. And I’m looking for some hope. I’m wondering how any of us will ever get out of our box—the box we’re born in or the one we wound up in because we’ve either been incredibly lucky or worked really hard or maybe a little of both. I worry because how we got into our box doesn’t seem to matter all that much to Jesus. Jesus only seems interested in what happens when rich people see poor people. And if I understand anything at all Jesus is saying, he’s saying we had better choose his way of seeing the poor before it’s too late. Amen.