The theme for this week appears to be the dangers of excessive wealth. Does the Bible really disparage wealth and exalt poverty? Our lesson from the prophet Amos exalts and describes vividly the high life 2,500 years ago. Oil massages, choice cuts of veal and lamb, mood relaxing music or the music of idleness. And the beds beds of inlaid ivory. These were the pleasures of Jerusalem. But these are not the imaginings of an irate prophet. Recently, they found- archaeologists found a tremendous trove of remains including about 1,500 ivory fragments that came from furniture dating back to the time of King Solomon's temple. These pieces were carved in geometric shapes, lotus flowers, rosettes, and were the possessions of wealthy people. But these descriptions also underline the temporality of all possessions. At some point, they will deteriorate and they may also be plundered and disappear. Moving to our epistle lesson. The author of the epistle to Timothy is explicit about wealth in one of and includes one of the most quoted statements from the Bible. The letter warns the wealthy: Do not be proud. Do not count on your wealth, but count on God instead. Be rich in good works. Be generous. and live a life that is real. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. And in their eagerness to be rich, some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. And then we come to the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Scholars suggest that the parables may offer us the closest inkling of what the actual words of Jesus may have been. The rich descriptions, the aptness, the surprise ending, the invitation to enter their complexity make the parables worthy of a lifetime of study and reflection. Parables can be understood at different levels because we change and we bring to the parables our own life experiences and the limitations of our understanding. This parable gave me much to think about when I was about 15 or 16 years old. My parents thought that I needed to do more to witness to the gospel. And so they introduced me to a missionary from Seattle who specialized in preaching to Muslims, of whom there are more than 200 million in India. And so he invited me to join him one afternoon, and I went with him to the largest wholesale vegetable market in the city. In the early afternoon when vendors were closing shop and preparing to go home after a hard day's work, we set up the amplifier and microphone and sang songs. And then all of a sudden he invited me to preach in the national language, of which I was a very poor student. And so I relied on a pamphlet, a tract as they are called and pretty much read aloud from it. And that tract contained this story, this parable of the rich man and Lazarus. And it had in it lurid illustrations of the man surrounded by high flames and demons with horns and tails and sharp trident. And across this chasm was a very contented Lazarus reclining with Abraham. I preached with as much gusto as I could muster and the few people gathered around soon turned into a small crowd. And when they understood the import of my message, which is that all of them were going to suffer in hell, they got very angry and a few of them picked up rocks and began to hurl them. We hurriedly dismantled the equipment and got away. There were no direct hits and that was good. And then a few weeks later came the major festival for Muslims of Ramadan, the ending of that holy month when Muslims fast and are very generous. And they end after the moon is cited, they go to a prayer wall. And we went to the largest prayer wall in the city of Bangalore. Thousands of people were gathered there, gathered in their new clothes and all of them in a mood of celebration and gratitude to God for his compassion and mercy. And as they streamed out of the gates, there I was with my stack of tracts. And one of the men who glanced at it was infuriated. He was a very large and muscular man. And he grabbed the whole stack from my hands and tore them in half as wrestlers would tear a telephone book. And I don't know what was next on his agenda because I discovered that I could run very quickly. And I took shelter in a restaurant– and that was the end of my witnessing. And later in college, my attention and commitment went to Jimmy Hendrix and Led Zeppelin and the Grateful Dead. And I forgot about all this for a period of years until I was back in the study of the New Testament while I was in seminary and re-reading, studying the parables gave me pause. Parables draw us into a story that appears to be clear. And we have here a rich man dressed in purple. I hesitate to comment on purple with retired bishops in our midst and our vestry who recently sported purple feather boas. Purple makes one stand out from the crowd. In contrast, the poor man is covered with soores, open wounds. What did he suffer from? Perhaps leprosy or Hansen's disease at as it is called still common in some parts of the world. And this disease disfigures human bodies in such a manner that people recoil when they catch sight of a victim of this disease. What must rejection and exclusion on this level feel like is something we wonder about. But Jesus punctures many of our assumptions in this parable. Notice that the rich man with his sumptuous diet dies at the same time as Lazarus who lived on crumbs. Is it wrong to eat good food in the midst of poverty? Is it wrong to live a life of relative comfort when surrounded by people who don't seem to have very much? But the big question that this parable brings to us is whether there is an immediate reversal of status upon death. Are the rich going to suffer in hell while the poor enjoy heaven? It is easy for the parable to provoke a surge of righteous indignation towards all those who have more than we do. But how do we define rich? Is it anybody who has more than we have? The scale of wealth has changed so much in the world that we have to make an inflationary adjustment to what we consider wealth. So what was wrong with what the rich man did? I suggest that the parable is about the present and not the future. The kingdom of God is among us now. And God's love and grace are present for us now. If only we have eyes to see and ears to hear and hearts to respond. What are our our assumptions about the poor and the needy and those who suffer broken bodies and terminal illnesses? Do we unwittingly conclude that the people who do not have money and adequate resources to live a life of dignity are also deprived of joy and laughter and love? In your own growing up, if you grew up with less than your friends have, did that mean that you were also deprived of love and friendship and joy and the loving support of your family? And this extends to all people who present a different external appearance from ourselves. Do we instinctively feel pity for them and a and smug gratitude for ourselves? During my final internship when I was in the seminary, part of my assignment included a short stint at a leprosy mission whose work still continues. I was instructed not to be nervous as I spoke with these people and sat with them and preached to them because the doctors there told me that there was no danger of my getting infected. But through my conversations and interactions, I discovered that these people for whom I had profound pity and whom I had been brought up to fear and shun were no different from me. They joked, they laughed, they enjoyed good food, particularly alcohol. They loved music, they had families, they sent their children to school. And gradually my views changed. I realized that this parable is about the rich man missing opportunities for fulfillment that come from receiving God's grace and love. Lazarus, while deprived of almost everything we take for granted, is certainly not deprived of God's love and the love of other human beings. The description of his external state leads us to assume that his internal state is also catastrophic and tragic. However, it is not what we have but what we are that determines our completeness as human beings. We are meant to be grounded in God in a state of being rather than located in a state of human centered activity. In the 1960s, Robert Greenleaf, a prominent business executive, saw the power-centered authoritarian leadership style so prominent in the United States and he saw that this was not working. He published an article entitled The Servant as Leader, and he went on to create what later was named the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership leadership that advises prominent corporations and business schools. If those whom we lead do not grow as persons, if they do not become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, and more capable of becoming servant leaders themselves, then we have failed. This was the problem of the rich man, wholly centered on himself and his tribe. He had no time to think about other people. And this brings the terrible consequence in this life of being surrounded by people. People who probably hated him for his wealth or flattered him for what they hope to wheedle out of him. All such relationships are transactional. Jean-Paul Sartre's play No Exit has three characters after death in a room together, and pretty soon conflict, bitter conflict emerges. And one of them concludes: So this is hell. I'd never have believed it. You remember all we were told about torture chambers, the fire and brimstone, the burning marl, old wives tales. There's no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is other people. This is hell. To be cut off from loving relationships and authentic interactions. But to live in God's grace and unfathomable love is to be strong enough to withstand the worst injustice, cruelties, and conditions in the world, including what our bodies can put us through. To live in love is to live without fear, even in our powerlessness. May God grant us the grace to serve and not be served. Expressing the servantthood of Christ through our innermost being and thus truly living in the bosom of Abraham. Amen.