The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for October 7, 2007

Texts: Genesis 4:1-10/Luke 16:19-31

Title: “My Brother’s Keeper”

              Even as the blood of his brother soaked into the ground, Cain was confronted by God. “Where is your brother Abel?” was the question.  “I do not know [he responded]; am I my brother’s keeper?”  The response was likely made dismissively, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

               God would not be put off.  From the Lord’s perspective, Cain was his brother’s keeper.  Unfortunately, he no longer had a brother to keep.  The murder had been committed.  The deed was done.  Yet the question Cain put to God lingers as a very important one to this day: “Am I my brother’s keeper?”  What responsibility, if any, do I bear on my brother’s behalf? 

               The issue of my responsibility for my brother is as current as the headlines in the daily newspaper that chronicle the debates taking place in the Congress surrounding the budget Congress will propose to the President. Each year our legislators face off on the issue of funding the multitude of social programs the government maintains to assist the brother, or sister, in need.

               The debate over these programs in the Congress, but also in the coffee shop, or other places where people gather, is often vigorous, frequently contentious.  He all know that strong feelings are likely to be expressed when the issue of responsibility for my neighbor is debated.  

              There exists no broad consensus across the nation on how you and I are to respond to the brother or sister in need. What we in America have never said is that my brother or sister’s welfare is irrelevant.  We do not debate whether or not we bear responsibility for each other, the vast majority of us freely acknowledge such responsibility, the real issue concerns the degree of responsibility we are willing to accept.

               It is fair to say that the United States, among the developed nations of the world, has been quite progress in accepting responsibility for the needy brother or sister among us. While our ancestors brought no social service network with them when they colonized North America, the nation’s founders soon recognized that poor houses and debtors’ prisons offered no solution to meaningfully address the needs of those who for whatever reason were being marginalized. Those same founders soon recognized that the churches, synagogues, and other faith-based organization being formed were providing the only real relief being provided.

               Fast forward to the storm, and its aftermath.  How many times have you heard that it was the churches, and faith-based organizations, that have been most prominent in offering relief to the citizens of our region. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The nation’s founders recognized that the churches, synagogues and other faith-based organizations could not be expected to be the principle sources of relief for the brother or sister in need.

              The founders faced a practical dilemma, as well as a moral one, dilemmas that continue to engage local, state, and federal officials. Predictably the dilemmas concerning the form in which assistance should be rendered, and the degree to which responsibility should be assumed, have been resolved most easily in times of national crisis, at those times when people of all ranks in society experienced vulnerability.  Think of the Great Depression.                 In a chapter from his book “Freedom From Fear,” entitled “The Ordeal of the American People,” author David M. Kennedy, quotes a voice from the depression, Frank Walker, president of the National Emergency Council, “I saw old friends of mine—men I had been to  school with---digging ditches and laying sewer pipe.  They were wearing their regular business suits as they worked because they couldn’t afford overalls and rubber boats.  If I ever thought, ‘There, but for the grace of God---’ it was right then.” 

                 “But for the grace of God.” The Great Depression of the thirties that reduced Walker’s friends to ditch diggers was one of those moments in American history when men and women of the upper echelons in society were forced to re-examine the source of their good fortune. They discovered that they were vulnerable to the very forces that forced their neighbor to the margins. “But for the grace of God.”   

                 Seizing an opportunity to capitalize on this period of national vulnerability, Huey Long, then a U.S. Senator from this state, “launched the Share our Wealth Society.”  The platform was simple, “every man is king.”  He advocated the confiscation of large fortunes, “levying steeply progressive income taxes, and distributing the revenue to every American family in the form of a ‘household estate’ of five thousand dollars---enough, he suggested, for a home, an automobile and a radio.”

                  Long insisted that his “Share our Wealth Society,” was wholly consistent with religious values, declaring, “God invited us to come and eat and drink all we wanted.  He smiled on our land and we grew crops of plenty to eat and wear….”  Solidly aligning himself with the less fortunate neighbor, he insisted that the Rockefellers and the Morgans [people of great wealth] were depriving millions of their fellow citizens of the “good things” God created.

                  For all of his rhetoric aimed at the wealthy, Long was accumulating a substantial fortune himself.  Be that as it may, the rhetoric caught on. His “Share our Wealth Society” program enjoyed great popularity.

“But for the grace of God,” even those who enjoyed a steady, if reduced income during the depression, were forced to look over their shoulder.  Tomorrow might be the day when they shared their less fortunate neighbor’s plight.   

               “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The impulse to help the brother is strongest when I myself feel his pain. Fact of the matter is, however, there have been only relatively isolated periods in our history, notably the depression and World War II, periods in our history fewer and fewer of our citizens remember today, when the great majority of our citizens pretty much shared a common plight.               “Am I my brother’s keeper?”  I hear Cain disavowing any responsibility for his brother’s welfare. No, his response didn’t sit well with God.

              Again, the impulse to see my brother as my brother is strongest when I recognize his worth as being equal to my own.  When I fail to do that, God gets very upset.

              Our New Testament lesson offers strong testimony as to how upset God can get.  There are just three persons in the lesson Jesus taught, one of them described as a “rich man.” Notice whenever Jesus introduces a rich man into one of his lessons, that rich man seldom shows up very well.  Such certainly is the case here.  Three persons in the lesson Jesus taught, a “rich man,” Lazarus, and Abraham.

              The “rich man” is, of all the characters in the parables and stories Jesus taught, regarded the least sympathetically.  His comeuppance comes in Hades where its fires torment him day and night.  It is the only instance in the gospels where the final reckoning for sins committed on earth is portrayed. The rich man’s fate makes us shutter.

              The rich man’s suffering is so extreme that all he can think about is water.  “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.”  How much water could the tip of a finger carry?  Not much.  But even that small amount was withheld, and for two reasons.  First of all, Abraham reminded the rich man that “during your lifetime you received good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things.  Second, and importantly, “a 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.”

              A chasm.  Think of a ditch or ravine.  “A chasm has been fixed.”  We all are familiar with chasms.  Chasms separate and establish boundaries. 

              A chasm existed between Lazarus, now enjoying the good life at Abraham’s side, and the rich man, forced to suffer in the fires of Hades.  A chasm existed. And that chasm was man made. For his failure to be his brother’s keeper, for ignoring the plight of his suffering of his brother, the rich man had created the chasm, and for doing so was doomed to a terrible fate.

              We are all familiar with chasms.  Chasms in this instance represent the distance we create between ourselves and those God has charged us to care for. From time to time chasms close substantially as when during periods in our history like the Great Depression and the Second World War when most of the citizens feel united in their plight. Though it should be added that the divide existing between racial groups stubbornly refused to close during those periods.       

              In refusing to acknowledge the rights of our brother to enjoy the quality of life we ourselves so often take for granted, we, in effect, assume a prerogative that belongs to God alone. By our failure to help him where we can, we decide what expectations he can realistically maintain and what dreams he may ultimately harbor.

              Our wealth as a nation gives us extraordinary power.  It gives us the ability to, if we choose, substantially close the chasm existing between our brothers and ourselves.  We may not choose to accept that responsibility, but in failing to do so can we realistically assume that God will treat us more mercifully than the rich man in our lesson?

              Do you realize that nearly one billion people across this globe remain in extreme poverty.  Nearly one-third of all children in developing countries are underweight or stunted.  Half the people in developing countries lack access to improved sanitation.  An estimated three million people died of AIDS in 2006.  Annually there are an estimated 300 to 500 million cases of malaria and 1.2 million deaths. “According to statistics comparing the rich and the poor, the world’s seven richest men could wipe out poverty.”  In 2004 this nation spend $450 billion on the military, $15 on foreign assistance.

              There are many more statistics that could be produced to document the chasm that exists between the rich and the poor of the world.  But such statistics do not really convey at all the pain and suffering the numbers document.  Joseph Stalin, the brutal dictator who oversaw the death of millions, is quoted as saying, “one death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic.”   

               Lazarus is a tragedy, the million Lazarus’ scraping by on a dollar a day are a statistic.

              “Am I my brother’s keeper?”  We know what God’s answer is. But what are we going to do about it?

              World Communion evolved during the depression as a way to promote a global consciousness as we gather at the Lord’s table. Our denomination chose to use World Communion Sunday as a vehicle for promoting peacemaking, and the very best way to promote peacemaking is to attack the persistent inequities that separate those of us who will gather at this table from our brothers and sisters who will gather at tables like this one in the slums of Brazil, the thatched roofed huts of Kenya or the mosquito infested bottomlands of Bangladesh. 

              World Communion Sunday came into being as a means of affirming and celebrating God’s overarching commitment to all his children, as a means of reminding us that God shows no partiality, but that each child of his creating is precious in his sight and enjoys equal standing at his table.

              We do not feel a kinship with the world’s poor and suffering, because their plight is hidden in statistics, and only on rare occasions represented in our experience as a person in desperate need. That fact does not excuse people like us from informing ourselves about the plight of the billion and more people who lack adequate food, shelter or medical care.  It does not excuse us from lobbying our elected officials to increase the amounts of financial aid and other resources our nation is committing to keep our brother out of the claws of poverty.  It does not excuse us from the our responsibility as individuals and churches to find ways to meet and get to know the people represented in the poverty statistics.

              “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The rich man who feasted everyday as Lazarus lay prostrate at his gate, never asked that question, and it’s a pity he didn’t. He may have spared himself the great suffering he endured.

              We know the answer to the question the rich man never posed.  But what are we prepared to do about it?

              PRAYER

              Loving God, whose love is not allocated by continent, or race, or station in life, but is a free gift to each child of your creating, we lift up those whom poverty and lack of opportunity have marginalized.  For us statistics, for you men, women, and children with names and faces. For us a source of pity and regret, for you people deserving of respect and dignity.  For us a source of righteous indignation, “why do people have to live that way,” for you a challenge to people like us to make more than symbolic efforts to address poverty and the conditions that cause and perpetuate it. 

              Lord, there are reasons why some dine sumptuously while others scrape for food.  There are reasons why some live in comfortable homes while others live in hovels.  There are reasons why some walk miles to seek the services of a medical technician, while others have access to well-trained specialists armed with the latest tools of medical science. There are reasons for these inequities, and while we didn’t create them, forgive us for tolerating them. 

              As we break bread and share the cup this day may our vision carry us to that place on the far horizon where people are gathered as we are to do what we are doing, but around a crude table in a mud hut or an open pavilion at the edge of the forest. Not an African, an Asian, a Mexican, or a Native American.  In you distinctions do not maintain.  Each one is a child of your creating, our brother, our sister. Expand, O God, our capacity to see the world as you do, and to accord our neighbor the respect you would have them given.

              Lord, we lift up our nation in prayer, a nation that has been for so many generations a beacon of hope for the world’s people. A land we are proud to call home, we celebrate the principles set forth in our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution.  We are proud of our Founding Fathers, and those who have perpetuated the legacy of freedom we enjoy through great personal sacrifices on battlefields around the world. We are proud of the generosity of spirit that greeted immigrants to our shores, even as we acknowledge the prejudices and slights certain ethnic groups were forced to bear. May this nation continue to be a land worthy of the dreams of those around the world yearning to be free.              

              Abide, O Lord, with the residents of this city who continue the process of reclaiming their lives. May the frustration, impatience, and anger so many feel not undermine efforts to rebuild.  May those in city government who so often bear the brunt of complaints find the strength to bear the challenges they face.

              Lord, bring consolation to the family and friends of former sheriff Harry Lee as they mourn his loss.  We are grateful for the efforts he made over the course of so many years to protect and serve the people of Jefferson Parish.

              Lord Jesus Christ, founder of the church, strengthen the witness of this congregation of Christians that in the efforts we undertake your will may be done, your name praised.  Recipients of gifts and talents to use in your service, O Lord, may none of those gifts or talents remain unused but give visible expression to our love for you and our neighbor.

              As we lift our petitions for friends and family, we thank you for Leonard who has returned to us today.  As he enriched us with song, may his life be enriched as he shares his special gifts with his students and our community.  We ask a special blessing for Mary Ann today as she recuperates from surgery.  Grant her strength for the journey upon which she has embarked.   Be with Pam, Rudy, Shane, Wayne as they meet daily challenges.  Be with Richard Dickey that he may be strengthened during this time of testing.