A Fly in my Soup
The Rev. Amy Morgan
September 26, 2010
Cellophane. That’s what he felt like. You could look right through him; walk right by him; and never know he’s there.
Mr. Cellophane, as he calls himself, is Amos Hart, a character in the musical Chicago, the husband of death-row celebrity Roxy Hart. He’s eclipsed by the fame and drama surrounding his wife, to the point where everyone completely ignores him, they don’t see him at all. He’s an invisible person. He’s like cellophane.
There’s a Mr. Cellophane in this story Jesus tells in the gospel of Luke as well. Lazarus lays at the gate of the rich man, dreaming of crumbs from the table, but no one even notices him. Every time someone comes in or out of the gated community, they practically have to trip over Lazarus. And yet, it seems they never even know he’s there.
Even in the afterlife, the rich man doesn’t address Lazarus directly. He talks to Abraham, telling him to send Lazarus on this or that errand for him, as though Lazarus weren’t even there. Lazarus is like cellophane. He’s an invisible person.
If you’ve listened to enough sermons, your mind is likely jumping to the end right now. Okay, who are all the invisible people we neglect to see in our world? We should see their poverty, share the wealth, and dwell in the kingdom of God. The end.
Not so fast. Before we think about who is invisible in their suffering, I want us to think about why people are invisible to us.
You see, the problem this story is really addressing is an inability to change, an inability to overcome the blindness to poverty created by privilege.
We can easily make lists of who those invisible people are – the homeless battling addiction; women and children suffering from domestic abuse; people around the world who don’t have clean water and nutritious food; people experiencing oppression because of their gender, race, ethnicity or sexual orientation; the list goes on. The fact is, we’ve gotten pretty good at making this list, checking it off, and tuning it out. The list is too long. The hurts we choose not to see, the hurts we ignore or tune out, the pain and suffering that threaten to overwhelm us are too pervasive to really see and engage. On every news station, in every newspaper, on the church prayer list, in every fundraiser there are Lazuruses lying at our gates. We have to trip over them to get in or out of our houses in the morning. And so the only way we manage to get to work or school or church, the only way we manage to get on with our lives is to ignore them, to make them invisible.
Part of our blindness has to do with separation, otherness. Abraham points out the gap between the rich man and Lazarus. It’s a gap that existed in their earthly life. That gap could have been bridged on earth. The man could have provided Lazarus with the crumbs from the table he so longed for. On earth, the two men were only separated by a gate. But in the afterlife, they are separated by an insurmountable chasm.
This is because ultimately, invisible people, invisible suffering, is, at the most basic level, a failure to see our common humanity. The two men in this story couldn’t be more different. One is rich, and the other is poor. One feasts sumptuously every day, and the other looks longingly at the crumbs that fall from the table. One is dressed in royal robes, and the other is dressed in open sores. The differences between the two men in this story are easy to see. There is one, and then there is the “other.” Differences, otherness, is easy to spot. And that otherness permits us to ignore each other. The rich man in Jesus’ story had, in his interpretation of the law, blanket permission to ignore Lazarus. In telling this story, Jesus is lashing out at the Pharisees, whom he calls “lovers of money.” The way they interpreted the law, Lazarus’ poor condition was not simply a matter of bad luck. It was a curse from God. The wealthy and powerful were thought to be blessed by God, while suffering was viewed as a form of divine judgment. To have helped Lazarus would have meant interfering with the work of God.
We may not use the law to justify turning a blind eye to suffering, but we have ways of legitimizing our inaction, too. We couldn’t possibly know why that person is homeless, or what global economic forces cause global hunger, or how that child came to be in foster care. And since we don’t know, we don’t have to do anything about it. We don’t have to recognize that those invisible people share our common humanity. It even becomes socially permissible to regard some people as not worthy of aid. We don’t know if the person on the street will use the money we give them for booze or for food. We don’t know if that organization will effectively funnel our funds to those most in need or use it for their own overhead. And since we can’t know for sure, we feel we have an excuse for not acting.
Poverty and suffering are the fly in the kitchen. We may hear it buzzing, we might swat at it unconsciously. We might even open a window and hope it flies out. But it isn’t the fly in our soup. Poverty and suffering don’t offend our sensibilities the way they should. A fly in our soup gets noticed. We do something about a fly in our soup – immediately. Jesus places the poor and the suffering at the center of the kingdom of God. For Jesus, poverty and suffering, those things that make people invisible, are the fly in the soup of the kingdom. As long as they’re in there, it’s just not going to taste right.
While the rich man in Jesus’ story obviously does not experience a change of heart even after he finds himself in a state of eternal misery, he does realize that the kingdom of God was not what he expected. He sees the fly in his soup and asks his waiter Abraham to remove it. When the rich man discovers he can’t be helped, he wants to help others like himself. His concern is still not for the poor and the suffering. He still can’t see past the differences between he and Lazarus. Even sharing the most human of experiences – death – with Lazarus, the rich man cannot see their shared humanity.
The rich man wants Abraham to send Lazarus back from the dead to warn his five brothers, who we can only assume enjoy the same wealth and privilege as the rich man. Abraham responds that, if the man’s brothers won’t listen to the law and the prophets, neither will they listen to someone raised from the dead. It’s a pretty dismal message. Right up there with Jesus saying, just a few verses later, that it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a wealthy person to enter the kingdom of God.
We’re left wondering, “Was Abraham right?” We find our place in this story not through identifying with the rich man or with Lazarus. These two characters are drawn in extremes. Our place is not in this afterlife drama. It’s back on earth. We’re the five brothers who’ve been given the law and the prophets. We’re the ones left behind to sort it out for ourselves. So we return to our list of invisible people and realize that we still aren’t listening. Maybe we wonder if it’s really possible to overcome that gap between the rich man and Lazarus. Is this story telling us we’re doomed by virtue of having more than someone else? By having all we need and more when others do not?
But then we remember the good news. The rich man got what he asked for. Someone was raised from the dead.
In the gospel of John, a man named Lazarus, not necessarily in reference to this story, is raised from the dead by Jesus. Through that event, many people came to believe in Jesus, but many others began to plot his destruction.
More to the point, however, is the way in which this story points to Jesus’ own resurrection. God raised Jesus from the dead so that we might believe him and what he said (and Moses and the prophets before him). God raised Jesus from the dead so that those who had much would remember to care for those who have nothing. God raised Jesus from the dead so that our story might have a different outcome from that of the rich man and Lazarus. This is a personal call to action, for certain. But it is also a call that is carried out in community. This story undoubtedly contains a personal, individual conviction that we have to wrestle with. But it’s not something we wrestle with alone. As the church, we are part of Christ’s resurrection. We are the resurrected body of Jesus in this world. We are the voice from the dead calling for repentance, justice, compassion. Many people believe the church ought to be the place where the afflicted are comforted and the comfortable are afflicted. That would make the church look a good bit like the afterlife described in this story. And I wonder, I truly wonder what that would look like here at First Presbyterian Church.
It might look a bit like the Pontiac Shared Partnership. We see the brokenness of the educational system in Pontiac, and we support teachers and students in their most formative years of learning. We see the women and children in New Bethel’s shelter, and we find ways to help care for them. We see our neighbors at New Bethel and recognize that while we might be very different, we have a shared humanity and a shared faith in Jesus Christ that unites us in ministry.
It might look like the work of our Wider Church Outreach Committee, inviting us to walk to end hunger in our local community and around the world; encouraging us learn about the challenges faced by foster children and families and get involved in education and provide resources; hosting a mission fair where everyone can find some small way to serve populations of invisible people.
It might look like our Deacons, caring for the immediate, basic needs of people in our church community and neighboring areas. It might look like our Presbyterian Women, holding rummage sales and taking up Birthday offerings to provide for the needs of people nearby and around the world. It might look like our Youth Ministry fundraising and traveling to Mexico to provide our neighbors with a place for education and hope for the future.
It might look like the work of the Health and Inclusion Committee, helping us learn about children and adults with special needs so that we can welcome them more fully into the life of the church, or hosting an Inclusion Conference and educational classes so that everyone can learn to see a population that has been largely invisible.
I believe we are, or at least we can be, a church that stops stepping over the suffering on our doorstep and does something about it. I believe we are, or at least we can be, a church that gives a voice to the voiceless and uses the power we have to serve God’s kingdom vision rather than our own desires. I believe we are, or at least we can be, a church that reaches out to those on the margins, that breaks down the gates separating us, and stretches across that chasm between people. I believe we are, or at least we can be, a church that places the poor and the suffering at the center of all we do, that sees suffering, invisible people as the fly in the soup, not the fly on the wall. I believe we are, or at least we can be, a church that makes sure no one in our community feels like Mr. Cellophane, like they are invisible, like they are less in our eyes and in the eyes of God. I believe we are, or at least we can be, a church that recognizes our shared humanity and is therefore driven to ensure we all have what humans need to survive and to share in the abundant life of God’s kingdom. We are a church that proclaims, like John the Baptist in the wilderness, that the kingdom of heaven is near because the poor hear good news and the lowly are lifted up. Thanks be to God. Amen.
