There was a rich man covered with
purple
and fine linen who dined
sumptuously every day.
Lying at his gate was a poor man
covered with
sores who longed for the rich man’s
table scraps.
Luke 16
.
.
Did you know that “doing nothing” can actually be illegal?
Many countries, but not the United States, have “Good Samaritan Laws” that
legally require citizens to assist injured people and people in
distress. The last time I checked, failure to offer assistance in France can be
punished by up to 5 years in prison or 100,000 Euros. This is actually the case
of the photographers at the scene of Princess Diana’s fatal car accident. They
were investigated for violation of the French "Good Samaritan Law,"
for their failure to offer assistance.
Did you know that “doing nothing” can not only be illegal,
it can also be sinful as well. This is actually the case in
today’s beautiful gospel story about a very rich man and a very poor man.
Before we look at the sin here, a sin of omission, let’s look at this wonderful
story in detail because it is the details that are so stark and shocking.
The rich man has no name, even though he has
traditionally been called “Dives,” meaning “rich” in Latin. Dives, in
today’s language, lived in a gated mansion, ate gourmet exotic
and costly food every day and dressed in the very finest suits.
Lazarus, on the other hand, oozing with open sores,
was dumped in front of Dives’ mansion. Peering through the gates, this
poor man could see loads of food being carried in and out of Dives’ mansion.
Poor Lazarus could not even imagine ever sharing in that wonderful food. He
simply longed to eat some of the baskets of bread scraps being loaded into the
dumpster, but no one ever offered any of it to him. Rich people back then wiped
their hands, not on napkins, but chunks of bread that were simply thrown away.
Too weak from hunger to fight them off, we are told that alley dogs came and
licked Lazarus’ open sores.
Dives was filthy rich, but that was not
his sin. Dives ate gourmet food every day and dressed in Armani suits, but that
was not his sin. Dives did not order his security guards to have Lazarus
removed from around his gate! Dives did not verbally or physically abuse poor
Lazarus! There is no indication whatsoever that Dives was evil. In fact, he
didn’t do anything harmful to Lazarus. However, that seems to be
the whole point of the parable: the rich man did nothing wrong, he
simply did nothing. His sin is that he didn’t even see Lazarus,
and because he didn’t even see him, he did nothing! He was so
self-focused that he had become complacent! He was so absorbed in living
his own cushy life that he didn’t even see the suffering right in front
of his front gate.
Dives was like “the complacent” that Amos the prophet
condemned in our first reading today - lying on ivory couches, eating lamb
chops and tenderloin, drinking fine wines and dabbing themselves in expensive
perfumes while the people around them starved.
Let me be clear on one thing. This gospel, again this
week, is not condemning wealth. Besides, you don’t have to be rich to be blind
to the suffering of those around you. Jesus did not condemn wealth. Rather, he
taught that “to whom much is given, much will be required.” He is teaching us
that the richer you are, the more responsibility you have, but he does not let
those of us who are neither very rich nor very poor off the hook! We all
have a responsibility to notice the suffering around us. The sin here then, is
not wealth, but the blindness that goes with being totally
self-focused.
The first step to helping those around us who suffer
is to notice them. We cannot do something about the poor and suffering
without compassion for the poor and suffering. We cannot have compassion for
the poor and suffering without first noticing them.
When I worked at Bellarmine University, we offered the
students yearly opportunities to notice the poor and suffering up close. There
were some who had their eyes opened in a dramatic way on trips to Guatemala and
Appalachia. For some these trips were life changing. Others volunteered to work
in places like nursing homes for the very old and places like the Home the
Innocents for the very young. We called them “consciousness raising”
experiences.
After I left Bellarmine, I started volunteering
personally in the Caribbean Missions in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, one of
the poorest countries down there. After I went down several times, I invited a group of five adults to join me – a doctor, a nurse, a computer teacher and two
other young adults. Others who could not go down got involved in the renovation
of the diocesan pastoral center in the Diocese of Kingstown and the purchase a
couple of needed vehicles. Some helped us send seven youth to world youth day.
Others were involved in sending school supplies, surplus medical supplies,
Christmas toys and used liturgical furnishings. I went down a total of twelve
times after I retired. Archbishop Gordon of Trinidad and Tobago, when he was
the bishop of Barbados and Saint Vincent, got me started.
Lately, I have raised the funds to build a new church
in Kenya, to build a new house for a single mother and sponsor her seminarian
son in Tanzania.
The thing all these experiences have in common, at Bellarmine, in the Caribbean and in Kenya and Tanzania, is they helped us all
wake up and take notice of suffering we were not aware of, something Dives was
unable to do until after he died. There he met poor Lazarus whom he never even
saw sitting at his gate and regretted his blindness after it was too late.
Poor Lazarus longed to eat the scraps from Dives
table, but nobody made and effort to get them to him. However, I am happy to
say that there are some people and organizations in this town who do
make sure that our leftovers are not wasted. All these amazing efforts
began with noticing. Kentucky Harvest was started by a man who noticed
that grocery stores and bakeries were throwing away perfectly good, but
outdated food while many were hungry. That organization has spread to other
cities. On one trip to Florida, I helped a local man of some wealth who
volunteered to pick up flawed oranges from a citrus grove to take to homeless
shelters. This Friday, I am doing a memorial Mass for his son who carried
on his work after he died. The dining hall downstairs at the Cathedral, staffed
by its many volunteers, has fed thousands and thousands over the years by
collecting leftover food from neighboring hotels, restaurants and food
companies. That whole operation began when a few people started noticing
the poor and the incredible waste and brought them together in a brilliant
solution. At Nord’s Bakery on Preston, volunteers from the Franciscan Shelter
House, as far as I know, still pick up day-old doughnuts to feed the hungry.
When I was working in the Caribbean Missions, we were able to send ten tons of
surplus and expired medical supplies coming out of our local hospitals and
nursing homes to the hospitals on the island of Saint Vincent through Supplies
Over Seas located here in Louisville. Because somebody noticed the waste
and recruited teams of volunteers, they help get it to needed areas around the
world, rather than dumping it in our local landfills.
Friends, the message today is simple: true
Christianity is not just about avoiding evil, but even more so about doing
good. Maybe our biggest sin is not the evil we do to
others, but the good we fail to do for them. Before
we can do that good, we have to look beyond the ends of our own noses, beyond
what’s going on in our own lives, and notice the people around us and
what is going on in their lives.
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