“Stewards Of The Gate”

Luke 16:19-31

I wonder if you know the story about Eddie?

For fifty-years, Eddie was the guy who maintained the rides at Ruby Pier, an amusement park. But then one day, actually on his 83^rd birthday, Eddie died attempting to save an 8-year old girl from a runaway cart high atop a ride called Freddie’s Freefall. The last thing he remembers is holding two soft little hands in his.

And there begins Mitch Album’s tale in his popular novel, “The Five People You Meet in Heaven.”

The basic idea of the story is that when people die they go through a process of encountering five people they met in life who help them relive certain experiences that significantly affected their lives. And in the re-living, they are able to be set free from the pain, and injuries, and guilt of the life they lived on earth.

In Eddie’s case, that means meeting again a person known as the Blue Man – and his old army platoon leader – and Ruby for whom the amusement park is named – and his wife Marguerite – and finally, a little Philippino girl named Tala who, without his knowing, had died as a result of Eddie’s actions during World War II. Eddie is devastated when he meets Tala. He had killed a child! And now he thinks he understands why his life has been filled with such guilt and bereft of any purpose other than fixing rides at an amusement park. And then – to make the guilt even worse – Eddie learns that it was Tala’s soft little hands that pulled him to heaven that day as the cart smashed him to death.

A huge, overwhelming sense of sorrow fills Eddie’s heart as he takes inventory of his life. And through giant sobs, Eddie says, “I was nothing. I accomplished nothing. I was lost. I felt like I wasn’t supposed to be there.”

And then Tala – the little Philippino girl – intervenes. She tells Eddie that, yes, his life had great meaning and purpose, and that he was supposed to be there. He asks, “Where? At Ruby Ridge. Fixing rides? That was my life…Why?”

And little Tala says in broken English, “Children. You keep them safe. You make good…for me.”

Once upon a time – a long, long time before Mitch Album wrote this book - Jesus told a similar story. In fact, the story of the rich man and Lazarus was a very popular tale in the ancient Middle East. There are at least seven versions of it found in rabbinical sources, and it was told in various forms in several other cultures as well. Many scholars trace the premise of the story back to Egypt where tales of the dead were many and often told.

And these stories can be powerful because sometimes you and I cannot truly see the meaning of our lives – the purpose of our living on earth – until we see ourselves in the context of eternity.

And so Jesus tells the story. There is a rich man who has everything. There is a poor beggar who has nothing. Both die. And it is in death that the two are brought face-to-face, albeit separated by a great divide. The rich man is in the tormenting flames of hell. The poor beggar Lazarus is in the safety of the bosom of Abraham. And there the rich man meets the meaning of his life.

Let me pause here to ask you why you are here. Not here at church today. Or in East Tennessee.

Why are you here? On planet earth.

And for that matter, why are we here? Why does Tellico Village Community Church exist? And I’m not asking about what our heroic founders had in mind when they gathered this congregation sixteen years ago. And I’m not asking for your opinion either.

I’m asking the kind of question that can only be answered when you venture over to the other side of life – like Eddie did – and like the rich man did.

It is a question that only God can help us answer. What is the purpose of our being alive as individuals, and together as this community?

This is a good question to ask ourselves, especially as we prepare to launch our annual Trails Through Tellico stewardship campaign. Because, you see, stewardship really is not about raising budgets and getting the money we need to pay the bills. All that is the result, but not the purpose of stewardship. Stewardship is about each of us rediscovering and renewing the very purpose of our being, and then accepting responsibility for it and faithfully using our time, talent and treasure – for the rest of our days - to fulfill the life and ministry God has given us.

So I want to invite you to come across the river with me today. Come with me to the other side where the Eddies, the rich guys, and the Lazarus’ of this world come face to face with the answers to the most important questions of all.

First of all, where do you find yourself in the story? Most of us probably see the rich man as a caricature of ourselves, although I want to encourage you to also see yourself in the poor beggar Lazarus. There are times, you know, when even despite our wealth, we become impoverished. A family tragedy. A devastating illness. A horrible mistake.

There are people in our community today who are going through some really hard times, and I want you to notice some things about Lazarus in the story. First of all, when no other human being would or could help, we are told that dogs came and licked the sores of Lazarus.

There’s something about dogs, isn’t there?

Do you all know Zany Puckett? That’s Bob’s dog. Zany is the reason we had to make a rule that dogs shouldn’t come into the church because Zany did that one Christmas season – just after we set up the beautiful Chrismon tree. Let’s just say that Zany staked out a claim on that tree.

Well, Bob Puckett used to take Zany over to visit Charles Morris at his parents’ house. Confined to bed with a terminal and completely debilitating illness, Charles would brighten with joy when Zany came. And Zany would jump right up in bed with Charles and cuddle with him. And Zany would lick Charles hands and arms and face with tender love.

Dogs are like that. Unconditional love. We can tell them anything. And they won’t judge us, or say a word to anyone. They’ll just sit there. Listening intently. Wagging their tails. Just waiting for the moment when they can do what they do best.

Lick us. With love.

The Bible says that when Lazarus was beyond the understanding and love of others, wild dogs came and licked his wounds. And I’ve had that happen, too, even though Sandy and I don’t have a dog anymore. But we have people in our lives who have that same kind of loving instinct – who come alongside and love us quietly and unconditionally. Many of you have done that for us in this past week after my uncle’s death – and I’m especially grateful for the gentle puppies in Jan Carroll’s Sunday School class who made cards for us and left them on my desk to find when we returned.

Even when life is dark, God sends people and animals and all sorts of things in his great creation to be with us in love. And it’s so important to notice that. They are visible reminders that God cares and is with us in the darkness – that God will be faithful to his promises.

And a second thing about Lazarus. When he died, it says the angels carried him to the bosom of Abraham.

Can you trust that promise as you go through your grief – or your chemotherapy treatments – or your psychiatric therapy – or that impossible challenge you’re facing at home? The Bible teaches that God sends angels to help bear us up and keep us in the safety of God’s eternal love. Neither illness, nor failure, nor death itself can separate us from the love of God.

And there are angels present in your life right now to make certain of it.

And the third thing about Lazarus is that he safely made it home to the bosom of Abraham – to the promises of God – to heaven itself. Death was not an ending, but a beginning. Not a dead-end street, but a ramp onto a new highway.

And it was there in heaven that Lazarus became the first person the rich man saw from his tormented situation in the burning flames of Hades.

I think it’s important to understand that Jesus is not using this story to teach details about the afterlife. He is using it to teach us the importance of THIS life and how we live it. It is a story about stewardship!

And I want you to notice something: there is nothing in this story that criticizes the man for being wealthy, nor does it make any comment on his failure to help the poor beggar Lazarus. It simply states that he was rich and Lazarus was poor. So what then is the problem with this man’s life?

Well, the problem is…the gate.

“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his GATE laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table.”

Human nature causes us to build walls around ourselves. We draw strong borders to protect our national interests. We create legislation to protect each state’s rights. We move to places like Lenoir City, Loudon, Tellico Village or Rarity Bay where we can create the kind of lifestyle we most appreciate. We join organizations and become members of clubs where can be with other likeminded individuals. We gather into churches – Baptist and Presbyterian and Baptist and Lutheran and Baptist and Methodist and…Episcopalian…and Baptist…and the Community Church, too. And we get involved with the things that interest us and make us feel whole. You cheer Michigan, and you cheer State. Some root on the Badgers and others the Buckeyes. But we all wear orange and sing Rocky Top. She has bridge and he has golf, and the kids are busy raising their own kids.

This is simply human nature. And all of these things involve building walls around our lives – walls within which we can go about our business and pursue our own happiness.

And Jesus simply points out in this little story that every wall we humans build has a gate.

And the measure of our lives is what we do with that gate!

The rich man kept his gate closed, as if to protect himself from the likes of poor, sore-infected Lazarus. But the point of the story is that the rich man lost his life in the process.

You see – and listen to this – the very purpose of your life can never be found inside the protected walls of your own existence. The purpose of life is only discovered outside the gate where people like Lazarus live – along with licking dogs, tending angels, and the very presence of God himself.

The rich man, it turns out, was not so much keeping the riff-raff out, but locking himself in – and in the process keeping himself confined to a world where God is not to be found.

Now, at the end of the story, the rich man realizes the terrible choice he has made, and prays that Lazarus might be sent back to warn others about the importance of opening the gate of their lives. But father Abraham answers, “No, they have Moses and the Prophets.” In other words, they have the scriptures. They have the Good News.

And they have US – to preach it! To live it! To demonstrate it! To call people to become faithful stewards of the gate of our lives, and the gate of our church.

There are many Christians who are perfectly content to consign the rest of the world to hell so long as they get to go to heaven. They are like the rich man, and they are in for the biggest surprise of their lives.

And there are many churches whose mission is to simply indulge the needs of their own members. They are like hotels for the saints rather than hospitals for sinners, like clubs for the insiders rather than mission stations to outsiders. They appear to be successful, but are in fact miserable failures because they have lost the meaning of what it is to be a church.

Which kind of Christian are you?

What kind of church are we?

And who do you think YOU’LL meet in heaven?