Sermon for Pentecost 17, Year C, 2001

Trinity Cathedral, Trenton, NJ

Reading: Luke 16:19-31

It was a sunny day in New York on Friday,
and unless you looked carefully
everything was
as it has always been:
Subways packed with morning commuters,
bicycle couriers dodging crazy taxi drivers,
and road crews
digging up the pavement.

But just below the surface
were the stories.
On 42nd street, just by Grand Central Station,
photos of the missing
have been joined by scrawled letters of condolence
and cellophane wrapped flowers - an impromptu shrine.
In a Roman Catholic church on the lower east side
700 people gathered with clergy of five faiths
to remember friends
from halfway across the world
who came here to die.
And on the train,
a woman sat talking with a stranger
about the friends
she had lost.

Everybody
has a story,
and not just in New York.
We remember where we were that fateful morning,
we wonder how it could be true;
we struggle with a whole bundle of emotions, from sadness to anger,
from fear to thanksgiving.

Like Pearl Harbor, Kennedy's assassination, the Challenger Disaster,
the attacks of September 11
have joined the list of tragedies
which are markers
of our lives.
They, and all that has happened since
are seared in our memory,
and our stories
are forever changed.

And so we tell our stories,
trying to find in them
some patterns,
some hint of meaning,
some glimmer of hope.
From time immemorial
telling stories
has been the human way
of making sense of our world.
Clustered round campfires,
sitting on the laps of our grandparents,
whispering in playgrounds,
we tell the stories
which describe our history,
which shape our identity,
which define our world.
And which connect us
in a never ending stream
of humanity
so that we are never truly alone.

Story telling
wraps us
in community,
it bonds us,
speakers and listeners alike,
in an intimate web
of experience and event and emotion.
Story telling
helps us sort through
our realities and fantasies,
our pains and our joys.
Telling our stories
somehow clarifies them,
validates them, processes them,
and frees us to step forward
into the next part
of the story.
Listening to stories
widens our world,
shapes our thinking
and bonds us in intimacy.

Stories might seem
to be about the past,
but in the process
of speaking and hearing about the past
we prepare ourselves for the future.
In the telling and the hearing
of them,
we build faith
we build hope
we build community.

A number of times these last few days
I have heard the Holocaust
invoked.
Sometimes it's used
as an example
of a just war, a model of another tyrant
who had to be destroyed.
Other times
it's as a model
of remembrance.
For it is in the very bones
of the Jewish people
to remember.
Year after year,
at the time of the Passover
they recite the story of the Exodus,
of hope in the face of extinction,
and freedom
in the face of fear.
And year after year
they add to that story,
entwining the story of God
with the stories of those
who have struggled for a justice
embraced by mercy,
in a world
where neither
can be assumed.

It might be easier
just to forget,
to allow ourselves to fall
into a state of collective amnesia
which would at least mask the pain,
but it's the stories
which help us move on,
stories which reframe
our lives,
stories
which reconnect us
with God.

Stories
which tell of a common history
and a common hope,
in each and every
generation.

And so
we tell
our stories.

It's no surprise then
that Jesus, brought up on the stories
of Passover,
told stories too.
Stories which built on the tradition
he had received
from his parents
and teachers
and community.
Deep in the tradition,
it was to the tradition he turned
to teach others.

The story of the rich man and Lazarus
is probably one he had heard
from his childhood, a story well known in the community
as a way to teach
about the importance of justice
and the use
of wealth.
But as Jesus told it,
it became something else.
It became a story
about stories.

You see,
the rich man
had all the evidence in the world
to teach him to live
a different
way.
He had heard stories
from his childhood,
stories of a God
who created all humanity
in his own image,
stories of a God
who welcomes strangers
and cares for the dispossessed and weak,
stories of a God
who does justice and loves mercy
and calls the people of God
to do the same.
He had heard the stories
but he hadn't listened to them,
not that you could tell, anyway.

Lazarus
had lain outside his gate
long enough
for his sores to ooze,
long enough
for the dogs to find and lick him,
long enough even
for the rich man to learn his name.
But the years of stories
had meant nothing.
Justice
had not penetrated the rich man's thinking,
compassion
had not touched his heart,
mercy
had passed him by.

"Send Lazarus," he said to Abraham,
"send Lazarus as a messenger
to warn my brothers."
"A messenger?" answered Abraham. "A messenger?
They have had many messengers,
and so did you. But you did not listen.
You heard the stories
of Moses and the prophets.
You heard them
all your life.
But you did not listen,
you did not listen
to the God of justice,
you did not listen
to the God of compassion,
you did not listen
to the God of mercy.
You heard the stories
and you did not listen.

Like most of us
the rich man tried to argue his way out of it.
"But if someone
were to come back from the dead, then
it would be different. Then
they would listen. Then..."

"No," said Abraham.
"Then
they would ignore him,
just as they ignored
Moses
and the prophets. They have stopped listening
to the stories."

Because those stories
had the power
to bring life,
the stories
could have shaped the rich man's life
into a life of justice, compassion, mercy.
But he did not listen.

Instead
he listened to the other stories,
stories about self-preservation
and financial success,
about the failures of the needy
and the pleasures of wealth.

And at the point
when he needed it most
his ears had been closed to the only story
which really mattered, the story
of a God who saves.
It is too simplistic
in this time of stories,
to say, as some would,
that the only story we need
is the story of God.
Because God
does not exist in a vacuum.
God inserts
God's own self
into this world, God inserts
God's own self
into our stories.
That's really what the incarnation, the coming of Jesus
in his life death and resurrection
is all about.
God among us,
God's story and our stories
all muddled together,
so that they can' really be pulled apart -
and that's exactly
how it should be.

Because as we tell our stories
we will find God present, sometimes
in the most unexpected places.
And as we listen to other's stories
we will find God there too, sometimes
in the most unexpected places.

It is story-time
right now.
There are stories to tell
and stories to listen to,
stories to receive
and stories to question.
Because not all stories
are good, not all stories
bring life.
The rich man found that,
and we find it too.

There have been plenty of rumors
these last three weeks,
and there have been stories told
deliberately
to fuel hatred.
We have
no part of these.

As Christians
we are called
to do justice,
to love mercy,
to walk humbly
with our God.
But there are stories to listen to, stories
of courage,
of faith,
of hope.
There are stories of God
in unexpected
places.
These stories
are our heritage, these stories
are our future.
Listen to them, tell them!
For they are our stories,
and God's stories too,
and through them
we, with God,
hand in hand,
will bring life and healing and hope
to this broken
world of ours.

Raewynne J. Whiteley
30 September 2001