Lazarus – Candle in a Cave

Some of the old-timey Gospel music can be fun to listen to. Dr. Ruby Holland sang,
“Get back Satan, I’m running late
Get back Satan, I’m running late
Well I’ve got to get to Heaven, before they close the gate
Get back Satan, I’m running late.”

And Bishop Neal Roberson pleaded,
“Don’t let the devil ride,
Don’t let the devil ride,
Oh if you let him ride, he’ll want to drive…
Please Don’t let him drive your car…
Don’t do it, Don’t do it, Don’t do it!”

A simple theology—Jesus never complicated the message! That’s one of the wonderful things about musicians, artists, writers, and poets using their talents to express God’s truths. However, there are some—much like theologians—who go even deeper, creating works that require great skill and intellect to understand. Today, especially, I’m thinking about Dante Alighieri.

Dante wrote the epic poem The Divine Comedy, which consists of three major parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso (Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise). I’ll be honest and tell you that I have attempted it, but have not yet made it far. My sister-in-law recommended a translation to me, and it is on the way, so I plan to try again. Keep you posted.

For the opening verse of the first part, Inferno, Dante wrote,

“Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.”

For Dante, who acts as both the narrator and poet, finding himself in the dark forest means he has found himself in a place of sin and spiritual confusion. While searching for a way out, he meets the poet Virgil, who will serve as his guide through the nine levels of the Inferno, hell.

The deeper the level, the more heinous the sin. Level one includes the unbaptized and virtuous pagans. Level six is guarded by demons and reserved for heretics. Level nine is the home of Satan, where he chews on the worst traitors, including Judas Iscariot and Brutus, as in, et tu Brute?

For many centuries, Christians held a vivid and imaginative view of hell, but as we became more “enlightened,” that understanding gave way to doubt and disbelief. Now, for many, hell is nothing more than a myth that we tell children to keep them in line on rainy days. The author of the book, The Hell There Is, which we recently discussed at our Saints Book Club, states, “What is more common today, at least among the faithful, is not the outright denial of hell but a kind of practical denial of it by concluding, contrary to Scripture, that very few, if any, go to hell.” (p.2-3) He explains that individuals come to this conclusion because they don’t believe a loving God would condemn anyone to eternal punishment. However, for the author, God is not the one condemning people; rather, they are choosing hell themselves. To demonstrate this, the author references the parable of Lazarus and the rich man (also known as Dives, the Latin word for rich or wealthy). So, how does the parable show the man choosing hell over being condemned to it?

To begin (and I’ll refer to the rich man as Dives), Dives was very well aware of Lazarus’ condition. Lazarus was not sitting at the city gates where he might have occasionally been seen by Dives; instead, Lazarus was sitting at the gates of Dives’ house. Dives would have seen Lazarus every single time he went outside, yet Dives chose to ignore him. Dives did nothing directly against Lazarus, but sin isn’t limited to actions. We pray in the confession, “Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.” Sins of commission are the wrongs we do, and sins of omission are the good we fail to do, even when we know we should act.

Countless times throughout the history of God’s people, even before the time of Jesus, God called on His people to care for the poor. For example, Deuteronomy 15:11 states, “There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore, I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.”

Disobeying this command, Dives, fully aware of Lazarus’ needs, committed a great sin of omission. He was not compelled to ignore him but chose to. Dives did not choose the ways of God; he chose the ways of self and the devil, making a conscious decision to prefer hell over heaven. Further proof of this choosing is that once there, Dives’ attitude does not change.

In Hades and in torment, Dives looks up and sees Abraham and Lazarus in Paradise. He calls out, “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.”

That is the same attitude he had toward Lazarus while he was alive. Lazarus is a non-person to him. He does not ask Abraham to send Lazarus down to where he is so that he can beg for forgiveness. No. Instead, Dives asks for Lazarus to be sent down to serve him. “Abraham, tell that wretch to run this little errand for me.” Neither does Dives ask if he might come up to Heaven so he might escape his torment. He is neither willing to confess nor ask for forgiveness for his sins, which demonstrates that, despite the torments he is currently experiencing, he is still happy with the choices he has made. It is one of those situations where your only regret is that you got caught. Dives chose his current state, and he would rather remain in hell than walk in the ways of God. Do people truly make such an insane choice?

You are familiar with Jesus’ words in John 3:16—“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son…,” and John 3:18 tells us, “Whoever believes in Him [Jesus] is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” Then Jesus says something quite remarkable in verse 19, “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.” (John 3:19) “This is the judgment,” may also be translated as “This is the condemnation.” So, if we rephrase 3:19, we could say, “This is the condemnation: Jesus came into the world, and people chose the darkness—they chose hell—rather than Jesus, because they preferred their evil ways over the ways of God.”

Yes. The author of the book is correct in his assertions—God does not condemn a person to hell; they choose it. What makes this choice so woeful is that after death, there’s no second chance. When Dives asked for that cool drop of water, Abraham told him that he had received his reward while alive and ignored the needs of another person. Additionally, Abraham tells Dives, “Between you and us a great 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.” Death is not a threshold we cross. Death is a chasm that, once crossed, cannot be breached.

The author writes, “Think of wet clay on a potter’s wheel. If the clay is moist and still on the wheel, it can be shaped and reshaped, but once it is put in the kiln, in the fire, its shape is fixed forever. So it is with us that when we appear before God, who is a holy fire, our fundamental shape will be forever fixed, our decisions will be final. This is mysterious to us, and we only sense it vaguely, but because heaven and hell are eternal, it seems reasonable to conclude that this forever-fixed state is in our future.” (p.76)

With that understanding, I have some good news for you and I have some bad news for you. Let’s start with the bad news—“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” (Romans 3:23) and “the wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6:23) We have sinned and we are dead in our sin; therefore, we are already on the wrong and unbreachable side of the chasm. We are dead in our trespasses and sins because we too have not followed the ways of God. (Cf Ephesians 2:1-3) That’s the bad news. The Good News is this—like the clay on the potter’s wheel, we have not yet been placed in the kiln. Our final shape, our forever-fixed state, is not yet set. There is still time to make another choice—a better and eternal one—and that is what Jesus offers us all. Jesus has created the one and only way by which we can cross the unreachable chasm, and that Way is through Him. “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’” (John 14:6)

“Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.”

Certain actions we take and choices we make can lead us into that same dark forest where we lose the straightforward pathway. If we persist, then, in the end, the consequences of those actions and choices bring us to that Inferno which is forever fixed. If, however, we choose the Way that Christ Jesus has established, then we are gifted an eternal dwelling place with God in the New Jerusalem. My advice then is this,

Don’t let the devil drive your car.
Don’t do it, Don’t do it, Don’t do it!

Let us pray: Loving Father, faith in Your Word is the way to wisdom. Help us to think about Your Divine Plan that we may grow in the truth. Open our eyes to Your deeds, our ears to the sound of Your call, so that our every act may help us share in the life of Jesus. Give us the grace to live the example of the love of Jesus, which we celebrate in the Eucharist and see in the Gospel. Form in us the likeness of Your Son and deepen His Life within us. Amen.

You all know that I’m a fan of Stephen King, but many people won’t pick up anything he’s written. Too scary for most, although much of what he writes isn’t what you think it is. To illustrate the point, King tells a story. He says, “I was in a supermarket down here in Florida, and I came around the corner, and there was a woman coming the other way. She pointed at me, she said, ‘I know who you are! You’re Stephen King! You write all of those horrible things. And that’s ok. That’s all right. But I like uplifting things, like that movie Shawshank Redemption.’ And I said, ‘I wrote that!’ And she said, ‘No, you didn’t. No, you didn’t.’” Well, he did write Shawshank Redemption, which is a fantastic story. This week, I was reminded of a particular scene in the movie version.

An old prisoner, Brooks Handlin, has learned that he will be paroled, but instead of being overjoyed, he begins acting very erratic, even threatening to kill another prisoner. It seems odd to most, but Red—another of the characters—understands. Red says, “Brooks is just institutionalized. The man’s been in here 50 years… 50 years! This is all he knows. You know what I’m trying to say? I’m telling you, these walls are funny. First, you hate them, then you get used to them. Enough time passes, you get to depend on them. That’s institutionalized.”

In reading our first lesson today, you would think that Stephen King wrote it—the Valley of Dry Bones. To understand what Ezekiel was writing, we must go back in history.

In Deuteronomy, the Lord says, “If you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today—that is, follow the Law—the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth.” (28:1) A few verses on comes the “but.” “But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you.” (28:15) There follows a litany of curses that will befall the people if they break God’s commands, one of which states, “The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You shall go out one way against them and flee seven ways before them. And you shall be a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. And your dead body shall be food for all birds of the air and for the beasts of the earth, and there shall be no one to frighten them away.” (28:25-26) In those days, the victor in a battle would shame the ones they conquered by refusing to allow the bodies of the dead to be retrieved and buried. Those bodies were to lay where they fell as a sign of defeat. God said, if you break my Law, this will happen to you.

We know that the people were disobedient, and in 587 b.c., God had had enough, and the promised curses fell upon the people. Nebuchadnezzar, the king of the Babylonians, sent in his army, sacked Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, and took the people into captivity and exile. During the battle, 4,200 people were killed.

Ezekiel was a prophet and a preacher in Jerusalem. He was there in 587 when the Babylonians attacked, and he went with the people into exile. While in exile, he continued to preach and to have visions. What we read today is one of those visions. It began, “The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley; it was full of bones.” There is no indication in the text that this valley of bones is the land surrounding Jerusalem, but it is safe to assume, given that Ezekiel was there and saw the dead. It is also safe to assume that the Babylonians would not have allowed the dead to be removed from the battlefield so that the Israelites would be further humiliated. So, in his vision, Ezekiel, who was in exile, stood amongst the dried bones of the dead.

While there, God spoke, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.” As he spoke, the bones began to rattle. They put on flesh and skin. Everything was restored except for one thing—life. The Lord spoke to Ezekiel again and said, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.”

There is a Hebrew word for breath—rûah. There is also the word hārûah—The Breath. Breath is what those corpses needed to have life, but only The Breath—the very Spirit of God that breathed life into the first man, Adam—can give life-giving breath. Both of these words are in what God commanded Ezekiel to do-call on The Breath that life might be restored to those who had been killed, yet not only them but to all. Everyone.

God allowed the Babylonians to conquer the Israelites. It was the fulfillment of the curse that God promised for disobedience. Ezekiel’s vision of The Breath breathing new life into the dead is the sign that God is lifting that curse and restoring the people. For those in exile with Ezekiel, this message is one of great hope because their exile was not only an exile from the land but also an exile from God. Now, they have been given new life.

It is that same new life that we are given. The Breath of God is breathed into us, and we are no longer dried-up bones. Through Jesus, we are fully alive beings in relationship with our God. Yet, we so often still hang around in that valley of dry bones, clinging to our former life. Thomas Merton referred to this clinging as the life of the “old man.”

“For the ‘old man,’” Merton writes, “everything is old: he has seen everything or thinks he has. He has lost hope in anything new. What pleases him is the ‘old’ he clings to, fearing to lose it, but he is certainly not happy with it. And so he keeps himself ‘old’ and cannot change: he is not open to any newness. His life is stagnant and futile. And yet there may be much movement but change that leads to no change. The more it changes, the more it stays the same.

“The old man lives without life. He lives in death, and clings to what has died precisely because he clings to it. And yet he is crazy for change, as if struggling with the bonds of death. His struggle Is miserable, and cannot be a substitute for life.” (A Year with Thomas Merton, p.84)

More simply put, Merton is saying that we are like Brooks Handlin in Shawshank Redemption. We are “institutionalized.” We’ve lived so long in that valley of dry bones that it is all we know. We’ve gotten so used to living that “old man” life that even though we want to change, we cling to… death.

Standing at the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus “cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to [the people], ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’” Jesus, The Breath of God, breathed new life into Lazarus, and Lazarus left the tomb, the valley of bones, and removed all that had bound him to it. We are invited to do the same.

Come out! Come out of the valley and enter into this new life. Merton wrote, “For the ‘new man’ everything is new…. The new man lives in a world that is always being created and renewed. He lives in this realm of renewal and creation. He lives in life.” Come out and live in life. It is a gift to you from God.

Let us pray:
Breathe in us O Holy Spirit, that our thoughts may all be holy.
Act in us O Holy Spirit, that our work, too, may be holy.
Draw our hearts O Holy Spirit, that we love but what is holy.
Strengthen us O Holy Spirit, to defend all that is holy.
Guard us, then, O Holy Spirit, that we always may be holy. Amen.

Tag: Lazarus

Sermon: Proper 21 RCL C – “Dives in Hell”

Sermon: Lent 5 RCL A – “Institutionalized”

Share this:

Share this: