Feeding The Beggar At Our Gate – When We Feel Overwhelmed By Need Transcript

 We live in a world that has extreme need, extreme poverty. There are people who live on a month that is less than what others make in a day, and even they who do that are facing extreme poverty themselves.

It's hard to go anywhere in the city, just a few miles down the road and Philadelphia without finding someone who is in need, someone who is hungry. The people that come through our doors each week face a tremendous need. We have a person who attends our church regularly, who is homeless. The need truly is great and it's unfathomable, and so we shrink from it.

We become overwhelmed by it. How can I do anything? How can I, in what little I have and what little I can do? How can I make a difference in such need? How can I change the fact that there are people around the world who die of hunger every day, who live in poverty and homelessness and in food insecurity?

The task seems too big. The need seems so great, and what in the world can I do about it? We ask that question all of the time. Sometimes we ask it out loud, and other times we ask it in our hearts, and sometimes we're asking it when we're encountered, turned by the need of someone we see each day. When I was in na, we lived in Nashville.

This was a while ago, but, it's the clearest example that comes to mind. One of the things that I tried to do was ride my bike to class, and so I took the same route every day. It was a hilly one. Usually I was not paying attention to what was going on around me because I felt like I was going to die.

I was not in the best of shape even having ridden my bike, but I would take the same route every day, and usually on that route in the same place. There was a man, likely homeless, definitely in need, and each day that I rode, I simply passed by him. Sometimes it was because I was out of breath staring at the road right in front of me because I didn't know if I was going to make it the rest of the way.

But other times I probably intentionally looked away so I wouldn't have to encounter him. So I wouldn't have to see the need and desire and ask in his eyes as I rode by and said, no.

When we see the needs of the world, I don't think it's us looking out at distant places where needs are tremendous. It's probably closer to those times I rode my bike and passed the same man over and over again because I don't think we as individuals have a whole lot of power to change the dynamics of the world on our own.

To meet the extreme need and extreme poverty, homelessness, and lack of care that exists thousands of miles away. But in our own backyard, on our daily walks just down the street, I think we have a role to play. Jesus tells the story of the rich man in Lazarus. I find it amazing and an interesting point that it's the poor man that is named the rich man is never named.

He tells this parable of this rich man who, lined his clothes with purple, which was an incredibly expensive dye, made from shellfish gathered by divers ground up, and turned into die. And it took a incredible amount of those shells to make just a little bit of purple dye. So anytime you see the color purple on linens in cloth, it's a sign of extreme wealth, and he ate his fill every day.

Then Jesus describes a poor man, Lazarus, who was covered and sored, who sat at the rich man's gate, and he was ignored, passed by. The only ones that paid him any attention were the dogs who were there to lick his wounds.

I don't think the rich man hated Lazarus. I don't think that was his sin. I think it was just indifference. He passed by without seeing him. He passed by without caring. He passed by. Without paying him any mind. I think that's where the rich man goes wrong, because Lazarus is not across the city. He's right at the gate.

The problem wasn't being aware that there was somebody in the need. The problem was whether he would act

The rich man never actually acknowledges Lazarus. Even in death. He sees him. At least that's a change. He sees him in paradise sitting next to Abraham. While he is being tormented, he at least notices him, but he never speaks to him directly. The rich man calls out Abraham or Father Abraham, send Lazarus to go get some water and bring it to me.

Abraham responds. No, he reminds them that when they were alive, the rich man had many things and Lazarus had none. And so now roles are reversed. And besides that, there's a great chasm that you can't come to us and we can't come to you. So the rich man again, cries out not to Lazarus, but to Father Abraham.

Then send Lazarus back to my household. I have five brothers who need to know what is in store for them if they don't change their ways.

And Abraham says, well, they have the prophets, they have Moses, they have the scripture. They have the same thing available to them that you had to, the same laws of God, the same commandments, the same guidance, and the same calls and warnings that the prophets give. When you ignore the poor in your midst, God is not happy.

The rich man says, yes, they have all of that. But surely if a man came back from the dead, then surely they would listen. And Father Abraham says, no. If they won't listen to Moses, if they won't listen to the prophets, then surely they would not even listen to a man who came back from the dead, perhaps pointing to Jesus's own resurrection and the fact that still people still deny.

So this rich man who didn't acknowledge Lazarus in life and barely acknowledged him in death, wanting Father Abraham to command him to do these things for him, ends his story in Hades and torment, knowing his brothers would join him someday.

This is a powerful story. Over the last few weeks, we've been talking about Jesus's teaching and the urgency to reach out, the urgency to repent the urgency, to share the good news, the urgency to seek and find the lost. And here it is now, more urgency. If you don't know when your end is coming, as we've talked about a few weeks ago, then who is at your gate today?

It's not a matter of who are you hating and who are you, and, and, and, and fighting against, but, and who are you casting down and, and beating and, and, and all of that. It's more of a benign question of who might you be ignoring in the fear and the face of huge need in the world and all of the things that we worry about when it comes to helping someone

We've created an easy way to walk past the needy. Those who are in need of care, attention help, food, medicine, and we walk past them, indifferent. Like I did so many times on my bike. And still, if I have to be perfectly honest when I'm walking in the city, avert my gaze even now for fear of being asked and having to say no.

And that's something I always wrestle with. How do I respond? How do I respond to the person who is at my gate, the unhoused, the hungry, the struggling, the forgotten?

Because the issue is not hatred for that person, but barely acknowledging that they're there at all. John Wesley taught that wealth was not evil, but it's dangerous when it blinds us to the needs of others. Now he decided to live on a fixed income and gave the rest of it away.

He did not leave an inheritance for, or his children, he didn't have children. He ended up dying destitute other than the books that he had collected. Now, I'm not saying that we are all called to such living, but his words of a calling to do all the good you can by all the ways that you can, and all the ways that you can challenge us to see the world and see the people at our gate to think about who we are and what we are doing and how we are spending our resources and what, we are placing our emphasis on, and making sure that inaction isn't the reason for our fall.

If we are seeking out all the ways that we can do good to all the people that we can do good for, we will notice and acknowledge the people at our gate. We can no longer walk past them pretending they don't exist or walk past them, assuming somebody else will help them or walk past them and say, well, if I help them, they'll just hurt themselves in the process.

But we must acknowledge and look at and say, can I do good for this person? Do I have the means and the ways to say I can do good in this person's life? By lifting them up, by giving them something, by walking beside them, by acknowledging their pain and suffering and seeing them for who they are as a child of God.

Now I know the need is great, and I know that there are things that we can do that actually hurt those who are in need. I'm not saying go and walk around with a wad of 20 or four $50, a hundred dollars bills in your pocket and giving it out to everyone who asks. But what I am saying is this, do you see the person that's asking when they ask, do you see who they are as a child of God?

Do you feel called in some way to respond? Can you at least acknowledge their humanity and not just avert your eyes and pretend that they're not there? The need out there is so great, and we're not going to fix it all. There's no way for any one of us to do so, but we can probably challenge the systems that create such poverty.

But what we can do in faithfulness and faithful living isn't about fixing every the world's problems, but walking around with intent and seeing and acknowledging. 

See people. See them for who they are as children of God. Instead of averting your eyes and walking past, make eye contact. Stop and learn their names. Acknowledge their suffering, even if there's not anything you can give them or help them with in that time. Build relationships. Acknowledge that they're there, especially if they're people that you see regularly 

support ministries, charities, and efforts that do create the space for sustainable change. Advocate for justice. This is things that we can do together to work towards solutions to homelessness and poverty. We're seeing today the dismantling of so many structures and so many systems that have been in place, that have been feeding the poor, making sure the sick have care, making sure the homeless have places to stay, and we can work together to challenge those changes, the dismantling of the various systems that are making sure more people have access to security, food, medicine, and living wages.

And one of the things that we can do to see the neighbor in our midst locally is serve finding ways and finding groups to work with. To volunteer with, to build relationships with people in need so that we can no longer just walk past them pretending they don't exist. When we walk beside someone, when we talk to them, when we make eye contact, we see them and must acknowledge them.

We are no longer able to like the rich man to say, Hey, sense, can you send them over somewhere else where they can get help? 

As a community of faith can be a part of the solution to the needs in the world when we work together. But that will invite, will require us to talk with one another to see how we can help encourage one another to help address our preconceptions. So that we might see the need in the world and our place in challenging it.

The Gospel's invitation is to challenge the rich man's conception in this story, both in ourselves and in others. We have someone who came back from the dead. Indeed, we have Jesus Christ, but we have the law.

We have the prophets. We have the Spirit speaking into our hearts. We simply need to listen and heed the warning and understand that what we are called to do. Scripture has already made clear. If we're willing to listen. So what's one step that you can take to this week? What's one area you may feel called to live into?

To see the need, to see the hurting. To see the lost. To see the ignored. To see the downtrodden. Acknowledge them for who they are and what they're going through. And no longer pass by and ignore

this parable. The chasm that exists in the afterlife already exists today, but today we have the chance to cross it on our own in the time to come. Not so much.

How can we build that bridge now over that gap

so we no longer step past those who are in need? Find ways to invite them to our table.