Episcopal Church of the Messiah

Worship Service Sermons

Proper 21C,  September 30, 2007

 The Reverend Canon Brad Karelius

A Heart to See and Feel

Last Sunday a Santa Ana woman was deported.

Last Sunday Maria Rosario Ruiz was deported.

Last Sunday Maria Rosario Ruiz, a member of this church for 5 years, married here 2 years ago to her husband, Martine, an American Citizen, mother to a six month old son, came up at the birthday blessing time and told us that she received a letter from INS and had to report to LA by 2pm, to be taken to Laredo Texas and then to Juarez Mexico, 1500 miles from her home in Mexico.

Last Sunday a woman was deported.

I ask you to pay attention to where your mind and heart are right now as I share this news with you? What are your honest thoughts and feelings?

Jesus tells a story in the gospel today about a rich man (Dives) and a poor man Lazarus. A story with sharp contrasts. Rich man Dives lives in extravagant luxury. Poor Lazarus struggles in utter destitution. Apparently Lazarus lived at the front door at the rich man’s house. Did Dives ever leave by the front door? Did he have to step over Lazarus? Jesus describes Dives as emotionally numb to the presence of poor Lazarus.

Both men die in Jesus’ story.

The rich man goes to hell where he suffers in the fiery torments. He encounters Father Abraham, another rich man who was generous and hospitable to all.

Abraham reveals more contrasts.

He asks the rich man to remember how it was for him on earth: how he now is in torment and Lazarus is in comfort.

The rich man struggles for some relief and wants to save his family from these consequences. But he is stripped of hope. There is an eternal gulf between him and Lazarus and with the living that cannot be reversed.

Dives, the emotionally numb one should have repented before he died.

What is Jesus doing here? Predicting punishment for the unfeeling rich or trying to scare them?

Luke remembers this story and his target is the assumptions and attitudes of this world. He is saying that the way that the world works is not the way that God works.

I am remembering the early Protestants who wanted some assurance that they were among the elect predestined for heaven. John Calvin wrote that we can’t really be sure, but if you are successful in business and amass capital that could be a sign of God’s blessing. The inverse of this is that poverty is a spiritual problem: the poor people must have something wrong with them, because they are poor.

The culture we live in teaches us to compartmentalize our religious values from the rest of our life. OK here on Sunday, in God’s house, or reading a spiritual book, or praying, but the implications of Jesus’ instructions to us should not infiltrate our whole lives. Politics and economics are in the real world.

And yet prophets like Amos and Jesus do see religious faith as connecting all of our life together. The real energy of God strives to rearrange the goods of the earth so that all people on earth will share them.

One of Luke’s goals in his gospel and the Book of Acts was to encourage his rich parishioners to help the poor parishioners.

In this mornings’ readings Jesus and Amos are critical of the emotional numbness and lack of awareness of the rich.

As Elie Wiesel wrote:

Last Sunday Maria Rosario Ruiz was deported.

I shared this story with many people this past week. Immigration is an emotional hot button. I shared the story of Maria Rosario and people listened. Then for many I noticed a mental shift, from listening about the plight of a member of our church, to general reflections on law, border security, and consequences for decisions.

What concerns me is our indifference and emotional numbness to a member of our church. I encountered very few people whose heart was aching for a mother whose child was wrenched away from her.

Even now you are having a reaction to what I am saying. "But she is illegal. She committed a crime. She brought it on herself. She should have found a good immigration attorney."

I am not going to try to interpret Jesus’ directives for our problems with porous borders or politicians who cannot come together to solve social problems.

I see Jesus and Father Abraham encountering Dives and asking him:

God’s judgment is on our numbness and emotional indifference and the ways that we allow our brain to insulate us from the tugs of our heart.

But Blaise Pascal responded: "the heart has its reason of which reason knows nothing." When we face complicated problems, the answer is not always in our mental processes of reason; there is a deeper wisdom in our hearts, deep within us. Within our hearts, vulnerable and open to God, will be found wisdom to give us direction, when our minds find confusion and conflicting choices.

Instead of only engaging our mental processes to debate an important social, political, economic problems, like immigration and undocumented aliens; Jesus and Amos are saying today: use your heart. Go deep into that place where God lives in you. Allow yourself to be vulnerable to the plight of another human person. Ask for God’s grace to be generous and open to other possibilities for this person.

If you cannot do this, Jesus is saying: you cannot walk with me as a disciple and there is a great gulf between us.

I cannot tell you the answer to our problems about immigration and border security. We do need to have a serious dialogue as a parish about this some time, where all voices are heard, and no one is discounted.

The fact is about 50% of our Spanish speaking parishioners are undocumented. Many have been coming to this church for more than ten years. They all live under a pall of great fear, anxiety, and apprehension. These are our parishioners. They will worship and eat with you at our Hispanic Heritage event next Sunday. What is your heart saying to you right now about our brothers and sisters?

At the Spanish mass today we are responding to the family of Maria Rosario Ruiz. I am giving the family money to fly her from Juarez (where over 1,000 women were murdered in the last 5 years) to her hometown in Mexico. Because her husband is a citizen he will be able to visit her and bring their baby to her.

In two weeks we will have a special forum on immigration rights by a trusted nonprofit resource. (INS has told us that we should not be informing undocumented persons of their rights).

We are telling our parishioners that if you get a letter from INS the first thing you do is call Carolyn or me.
We are preparing cards with their rights and also contacts for honest, competent immigration attorneys (many have been victimized by unscrupulous attorneys).p

As Christians we can use our minds to think about and debate beliefs and values in the American process of valuing thoughtful dialogue.

As a Christian where does Jesus want you to go with this and where are you having a hard time? You can ask the Lord for help, you know.

Are you able to feel for this woman and her family?
Are you able to pray for them in this hard time?
Are you able to feel and pray for our other Messiah parishioners who live in daily fear and apprehension?

I believe God has inspiration for us in solving these problems, but the answer will be found in connecting to wisdom that is in the realm of the heart and a generous God.
What Jesus asks of us is simply that we see the poor and the immigrant among us, that we do not let affluence become a narcotic that knocks out our eyesight. Riches are not bad and poverty is not beautiful. But nobody gets into heaven without a letter of reference from the poor. Amen