St. Andrew’s Pictou, September 26^th 2004          PWS&D Sunday

 

The High Price of Self-Absorption

 

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15

1 Timothy 6:6-19

Luke 16:19-31

 

There is a story about a little boy in hospital who was not doing well at all for any known medical reason. The medical staff just could not explain why he was not getting better. His problem had been dealt with and he should just be getting better now, but he wasn’t.

 

Because he had been in hospital for awhile and was missing school, a teacher had been arranged to help him keep up with what was going on in school, so that he wouldn’t be too far behind when he went back. For some reason, the teacher arrangement had been delayed, but she finally arrived and started helping him with his math and English.

 

A funny thing happened.

 

The boy started to get better soon after the teacher arrived. Some investigation was done as to why he had now started to improve. The reasons surfaced. The boy had never been in a hospital before and thought that he was going to die. When the teacher came in and starting teaching him, he figured that they wouldn’t bother wasting time to teach math and English to a boy who was going to die and so he figured he must be going to live, and so he started getting better.

 

For the boy, hope was reborn in (what was for him) a hopeless situation. He had been totally self-absorbed by the hospital experience and all of the health concerns. The arrival of the teacher re-connected him to the bigger reality of life and getting back with his classmates.

 

We adults can also all get absorbed by the matters at hand in our own little personal life. The concerns of our own lives seem so big and important; it is difficult to see that there is more.

 

You may think that you are having a bad day, but Jeremiah was confined to the court under guard by the King of Judah. His country had been invaded and the city of Jerusalem was under siege by the mighty Babylonian army. He was held under guard because he was prophesying that the Babylonians were going to take over the city, probably a fore drawn conclusion by the prophet that a small country could not withstand an attack by the largest military power of the day. Jeremiah was having a bad day.

 

The power in this passage comes from the fact, that the prophet Jeremiah, who in spite of the fact that he was prophesying while that at any moment the country was to be taken over by the Babylonians who were laying siege to the city, he bought a piece of land!

 

Now think of it for a minute! If your country was being overtaken by military force, is this a time that you would go out and buy real estate?

 

In fact this is what he did and we are given his actions in detail:

“And I bought the field at Anathoth from my cousin Hanamel and weighed out the money to him, seventeen shekels of silver. I signed the deed, sealed it, got witnesses, and weighed the money on scales. Then I took the sealed deed of purchase, containing the terms and conditions and the open copy; and I gave the deed of purchase to Baruch son of Neriah, son of Mahseiah, in the presence of my cousin Hanamel, in the presence of the witnesses who signed the deed, and in the presence of the all the Judeans who were sitting in the court of the guard.”

 

Jeremiah then gave instructions for the sealed deed and the open deed to be put in earthenware jars so that they would last for a long time. WHY did he do this and why are we given so much detail?

 

Jeremiah himself, gives us the answer of why he dramatically witnessed to all the people:

“For this says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.”

 

The people of Judah were consumed by their plight. The Prophet Jeremiah was giving them hope by carrying on a real estate transaction in the middle of a war zone to show them that according to the word of the Lord, the land will be restored to the people, as it later was. Jeremiah was a realist. He knew that there was more to the story and was not consumed by matters at hand.

 

Jesus Christ was a realist. When he was here on earth he lived like we do: he got tired, hungry, thirsty, and angry. He felt pain when he was assaulted and he bled when he was cut.

 

The story that same Jesus gives us today is “a reality check” of the highest order.

 

In the story we have from him today, we move from Jeremiah’s story of “a nation being self-absorbed” to just “one person being self-absorbed,” a rich man who has no name, except that we know he is rich. The other main character is a man consumed with pain, called Lazarus who begged at his doorway. The rich man had the power to relieve the suffering of Lazarus, but he did not.

 

The poor man languished at his gate every day; “Lazarus, covered with sores who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores.

 

The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side.”

 

As you can see, the tables have been turned; at death, their fortunes have been reversed.

 

The rich man called out in agony, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to did the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.”

 

Abraham explained that this could not be done because there was a great chasm between the two and it could not be crossed either way. Request denied.

 

So the rich man went on trying to do what he could from his new found knowledge and wisdom about the consequences of human choice.

 

“Then father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house – for I have five brothers – that he may warn them, so that they will not come to this place of torment.”

 

But Abraham tells the rich man that his brothers have Moses and the prophets to listen to and they don’t need to hear the same information again from Lazarus.

 

So the rich man tries to bargain again, “No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.”

 

Abraham gives him the final decree: “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”

 

Folks, Jesus is telling us something in life that is hard for us to hear. For those of us “who have ears to hear,” this story tells us that some of our choices and actions in life are non-reversible.

 

Unlike our VCR’s, for some of our choices in life, there is no “rewind button;” the consequences of our actions are final, irreversible, and irrevocable.

 

I happened to be switching channels the other night and there was a program on Donald Trump. Awhile back, his team of financial advisors was flying to a meeting in Atlantic City in a helicopter and it crashed and they all died; his whole financial team, all of them: dead!

 

Trump said it shook him up. Doesn’t he know that people die and helicopters can crash? Do you think that maybe Trump was so self-absorbed he thought that death would pass him by?

 

With all of his wealth and power Donald Trump was self-absorbed that he didn’t know that he was no different than any other person in the world: death happens; accidents happen. There are absolutely no exceptions to this reality in life. (And he is on the reality TV show!) Just because you can afford a fleet of helicopters, doesn’t mean that a helicopter can’t crash and people can die.

 

As rich as he is, Donald Trump learned the high cost of self-absorption: nobody is exempt from the reality of life, and if you forget that you are not “the higher power,” you are in for a rude shock.

 

If you think that almost 2600 year old text from Jeremiah chastising Judah over its self-absorption is out date. Think again. The modern day Jeremiah is Kofi Annan. This man chosen by the United States to be the Secretary General of the United Nations, recently said that the US invasion of Iraq was ILLEGAL! “Prophet Kofi” quietly said that the US invasion was illegal and that all of the world’s countries must respect “the rule of law.”

 

The information coming out from the Arrar inquiry says that the US just wants our intelligence information and they will use it the way that they want. We are getting the message that our Canadian Citizenship will not be respected by US authorities.

 

I have relatives and friends who I love and who are Americans, but USA government is being totally self-absorbed and ultimately, the whole world will all pay a very high price for their self-absorption.

 

Each and every one of us is loved by God, but we live in a context where all of the other people of the world are also individually loved and cherished by God.

 

There are two parts to the equation: “us” and “the rest of the world.” If we become self-absorbed either individually, or as our country, there will be a very high price to pay for working with only one part of a two part equation.

 

There was a young man who was hiking in the American west: Aron Ralston. There was a landslide and he got his hand caught under a huge half ton bolder and was stuck there with his hand caught in a canyon for six days; very meager food and water, no help or no hope for recovery.

 

He went through every thought and feeling imaginable, from suicide, pain, fear, and on down the ladder of pain and suffering. Of consequence he was a man absorbed by his own life and predicament, as we all can be, although, for him we might understand his self-absorption, except that did him no good. He even took out his video camera and said his tearful good byes and his last will and testament.

 

On the sixth day, Aron Ralston says that he had “an epiphany” of sorts.

 

He realized that he could save his life by amputating his arm and so that is what he did, he therefore survived his ordeal and now he has a hook for a hand.

 

He says “I look at this as the greatest thing that ever happened to me.” He has absolutely no regrets. Ralston’s book is called, Between and Rock and a Hard Place. National Post Sept 23^rd  04.

 

The moment that six days of suffering finally took him outside of himself, he was set free! The cost of his life and freedom was his hand, but he seems to be OK with that, because there was even a higher cost to be self-absorbed in his predicament: DEATH!

 

For the people of Judah, for the rich man who ignored starving Lazarus at his gate, for George Bush, for you and I, the high cost of self-absorption is… death. It would also have been death for young Aron Ralston had he not chosen to pay the lesser price of losing his hand.

 

We all have a life to live and choices to make and costs to pay, but for those “who have ears to hear,” choose the God of life who asks us to love those in need as we are able to help. In our caring we close the great chasm of sinful pain and destruction that separates people from each other and from God.

 

AMEN                Rev. Alan Stewart