Youth Sermon

On September 30th, Youth Sunday Service, Sean Jones, a senior EYC member, gave the homily. He has graciously allowed it to be shared on our blog.

[Reading info: Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost, Year C, Proper 21, Gospel:
Luke 16:19-31.]

Today’s lesson is the parable of The Rich Man and Lazarus. The rich man is a man with security. He has a home to sleep in, a car to get around, a steady 6 figure income, and health insurance if he gets sick.
Lazarus has none of this.
He walks the street, to nowhere in particular.
He has no shelter from the heat of summer or cold of winter.
He can never hold a job, let alone one that pays enough to live off of. And without the money he has no way to get help when he gets sick.

Jesus taught us that the two most important Commandments are 1. Love God and 2. Love your neighbor. He told us that the Kingdom of God started here on earth and we should follow its rules to ensure our acceptance into the kingdom after death.

Lazarus lived just outside the rich man’s house. So everyday when that rich man left his house for work or a social event he would have to pass Lazarus. A man so hungry he would eat the crumbs from the rich man’s table and everyday the rich man would simply ignore Lazarus neither helping nor tormenting his fallen neighbor.

In the end Lazarus dies and enters the Kingdom of Heaven. Shortly thereafter the rich man dies as well and enters the torments of hell. There the rich man cries out for comfort, he cries for Lazarus to drop one drop of water on his tongue so that he would be soothed from the agony of hell’s fire. What irony?

In this very room, all of us have our needs met. We’re not on the streets struggling to put food in our stomachs. None of us are a Lazarus.

So isn’t it our obligation to take care of the Lazarus’s in the world?

Some would say no. They would deny him stating it’s his fault for getting there.

Maybe he’s a druggie, an alcoholic, or just doesn’t have the ability to handle money in a responsible way. But Jesus would say it doesn’t matter how Lazarus got to the state he’s in. Lazarus is a suffering human being making it the obligation of those well off, like us, to help him.

The rich man chose his fate. By choosing not to live in God’s kingdom on earth he was not included in God’s kingdom in death.

So let us not forget the Lazarus’s in the world. So we can live in the Kingdom today.