Homily - Gardening in Love (The Rich Man and Lazarus)

Luke 16:19-31

Fr. Anthony reflects on the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, revealing how our blindness—born of sin and a materialist worldview—turns the world and one another into mere commodities. Yet when we learn to see with love and humility, tending creation as God's garden, we rediscover beauty, grace, and the feast of life already set before us.

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The Gospel of Lazarus and the Rich Man
Homily – gardening in love

It is hard for us to live the way we should.  From our time in Eden to now, we have failed, and the consequences to our hearts, our families, and our world have been disastrous.  The world groans in agony.

One of our challenges is that we do not see things as they really are.  We do not see their beauty and we do not see how they are connected.  Instead of seeing things as both intrinsically good and perfectible, we evaluate them based on what they mean for us; what we can get from them.

We see through a mirror dimly, in part because of our personal sin, and in part because our corporate worldview is fallen.  The two work together to blind us to the world and opportunities for grace.  There is this idea that cultures that do not have a word for something, say for instance a specific color, then they cannot see it.  Their visual system will receive the requisite frequencies for that color, but it will not match any concept within their minds, so it either gets mislabeled or simply missed altogether.  This was certainly the case with the Rich Man in today's parable – somehow he missed seeing Lazarus and the opportunity for grace a relationship with him would have provided.  Moreover, he and his community – here represented by his brothers – had missed the point of the entire religion that they claimed to be a part of.  And Abraham says that even a great miracle – a man rising of a man from the dead – would not be enough to restore their sight.

Humility is the root virtue of discernment; and in humility, we have to take it as a given that we are in may ways just like the Rich Man.  And I say take it as a given, because if it is true, then we will automatically mislabel – in this case meaning justify – our misperceptions and the gaps in our vision.  The Rich Man missed the purpose of his riches and his calling to serve the man at his doorstep; more than that, he missed the very purpose of his life; the thing he was put on this earth to do.  We are like Him and his brothers – and we claim to know the truth of the resurrection.

The Rich Man and his brothers had the same calling that all of us have.  This is the calling given to us at the beginning; we talked about this yesterday.  We were designed – made as God's imagers - to bring out the best in everything and everyone; to heal those that are hurt and to build up those who are already well towards perfection.  But instead of this, our fallen materialist worldview and our sin combine, for example, to get us to think of things as objects and ourselves as consumers.  We want to know what we can use things for and what we can get out of people. 

One of the results of this is that our souls are starving from - a lack of grace.  We feast sumptuously on commodities, but cannot see the more real and and much more vital meal God has put before us.  We feed our bodies, but take no thought of the food required for our souls.

Again, let's go back to Adam and Eve.  Think of how they fell.  One of the ways to understand their fall (from St. Nikolai Velimirovich) is that they turned the thing they were meant to tend – the garden – into a commodity; from something that deserved respect and the greatest of care to something that was useful primarily as food.  Even the thing God told them not to eat became a commodity to them: they wanted what it offered.  And remember what they learned?  That it "tasted good."  What a loss.

Hear me well:  Adam and Eve were meant to eat the things that grew in the garden, but the availability of food was really just a side-effect (what economists call a "positive externality") of being a good steward.  They got it all wrong when they put what they wanted from the garden before their love for it.  Instead of tending the garden, they tended to themselves.  They forgot about beauty; they forgot about connectedness; they forgot about service.  And so all the fruits of the garden became completely unavailable to them.

We are so much worse than they were; our commodification of people and things in this world knows no end.  We are always looking for an angle; looking for the best deal.  Looking for how things do or do not fit into our plans.  And because the materialist worldview is fallen and because selfishness is a sin, we do not see grace nor the many opportunities God has given us to multiply it in this world.  And so we starve in a world of plenty. 

Let me give you a concrete example.  Marriage was given to us in the Garden.  It was meant to bear fruit, and this fruit was meant to be both physical and spiritual.  But men should not love their wives because they hope for something physical in return, they should love their wives because they want to help nurture them towards perfection (but I am not speaking of marriage but of the Church).  If we cannot see this here and in our marriages, how will we see it in the world?

Christ does not love us because He wants something from us.  He does not sacrifice Himself for us in hopes of getting help with His plan to restore beauty to this world.  As we become perfect as God is perfect, we will help Him with this plan; but He sacrifices Himself for us because He sees the potential beauty within us and wants it to grow.  He does it because He loves us.

We have to stop looking at one another as things to be used, things that either bring us pleasure or pain; that are useful or irrelevant.  We have to see one another the way God sees us.

[More on Blindness: Commodification leads to a lack of proportion]

Surely one of the ways we have cursed ourselves through our blindness is that we cannot see the beauty that emanates from all of God's creatures; the potential for grace that is present in every moment and every encounter.

Why is this so hard?  Why are we unable to enjoy the fruits of God's love for us?  Why don't we see things the way they are?  Why couldn't the Rich Man see the grace that would flow from helping Lazarus; why could he and his brothers not understand the deeper meaning of the Law and the Prophets?  This blindness really is a curse; it pulls us further away from our purpose and robs us of the joy we were meant to have and share.

There are so many examples in our lives where we are blind to miracles.  Yes, the problems are there, but they are so minor compared to the miracles!

This even happens in Church.  I bring this up because it is the Eucharistic Feast and the Church that gathers around it that is most permeated with grace.

And yet, in many communities, parish life becomes a magnet for discontent, and a forum for judgment and complaints.  I pray it not be so here.  There are very real issues that parishes must deal with – things like how best to evangelize, what sorts of projects should be focused on, and how limited resources like space should be used.  But our automatic inclination – even here where God's grace should flow most abundantly – we treat these things as objects about which we disagree with the natural inclination for polarization, rather than an opportunity to grow collectively in discernment, in earned harmony, and in love. 

The Orthodox internet is often more perverse. Every aspect of church life becomes something to be analyzed and debated, objects to market for or against… and it all threatens to turn the celebration of God with Us into a series of political or ideological positions that can be analyzed and judged … I do this all the time; I suspect some of you do, too.

We have turned even the Church, the vessel of everything good and true, into a commodity, something to be judged, to be measured, to be evaluated like some product on a grocer's shelf.

Is it any wonder that we do the same thing with our spouses, our children…our enemies… the beggar on our doorstep?

Conclusion:  Love without reservation

My point is not that the things that attract our attention in this way are not important or that they should not be discussed.  Going back to the example of the garden, food is important.  If we don't eat, we die.  But Christ reminds us;

"Do not be anxious about what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Life is more than food, and the body is more than clothing." (paraphrase of Matthew 6:25).

God is right here with us, working miracles in our midst, and we miss them by focusing on His height ("Oh, is that Jesus; I imagined he'd be taller.")

Let's not get distracted.  Let's love without reservation.  Let's love without expecting anything in return. 

Let me repeat the irony; if we tend this world – this garden – in love, we will receive what we need – the necessary commodities, if you will, in return.  As the Lord says in almost the next breath, if you really love, if you really give of yourself without reservation, then "it shall be given unto you in return; a good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over…" (St. Luke 6:38).

And again in St. Matthew (paraphrase of 6:33-34); "seek first God's kingdom and his righteousness, and all the things you need will be given to you as well."

The beggar is not an obstacle to our enjoyment of live – nor is our alleged enemy.  They are not objects to be judged in this way at all.  They are the cosmos, in need to God's grace – and we are called to be its steward, the priests who minister them towards healing and perfection. 

Let's open our eyes and our hearts to beauty and feast on the abundant grace God has surrounded us with; the feast of grace here in the Church, the feast of grace that is achieved when we love our neighbor, and the feast of grace that God blesses us with when we tend to the needs of the world.