Open to witness

Sermon by Rev. Dr. Christian Scharen on the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost + Sunday, September 28, 2025.

The students in my preaching course at the Lutheran School of Theology are all preaching on this text this coming week. The class works on a two-week cycle: we all study a shared text one week, and then they all prepare sermons on that text for the following week. So, this last Monday we sat in a circle asking questions about this passage from Luke. I asked them to read the text silently, see where questions arose for them, and then we went around sharing one or two of our questions.

They had quite different questions, as you can imagine. They ranged from observations — why is the poor man given a name, Lazarus, and the rich man not? to difficult theological issues — where do the ungodly go when they die? My teaching assistant, who is a Dalit liberation theologian from India, asked a question that comes from his experience of being a so-called “untouchable” person in the caste system of India. Why, he asked, do the poor always have to die to receive good things? Why not in this life?

I found myself stuck asking questions about the rich man. Did he know Lazarus? Did he walk by when he came and went from his home? Did they ever talk with each other? How long did this go on before their deaths? Days? Months? Years, even? Did the rich man ever try to help, to heal Lazarus’ sores, or to satisfy his hunger? Had he become indifferent overtime or had he been arrogant and cruel enough to have always been indifferent?

I was stuck on these questions about the rich man because of my own experience of walking around Chicago and encountering people who are asking for money or for food, who seem to be suffering, who may be hungry and without adequate shelter. I have varied responses, if I’m honest. I don’t usually carry cash, so I’m not in a position to give money if that’s what they’ve asked for. But I don’t often ask what I can get for them, and then take the time to go purchase it for them. I don’t often offer to buy them a meal, or offer to help find support services. I do try to encounter them, however, to look, to speak, to acknowledge our shared humanity.

I think it is because of such everyday experiences that it is meaningful for me to join in the longstanding Holy Trinity commitment to the South Loop Community Table. Its mission is to provide community, sanctuary, and celebration. They say they exist as a space that strives to break down barriers that society has created — barriers that tell us who should and shouldn’t build community together.

I especially need that because of the way our society at this moment and especially political leadership is creating division, exclusion, and demonization. Rather than break down barriers out of compassion, instead we see barriers being erected out of what I can only call cruelty. After calling for the removal of homeless people from Washington, D.C., I can easily see Donald Trump as the rich man in this parable. I know I don’t want to embody the sort of disregard displayed by the current administration. Yet their celebration of the life of rich men, and of cruel behavior, exhausts me. It wears me down.

I know Jesus told this parable against those who, like the rich man, celebrate despite, and perhaps even because of, the suffering of others. It shall not be so in the reign of God. Yet how do I sustain my ability to work against such a tide of actions that seem to embody everything the reign of God is not?

I’ll come around to my answer to that question but first, I need to share how I came to find that answer. In addition to teaching preaching and worship at the seminary, I also direct the chapel. That means I invite people to plan and lead our Wednesday chapel each week. Knowing what a consequential election it would be, I asked Pastor Craig to preach on the Wednesday morning following the election last November. I told him we needed a wise pastor to be with us and to preach that day. He mercifully agreed, but in all honestly, we thought we would not know the results for days, if not weeks. Instead, we woke up to news that a twice impeached and convicted felon would be our new president. We knew what to expect because we’d seen what horrible things he was capable of, and he promised more of the same should he win. Craig encouraged us not to despair, and to realize it would be a long struggle against all that would come in the months and years ahead. He said, to summarize his eloquent sermon, tend your soul. To be and do the good you believe in will require of you a deep well, a reserve to draw upon. Find what it is for you that fills your well, that grounds you in a God of generosity, compassion, love and justice, so that you’ll be ready for the work you are called to do.

Some time later, I found a brief poem by the Anglican priest and poet R. S. Thomas. Called A Bright Field, it goes like this:

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the
pearl of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

I read it every day, or most, anyway. Often before or during my morning walk with my dog, Walt.

One morning this week, my attention was drawn to the ground between the sidewalk and Indiana Avenue where perhaps a dozen or more house sparrows were hopping about eating seeds. Another morning, walking through the natural gardens in front of the Field Museum, I paused to take in the showy purple New England Asters when a monarch butterfly flitted up and drifted over to land on the lacy late boneset blooming nearby. Such moments arrest me, holding my attention, preaching to me of God’s good creation that in these and so many other ways is quite beyond the reach of the occupant of the White House, in whatever administration, including the current one.

I don’t think Donald Trump will change even if, as Abraham says in the story from Luke’s gospel, “someone rises from the dead.”

But then again, I’m not responsible for Donald Trump’s change, but rather to being open to change myself, open to turning aside like Moses to the miracle of the lit bush, turning aside from my temptation to shut down, to give up, to just walk by all the things that, like Lazarus, cry out for a compassionate response.