Pentecost XIX - measuring tape

This is my measuring tape.

It comes from Europe, so it is slightly different than the ones you are familiar with. We have been using it a lot recently as my 6th grader is learning how the metric system works in her Science class. We have been measuring pencils and posters, furniture and stuffed animals, and even rooms. We now know that a regular pencil is more or less 20 centimeters long and that our coffee table is more or less 1 meter wide. She is also working on shifting from centimeters to inches… something that I’ve never really mastered.

Talking about measuring tape, I don’t know if you remember but in the Disney version of her story, Mary Poppins had a measuring tape too. She used it to measure the kids in her care, Jane and Michael, and the results of her measuring were out of the ordinary.

Michael measured “extremely stubborn and suspicious”

Jane measured “rather inclined to giggle. Doesn’t put things away”

And of course Mary Poppins measured “practically perfect in every way”.

We still use the phrase the measure of a man or of a person to talk about a person’s character. Of course, since we don’t have Mary Poppins’ clever tape, the “instrument” we use changes according to whom you ask.

For famous physicist and engineer Lord Kelvin, The true measure of a man is what he would do if he knew he would never be caught.

For English writer Samuel Johnson, The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

Even J. K. Rowling tried her magic hand at measuring. She said that If you want to see the true measure of a man, watch how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.

And finally, one of my favorite, Fr. Robert South, who said that If there be any truer measure of a man than by what he does, it must be by what he gives.

We all have different ways of judging other people’s character, don’t we?

And often the way we judge ourselves is wildly different than the way we judge others.

Be as it may, today we are confronted with how God judges humanity.

Once again Jesus is dealing with the very human Pharisees.

He has just told them a story with a difficult moral: “You cannot serve God and wealth”, he has said, and the Pharisees are making fun of him because - according to Luke - they are “lovers of Money”.

So right in the verse that precedes the beginning of today’s reading, Jesus tells them

“You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others,

but God knows your hearts.  

What is highly valued among human beings is detestable in God’s sight.”

And then he tells them the story of the poor man Lazarus and the rich man, traditionally known as Dives (which is nothing else but the word for “rich man” in the 4th century

Latin translation by Jerome).

Now, at a first reading we may start worrying about our own afterlife.

If the rich are going to be suffering the torments of Hades and the poor, the really poor

(not just those who cannot afford a fifth pair of shoes or tickets to the D-backs)

the really poor are going to be in the arms of Abraham or the angels, then we - all of us here today, I am afraid- have no hope of ending up in the clouds.

Because as far as I know none of us here is THAT poor.

But beware.

This story is meant to prove a point; Jesus is not after giving us a picture of the afterlife as he knows it. It is a parable. A parable meant for Jewish listeners.

First-century Jewish hearers of this parable would have assumed right off the bat

that the rich man was righteous and that the poor man was evil. Wealth in the ancient world was often viewed as a sign of divine favor, while poverty was viewed as evidence of sin. Just like sickness.

Remember how in the 9th chapter of John’s Gospel the disciples ask Jesus

who has sinned him or his parents that this man was born blind?

(John 9:2)

In that world, faith in God led to success: money, wives and children, land and health.

It’s pretty much like the prosperity gospel preached on Tv by the likes of Joel Osteen and Creflo Dollar. I don’t agree, but this Christian religious doctrine maintains that financial blessing is the will of God for Christians, and that faith, positive speech, and donations to Christian ministries will always increase one's material wealth and success.

So in some circles things have changed but not that much.

Now I believe that in our story Jesus doesn’t care so much whether Lazarus is rich or poor but he cares deeply for his suffering. And I don’t believe that the rich man ends up in trouble because he is rich, but because in his earthly life he didn’t see Lazarus.

In spite of their proximity, in spite of the fact that Lazarus was there, hungry and in pain right outside his door day in and day out, the rich man is too busy congratulating himself on how well he is doing and celebrating with sumptuous feasts that he never even notices him.

Dives’ sin is not that he is wealthy, but that he is apathetic, indifferent to the plea of the poor. His wealth has distorted his vision.

When Jesus tells the Pharisees, You cannot serve God and wealth, he means you cannot focus your attention on both at the same time. If all our energy, all our care is on the task of making and administering our money to make more money and to purchase more than what we need while ignoring all others out there, far and near,

who can barely sustain themselves on 1 dollar a day, then there is something really wrong with our heart and with our eyesight.

And that is where Jesus is pointing the finger. That is what he is judging.

Those who watch the news and feel oh so bad for the poor and then go fix themselves another sandwich.

Those who read the papers and tell themselves that if they are so poor and so sick those people must have done something to deserve it.

Those who justify their indifference by telling themselves that the unemployed clearly do not want to work, but just to be a burden on society. Those who spend hours pouring over the pictures of Miley Cyrus twerking or trying to decide whether Miss America is indeed too dark skinned to be beautiful, but are way too sensitive to look at the faces of the suffering in Peshawar or in Nairobi.

I don’t know whether God has scales or if at our death we are neatly separated in rooms with different temperatures and levels of comfort.

I believe in a generous God, a God with an infinite amount of patience, a God who is ever ready to forgive even our worst crimes toward each other, when we repent and return to God’s path.

This is what I hear when Jesus talks.

But I know that if ever came a time when God took out Mary Poppins’ measuring tape

and called my name, I want to measure better than Dives.

I want to measure better than the Pharisees. And I am sure you feel the same way.

I am sure that deep in our hearts we all know what we would like to hear.

When and if God takes out the tape and measures me,

I want to hear something like this:

she does have many many faults and she definitely talks too much,

But she sees, and she gives, and she cares.

Amen