Year C Proper 21
1 Timothy 6:6-19
Luke 16:19-31

I believe in God, the Father almighty. We come here every weekend to worship. One of the great joys of our communal worship life here is how carefully, lovingly, and prayerfully composed our worship service is. In our worship, music and scripture; one of the most common ways to refer to our Creator, our one, holy and living God is Father. Our Father, who art in heaven. God as a parent is a beautiful image. A healthy relationship with a parent (or parent-figure) is grounded in love – love that supports and nourishes, that offers wisdom and affection. Love that nurtures. But as any parent or anyone who has ever been the adult-in-charge knows, healthy love has healthy boundaries, and those boundaries can includes saying words like “No.” The healthiest relationships we have aren’t the ones that pay us lip service; they’re the ones that have a deep enough love to be honest with us – and to challenge us to be the best version of ourselves. That’s an important thing to remember, when we get scripture readings as challenging as the ones we just heard today. Today, we need to trust in God’s love for us, and out of our love for God, be open to talking about some difficult stuff, and trust that at the end of the conversation, our God is still going to be the God who loves us, forgives us, and calls us to the best way to live – forever.

Let’s start with the difficult stuff. What’s the hardest part of these readings? Personally, I think the most challenging verses come from the beginning of Paul’s letter to Timothy, and I encourage you to pull out your bulletin and follow along

“But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith…”

That’s a bear….Let’s look closer at the words. The problem is not in the money or riches themselves. The temptation is in the desire for riches – not the riches themselves. The pain is in the eagerness to be rich – not the richness itself. The evil is in the love of money – not the money itself. The money itself isn’t the problem. Money is merely an object, a resource, a gift. What brings us closer to or further from God is what we desire, who we love, where we focus our attention. How we use and think about this money – this object –  is the issue! It’s easy to want to focus on the certainty of the things we see with our physical eyes, and reach out for comfort to touch with our hands. But as disciples, we are called to walk by faith, to be grounded in what we know in our hearts but cannot touch with our hands – all that is seen and unseen. How do we focus our time less on the objects of our earthly life, and more on the relationships that connect us to eternal life?

Today’s gospel passage illustrates this very point. In today’s passage from Luke, we hear the story of an unnamed rich man and a poor man named Lazarus. In his earthly life, the rich man lives comfortably. In his comfort, however, he never stops to show compassion to the poor man, Lazarus, who sits just outside of his gate. Scripture leaves room for interpretation here; perhaps, he never even sees Lazarus. It is also possible that he sees and ignores and neglects Lazarus daily. The parable doesn’t tell us about the extent of their interaction. Either way, the gate is an earthy barrier that the rich man maintained in his earthly life that represents his limited earthly focus. In death, this barrier became a chasm – an uncrossable void that divides them. All of this could have been avoided if the rich man had opened the gate All of this could have been avoided if he’d opened his eyes to see the gate and been guided by his trust in God.

There are so many things clamoring for my attention every single day, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels that way. We’re all struggling to balance so many different things. How can we keep our focus on the right one? How can we focus our actions on the good?

Today’s readings challenge us in glaring, up-close-and-personal ways, but now that we’ve talked about those challenges, let’s go back and look at that hope. There’s more here than a caution against temptation; there’s a reminder towards all the goodness God calls us to – the goodness God promises Paul writes to Timothy, “Take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called” Once we get past the challenge in the first part of the reading from Paul’s letter to Timothy, the focus of the message completely changes. When Paul tells Timothy to take hold of eternal life, Paul says it in present tense. As in, this eternal life is already here, and if we focus our energy on richness of good works – works like gentleness, generosity, love. Then, we will have the kind of treasure that allows us to “take hold of the life that really is life.” This is the assurance that brings me back every week, and it comforts me to know that we are all striving towards this together, fighting the good fight of the faith together, for the life that really is life right now – and for the life of the world to come.

A key part of Paul’s power as a leader is his own story of redemption. When he cautions us against sinfulness – when writes these challenging passages – he does it as someone who’s experienced taking the wrong path and struggles right alongside us to see and stay focused on the right one. Paul speaks as someone who’s experienced God the Father’s grace and forgiveness the same Grace and Forgiveness we seek and find here every week, as we continue together on this journey of faith. You know, part of Paul’s letter is even worded to be like a Creed: God, who gives life to all things and Christ Jesus, who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light. Paul’s warned Timothy what not to do, now he reminds of what acts he should focus on: faith, love, endurance, gentleness, generosity, goodness. These are the qualities of our Creator, God our Father, who we come back week after week to worship and whose path we strive to follow.  This is the God we confess our faith to in the words of the Nicene Creed! Our God’s – our Father’s – path leads us to take hold of eternal life – the life that is really life – right now. That’s a God I will declare my faith in, over and over again. How about you?