Knowing Lazarus
Sermon preached by Fr. Timothy Ferguson on Sunday, November 3, 2024
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. One God. Amen.
Good morning. God bless you all. I am Father Timothy. I want to thank Father Antony for inviting me to come and pray with you this morning. It's an honor and privilege to serve among you.
I want to talk a little bit about today's Gospel, of course. Actually it's one of my favorites. I think I prefer it to most of the rest of the Gospel, actually. It's certainly a very touching story. It is to me.
If you ever saw a statue of Lazarus, it's a very moving statue. If you ever been to South America or Central America, for example, you would see hundreds of them. Most churches have them, and if there's ever procession for a feast or a holy day, a statue of Lazarus would be carried along with the other Saints. The statue is of a ragged man, covered with sores, dressed in a loin cloth with a crutch under one arm and his hand extended in the other. He's surrounded by dogs who lap at his feet, and legs. It's a very moving sight. The first time I saw it was at Christmas in Bogata, Colombia, and it was a prominent statue of their celebration which goes on for about 2 weeks. But every night that statue was brought out along with others, and people would clamor to touch the bier that the statue was on.
The fascinating thing to me as a young man at that time, back in the late 1960s - that was long time ago - was that this is a statue of somebody who really never existed. There was never a human being named Lazarus. Lazarus is a character in a story, but that story is told so well that I think - and maybe you think - that there is actually such a person. Now you couldn't argue with the composinos in Colombia or Guatemala or Cuba that there was no such person. This man exists in the minds of millions of people, and he exists for a reason. They relate to him.
He even has a feast day in the end of December, and during the celebration of his Feast Day, people bring their dogs and especially their puppies to be blessed by the priests who come out and bless the animals in memory of Lazarus from this Parable, not the Lazarus from Bethany, but this Lazarus from this story who is so real.
Jesus knew before any of us went to creative writing classes that the difference between fact and fiction was that fiction had to make sense. In this case, in this story it truly does. If we read the Gospel of Luke where this is contained, we see that the people he was speaking to were the poor. They were the sinners. They were the marginalized. They were the outcasts. Those were his hearers, and this story became their story. This Man became them.
I think that it's the only Parable where the central figure has a name, the only Parable where anybody is named, Lazarus. The power of it is that he actually is a person. There have been millions of Lazarus's since Jesus told this story, maybe billions. There's a theology built around this story and similar stories in the gospel, a theology that tells us that God's preferential option is for the poor. God's preferential option is for the poor. That theology says that God is poor, that God is Lazarus, that God is that human being in need, a human being who was ministered to by irrational animals out of their instinct, while rational humans refused to care for him.
Lazarus is also real because you see him every day. You see him this morning on the corner with his cardboard sign and his cup. If you didn't, you might see them when you go home. If you miss them, look for them tomorrow. They're everywhere. Lazarus is in front of us all the time, and we always have the opportunity to minister to him as rational responsible human beings, who know that God's preferred option is for that man on that corner with that sign and that cup.
If we don't see him alive in person because of whatever circumstance we have then we can see him by assisting those who live with him, organizations like the Salvation Army, the St Vincent de Paul Society, the list goes on and on. Our assistance to those groups is our touching of Lazarus.
We have a excellent opportunity here in Boston. We have the Orthodox Volunteer Corps. Some of you may have heard of it, maybe you all have. These are young adults who've given away a year of their life to go and work for Lazarus, to go and feed Lazarus, to minister to Lazarus. They've given up their entry into whatever their careers would be and they decided to go out on the street and help the poor. They work, or example, here in Boston, with Catholic Charities, with Habitat for Humanity. So if we meet them, we can help them. We can encourage them. We can tell them how much we love what they do. That's our touching, our embracing, ministering to this Gospel.
I think this is the heartland of the Gospel. I believe that this is where the Gospel makes complete sense. This is where the Gospel is absolutely human, when Jesus tells stories like this, when Jesus works with the poor, when Jesus ministers to those around him who are sinners, when Jesus welcomes home his beloved people who may be oppressed. I think that's where we are. There were no rich or wealthy people hearing this story. They were home comfortably eating. If they ever met Jesus, it was in the comfort of their synagogue. They didn't meet him on the street. They didn't meet him in the crowds. So Jesus' message was throughout the pages of the Gospel to the Sinner, to the outcast, to the marginalized, to those outside the mainstream of society. And that's where Lazarus is. That's where the majority of civilization is and always has been.
Our ministry is there. Our life is there with them. Let us think of this Lazarus - we can't invoke him through his prayers, but we can invoke the one who invented the story, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ - to aid us in seeing and ministering to the Lazarus's who are among us.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. One God. Amen.