There Is A Chasm...

[00:00:00] Good morning. [00:00:03] I want to talk about chasms this morning. [00:00:06] Did you see that word in the Gospel lesson, chasms? [00:00:11] Well, chasm. I went and looked it up because it's not a common word for us. There's a chasm in upstate New York, the ausable chasm, get this, two miles long and 150ft straight down deep. That's a chasm. [00:00:28] Of course, we live in Colorado, so just go over to Black Canyon of the Gunnison. [00:00:40] 50 miles long and as much as 2,500ft deep. Now that. [00:00:46] That's a chasm. [00:00:49] You know what a chasm is, right? [00:00:52] It's a rift. It's a division. It's a deep divide, a fissure in the earth, and sometimes also division between two friends. [00:01:06] Would you pray with me, Lord Jesus, show us that you and only you are the one that bridges deep chasms today. [00:01:23] Amen. [00:01:26] So you and I were treated to that vivid account from Jesus about the rich man and Lazarus today. [00:01:36] And as you will recall, both died. [00:01:42] And we find the rich man in Hades, Lazarus in eternal bliss, and the rich man being in torment in Hades. [00:01:56] He lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he called out, father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame. [00:02:18] But Abraham said, child, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things and Lazarus in like manner, bad things. But now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. [00:02:33] Besides all this between us and you, a great chasm. Ah, there is the word. A great chasm has been fixed in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us. [00:02:51] Now, a couple of things occur to me in this opening passage from Luke's Gospel about the rich man and Lazarus. [00:03:03] He says he saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. I don't think he knows yet where he is. [00:03:15] He's just kind of, you know, has this vision. Maybe he's had visions before. [00:03:21] And so he calls out, father Abraham. Well, that tells us that he is a member of the household of the Jewish tribe. He's one of the children of Israel that Jesus has come to seek and to save. And he says, have mercy on me and send Lazarus. Now stop and think a minute. That's why I think he doesn't know where he is yet, because he still thinks he can snap his fingers and get things brought to him. Just like, you know, he's been used to his whole life, send Lazarus Abraham's comment. [00:04:01] Remember, in your lifetime you received your good things. [00:04:08] He's like the poster child for that lesson we had from Amos today, where it said, woe to those who lie on beds of ivory and stretch themselves out on their couches and eat lambs from the flock and calves from the midst of the stall, who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp and like David, invent for themselves instruments of music. It's like, you know, let's just get the top 40 on the stereo and jam out, right? Who drink wine in bowls. Not glasses, not goblets, bowls. Have you ever had a bowl of wine? [00:04:44] I mean, seriously. [00:04:46] And anoint themselves with the finest oils and are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph. That's kind of Old Testament code language for not grieving over the fact that our nation is about to be wiped off the face of the earth. [00:05:06] Back to the chasm. [00:05:10] This chasm. [00:05:13] Now, this word, chasm, I think this is the only place that it may appear in the Bible. I didn't search that out, but it's one of these lonely words, chasm. But, you know, the idea of chasm is all through the Scriptures. I mean, it already goes all the way back to Genesis chapter three, where God commanded Adam and Eve to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And they did. And when they did, it created a separation between God and man that we would call a chasm. And there are others. The chasm that existed between Cain and his brother Abel. [00:05:56] Cain was jealous of Abel, and he decided to bridge the chasm by just getting rid of his brother. He murdered him. I didn't solve anything. Or the chasm between Sarah and Hagar. Sarah, who was jealous of Hagar because she could have children and Sarah couldn't. Or between Jacob and Esau. [00:06:21] There was no love lost there. Jacob kept lording over his brother, and his brother just would get more angry and more angry and more angry until there was hatred between the two of them, or between Israel, the nation of Israel, as they were entering into the promised land. And what did they encounter but the Canaanites, who had a completely different worldview. There's a chasm. Or between David and his son Absalom, where there should have been love and togetherness, there was nothing of the sort. Or when God called upon Babylon, vicious, sinful Babylon, to come and take his people into captivity, there was a chasm. [00:07:08] Or St. Paul talks about the chasms that exist among people even in the New Testament, when He talks about Jew versus gentile, or slave versus free, or male versus female, or rich versus poor. And he points out that Jesus is the one who makes us all one. [00:07:34] The problem, there's desperate separation in this world that no human, that no human can bridge. [00:07:53] Well, that explanation from Abraham wasn't good enough. [00:08:05] And so the rich man said, I beg you, Father Abraham, I beg you to send Lazarus to my Father's house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them lest they also come into this place of torment. [00:08:23] But Abraham said, they have Moses and the prophets, Let them hear them. Now, this is the one place, like we might want to high five the rich man or give him a good slap on the back and say, attaboy. Why? Because he, for the first time in his life, perhaps is caring about someone besides himself. His five brothers, he wants them to be warned. [00:08:46] But Abraham, of course, and Jesus is telling this story. [00:08:54] They have Moses and the prophets. [00:08:57] Let them hear them now. Again, that's Jewish code language for the Scriptures. And Jesus has a high view of scriptures. He says, these scriptures are the very means by which you can understand salvation and come to know and love and serve God, not yourself. [00:09:24] So this, we would call it Old Testament reference, but it's the Scriptures the people had. And in those scriptures, the law and the prophets, it's the story of salvation. [00:09:40] It's the story of the bridge over the chasm that separates God from mankind. [00:09:49] Genesis 3. While it doesn't sound like a gospel story, it's God talking to the serpent. And to the serpent he says, I'm going to put enmity, distance between you and the woman, between her seed and your seed and her seed. He says, in other words, her offspring, the son that she will bear one day will crush your head, Satan, and you're just going to get a nip at his heel. [00:10:25] That doesn't sound like a gospel story, does it? But it is. It's what we call the first good news, the proto evangelium, the. The first promise of the message of salvation. Or Genesis 15, where God makes a promise to bless all nations of the earth, and he starts it out with Abraham. Or Psalm 16. [00:10:50] Sometime today, spend a little quiet time with Psalm 16 and just bathe in the promise of eternity with our heavenly father. Or Psalm 22, when, where? [00:11:02] Thousands of years before. [00:11:05] Well, maybe it's not thousands. [00:11:08] Hundreds of years before the cross was even invented. There's this description of our Savior suffering that way on a cross. Or Isaiah 53, Isaiah 53, where Isaiah says, who's Even believed. Who's even paid attention to what we've been trying to tell everybody? [00:11:37] Because all we, like sheep have gone astray. Everyone turned to his own way. [00:11:46] Sound a little like the rich man. [00:11:49] Very turned in on himself. And yet Isaiah says the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. [00:12:00] That's Old Testament good news. Old Testament promise of salvation. Old Testament bridging over the chasm that exists between God and man. [00:12:16] Well, those are just a few of the references. They're all over what Abraham says when he says they have Moses and the prophets. Let him listen to those. [00:12:27] Well, for the rich man, still not good enough. [00:12:32] So here's what he said. [00:12:34] Father Abraham, no, no, no, no, no. But if someone goes to them, my brothers from the dead, then they will repent. [00:12:48] And then Abraham has to say, if they don't hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced, even if someone should rise from the dead. [00:13:05] Okay, you know where this is going, right? [00:13:11] You know, last week, our message, and this week, today, and especially after listening to St. Paul talk to Timothy about wealth and riches. [00:13:23] We could so easily take and hold this topic of money before our eyes, this topic of wealth. [00:13:37] St. Paul even said the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. [00:13:44] But I think that's just one chasm that creates separation between God and man. [00:13:55] Certainly a big one. [00:13:58] But there's also wanting my way all the time. [00:14:05] You know, that unholy trinity, me, myself and I, that rears its ugly head all the time and demands to have its own way. [00:14:15] Or this stubborn self obsession I have, you know, always caring about me and only me. Or look at the rifts that emerge among family members, sometimes between parent and child, or child and parent, or brother and sister, or even extended family into aunts and uncles and cousins, things that just go south. Or maybe at work where there's a rift or a disagreement or a division that crops up, or between neighbor and neighbor, oftentimes over something that's so insignificantly small, or even here among us in the body of Christ. [00:15:07] Or the covetousness that emerges inside of us when we can't have what we think we ought to have or that we really want, or this reluctance to show mercy and grace to others, the very mercy and grace that's been shown to us. Didn't you love the little one who said, where does love come from? It comes from Jesus. What he has shown us, what he has given us. He calls upon us to turn and share with those who are around us. [00:15:48] Well, St. Paul talks about it all. I think when he says, it's through these cravings that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. [00:16:02] But as for you, O people of God, flee these things. [00:16:09] Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. [00:16:15] Fight the good fight of faith. And it is a fight, as we sang in that last hymn a moment ago, take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, because there are so many other things that this world would say take hold of. [00:16:32] Paul writes this. He says, no, take hold of eternal life. [00:16:37] There's two stunning words that come to us today from this rich man. I don't want to give him too much press. I mean, he's, well, the antagonist in the story. [00:16:53] But he said, if someone should rise from the dead, that's stunning because someone did rise from the dead. [00:17:05] Our Lord Jesus, who went to to the cross, suffered and died, taking upon himself all the penalty we deserve, and then rising victorious over us, showing that he has the power over death and life. And he has the power. He's like the engine of our salvation, bringing to all who would believe in him that eternal life. It's not some magic trick. Like if somebody rises from the dead, well, then I'll believe. [00:17:42] No, Jesus rises from the dead because he said he would. And he's accomplishing the Father's will. And it's true for all who believe. [00:17:53] And if one chooses to not believe, it doesn't negate what Jesus has done there on the cross. It was prophesied, and he conquered sin and he conquered death, and he gives life in its place. [00:18:12] The other word that this rich man says is repent. [00:18:17] Did you hear that? [00:18:19] He wanted his brothers to repent. [00:18:23] Well, we are so good, aren't we, at keeping track of the wrongs that are done to us. [00:18:34] Little checklist, you know. Here's what so and so did. Keep a record of wrongs. [00:18:42] We're not so good at keeping track of how we might have wronged others, are we? [00:18:53] But a chasm, unforgiveness can be so easily bridged with these words. [00:19:06] I was wrong. [00:19:09] Would you forgive me? [00:19:15] I know those words I said to you must have hurt. [00:19:19] Would you forgive me? [00:19:25] I was faithless, I'll admit it. [00:19:31] But would you forgive me? [00:19:35] Do you see how those words bridge the chasm that might exist between you and someone else? [00:19:48] If God's spirit today is speaking to you about a chasm of relationship, I would urge you to bridge that chasm today with those very important words. [00:20:02] Because it is time to repent. [00:20:06] It's always time to repent and trust our lives to God, the God who is going to serve us today with his body and blood, his very real presence served to you and to me or that drop of water that Lazarus could only hope could be dripped upon him to cool his tongue. That drop of water is the very water that along with the Word was poured out upon you at your baptism and it brought you what water and the Word bring life, forgiveness, health, faith to take hold of this gift of God's grace and mercy. [00:20:59] Well, everything we need, really everything that we need, everything that we need is provided through Jesus Christ. [00:21:18] And I think the call today is to recognize the joy that exists in that understanding all our needs are met. [00:21:27] What's the worst that can happen? [00:21:30] And in that joy share it with somebody else. [00:21:44] Don't keep it to yourself. [00:21:53] Take that joy and serve one another. [00:21:59] Amen.