Gates, Walls, and Chasms: Dives and Lazarus Part I

Gates, walls, fences, and in days of old when knights were bold, moats: all meant for the same purpose, to separate.  Distance works, too, or chasms.  Next Sunday’s Gospel  is a classic.  The names of the two main characters are from Latin (Dives means “rich man”) and Hebrew (Lazarus is a form of Eleazar, which means “helped by God”.)  Lazarus is a poor man with sores on his flesh.  Oh, did you find at least a little “ewww” or “yuuuck” involuntarily shudder up at you from inside?  Did you feel a little repulsion at the open sore thing?  So maybe it’s not totally alien for you

to join me in finding myself in the role of the rich guy, Dives, who lives comfortably and ignores Lazarus, the repulsive guy that lies outside his door. 

This story was set in a city, where practicality of access to goods and services (a well, a market, etc.) means compact land use, density.  People live close to each other.  Rich and poor are separated here by walls, but walls had doors and gates.  So the poor would sit at the gates in order to get the attention of those who might help them, just as today ragged people with “Will work for food” signs around their necks sit at stoplights, where we in cars who would like to whiz by with our windows rolled up are stuck having to be close to them.  Dives, in order to get out of his house, was required to step around this scabby obstacle, and he might well have detested it.

When we lived in Detroit, our old house made it necessary for me to get to the local hardware store with unfortunate regularity.  Something always required repair or replacement.  There was only one way into the store, and like Dives, I needed to step around the guy who would ask, every time, for money.  He would stand between me and the door so I could not ignore him.  I resented it.  I felt pretty broke myself, raising growing kids and paying Catholic School tuition on a pretty meager salary as a counselor.  On my mile-long drive to the store, I could feel my teeth clenching, dreading having to evade him.  Sometimes I’d look into his eyes and say, “Sorry, No.” and sometimes he’d persist, ask again after I’d said that, and I’d push at the air as I turned my back on him, already dreading that I’d need to see him again on my way out.

Oh, yeah.  I can see myself as Dives.  In the store, inside the walls, I was comfortable.  It was like we belonged, you know, we had business being there.  Some of us were customers; we had money.  Others were employees.  It was cool.  It was fine.  Oh, maybe this guy was not Lazarus, not appropriate to the Gospel story.  When we went to Europe to visit our son living there, every once in awhile “Gypsies” – Roma people now being chased from France and other countries – would play the role well, complete with skin covered with sores.  On crowded sidewalks, pedestrian traffic would slow when we (we comfortable ones) would be required to walk around the half of the sidewalk obstructed by a man’s bare, scab-covered leg or a woman’s squalling infant, next to an outstretched palm or a ragged bowl or basket.  Oh, yeah, I can see myself as Dives.

You might find an argument forming inside, as I do.  These examples are what we in the city would call “aggressive panhandlers”, most of which were found not to be homeless at all.  And we might similarly wonder whether Lazarus was at least a bit manipulative by lying at Dives’ door. 

But we’re troubled by this, aren’t we?  Maybe that’s why we have walls of our own, and doors to lock.  And maybe that’s why some of us choose to live at a distance from the poor, so when we are in our neighborhood, it is like we belong; it appears that our neighbors are comfortable too. They have what they need, and we have what we need, and once in awhile we help each other, but it’s no skin off our nose; there are no open sores involved.  Some of us climb right in, living in the cities, in neighborhoods where poor struggle to survive, where we see them every day, where they are close, where we have nowhere to turn to escape them. 

I said escape them.  Are you with me?  What is this about, this revulsion of sores, of poverty, of need?  Why do we consider (or why are we tempted to consider) comfort as a preferential alternative to cross-class relationships?  

Tomorrow – Part II