There is a well-known trope present in feel-good movies. Small-town boy or girl graduates from high school and moves to the big city, usually New York City. They want to see the world and break the limits of their narrow childhood perspective.
And invariably, as the trope goes, the person who moves from small town to big city becomes a bit puffed up and snobbish. It’s what we Southerners call gettin’ above your raisin’. But as the movie trope continues, there is usually a moment of crisis that brings the small-town person up short. Often, it’s the illness or death of a family member, and so the big shot from the small town must either travel back home for a while or move there permanently. And, as you have probably guessed, the tension of the drama is resolved when the one who has gotten above their raisin’ usually falls in love with a childhood friend and decides to make the small town their home forever.
Of course, the point is that the main character has a moment of existential transformation. They realize that the big city isn’t necessarily better than the small town. The big city, for all its riches, has its negative side and poverty: anonymity, loneliness, lack of community, and little sense of being at home. In returning home, the characters of these rather trite stories rediscover their origins and finally see that the small town is richer than they initially thought.
It seems that aging keeps us connected to our origins. Aging is its own kind of poverty, of losing things we thought we would always have. Having moved from small town to big city myself, the older I get, the more I appreciate where I came from. When I remember my family’s heritage, I see more of myself in it, and I learn more about who I am. I remember the struggles of my hardworking ancestors and how they persevered. I remember where I came from.
But the rich man in today’s parable has forgotten his story. This isn’t something that is immediately apparent on the surface of the text. But the rich man has forgotten where he came from. And that convenient amnesia is the cause of his judgment in the next life.
The rich man’s story is much bigger than small town boy moves to big village and gets rich. We certainly don’t know if this is the case with the rich man, but his story goes back centuries. It starts when Abraham heeds God’s call to leave the security of his homeland to travel to the Promised Land. Abraham leaves everything, except for his family, and changes the course of his life. Abraham, in a spiritual sense, becomes poor.
And the rich man’s story continues when Abraham and his family temporarily flee to Egypt to escape a famine in the land of Canaan. Real suffering, genuine need, and poverty are all a part of the rich man’s story, although he doesn’t remember it.
The story that began with Abraham and Sarah is a long one, though. Well after the death of the first ancestors, the people of Israel escape yet another famine by going to Egypt, and they become slaves of a ruthless Pharaoh who doesn’t remember the favor shown to Joseph by the previous Pharaoh. The people of Israel are caught in a vicious cycle of amnesia, and forgetting is so often the root of evil.
That same group of people is brought into freedom by Moses, a former baby abandoned in a basket. And the story proceeds in the wilderness wanderings of God’s people on the other side of the Red Sea, when they hunger for food and thirst for water and are forced to rely upon God alone as they question whether they will ever reach the Promised Land. And then, on the cusp of that land, in the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses offers an extended sermon in which the main point is to remember. Remember, he says, what God has done for you. When you get to the big city of the Promised Land, amnesia will strike again. You will forget how poor you once were. You will forget that you were slaves. So, remember. Always remember.
And we all know that they did not remember. They became tribal and hostile to their enemies. They turned to other gods. They became greedy, forgetting to leave the edges of their harvested land for the needy. Another exile, this time in Babylon, humbled the people of God for a time, but they still forgot, despite the cries of the prophets calling them to justice and peace.
Finally, God became poor in Jesus, choosing a manger rather than a palace for birth, fleeing as a refugee to Egypt while running from a cruel tyrant leader, and giving himself up freely on the cross. And even those to whom Jesus preached the Gospel and came to save forgot their stories. They couldn’t see that the One who became poor for their sake was one of them. In Jesus, we see the perfect remembrance of the story of God’s people. And this story is our story, too.
But the rich man has conveniently forgotten his story, perhaps because it’s too painful and challenges his comfort. His exquisite apparel is merely a symbol of his amnesia. He has put many layers of fine clothing and decadent living between himself and the living God. We don’t even know if he deliberately refuses aid to Lazarus. The problem is that he just doesn’t see him because he has forgotten his story and what it means to be like the poor. He can’t see his own poverty.
But Lazarus, at the gate of the rich man’s abode, is an open, raw wound. He is laid bare before humanity and God there at the gate. In his gory wound is the story of all humanity, the rich man’s and ours. In that open wound are times of famine, times of homelessness, times of grief, and times of suffering. It’s all there in that wound, with no purple robes to cover it up.
This Eucharist is an open wound, too. Before five minutes have transpired in this Mass, we are reminded that we have come before the God unto whom all hearts are hope, all desires are known, and from whom no secrets are hid. No amount of fine clothing, pretension, education, and status can cover the wound of our lives. Nor should this wound be hastily dressed. In remembering our own story and our own woundedness and vulnerability before God, we move closer to seeing God face to face.
And this is why we, as the Church, are judged when we fail to go to the poor. As the physical gap between us and the poor narrows, so does the chasm narrow between us and the bosom of God the Father. But as the gap widens, we find ourselves thirsty for the living God, in agony because that same God seems so far beyond our reach. We would long for even one drop of water to cool the fiery pain of that separation from God.
But being close to the poor is a dangerous thing, too. The first step, of course, is to see them, really see them. Because the rich man could not see them, even in the next life, Lazarus is simply another thing to use for his own comfort. And we must be wary of this, too. Getting close to the poor is not intended to alleviate our feelings of guilt. It’s not an act of charity to be used to gain heaven. It’s not something we do to feel better about ourselves. In going to the poor and getting close to their gaping wounds, we remember our own story. We remember that, once, we were poor and, in some sense, we are still poor. And when we can recognize that we have always been poor, we also discover that we have always been loved, too. In this, we begin to see the face of Christ.
If we are not convinced by Jesus, the One who has already come close to us, then nothing will convince us. No warning from the dead will provoke our repentance. Jesus has already come as one of the poor to be among us, and if we move close to him, there will be no gaping chasm in the next life. If we can’t see Jesus now, in the poor and those the world dismisses as refuse, then we will not recognize Jesus in the next life.
The chasm in today’s parable is the chasm of judgment, which is, oddly enough, a gift to us. This chasm of judgment is the gaping, anguished hole that is revealed when our own human insensitivity, cruelty, and irresponsibility are pitted against God’s infinite love, mercy, and compassion for all of humanity. It’s the gap created when the amnesia of our own story of poverty is placed next to the eternal remembrance of God’s provision for humankind in their poverty and suffering. In the recognition of our spiritual amnesia, that gaping chasm will seem rigidly fixed, incapable of being traversed. But with God’s mercy, with our prayers for the dead, and their prayers for us, anything is possible.
In the open wound of the Christian story, we part with all those things that keep us from seeing the stranger at the gate as part of our own story, too. And this is why truly to live with Christ, we must die to self. This is why the first must be last and the last first. This is why the humble must be exalted and the exalted ones humbled. This is why in the poverty of the cross we are given the life that is really life. And through the One who showed us how to be poor and then rose from the dead, that life is available to the whole world.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 28, 2025