| Mind the Gap |
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The gap that the recorded voice is referring to is of course the gap between the station and the train but I was reminded of it as I read this weeks reading from Luke and discovered anew the story of the rich man lying aloft in his gated mansion and the poor man, Lazarus, aweeping and a hungry and a-sitting at the gate.
The gap that exists between these two is a gap of class and culture a gap of the have and have nots a gap which exists in myriad forms within our own world and a gap which appears to be ever widening. According to theologian Richard Rhor this Lukan story is about ‘consoling the poor and critiquing the rich’ and is an attempt by the gospel writer to explore the issue of justice in a world where little justice appears to exist. In the story the rich man is ‘bad’ in this life and so is punished in the next and the poor man suffers in this life but finds comfort in the next. So far, so simplistic.
But, according to Rhor, if we go beneath the surface of this mythic story we can see that the rich man is already living in a type of hell because hell is actually a state of being. Hell is the state of being where you don’t love anymore, it is to be cut off, to be alone and thus the meaning of the story today is that if you choose a life of selfishness then you are choosing a type of spiritual death, a type of non-existence and that true life, true heaven, is to be found in the here and now of choosing love, choosing sharing, choosing communion and compassion.
So by refusing to reach out over the gap, the rich man is indeed condemning himself to hell, but it is a hell of the here and now as much as it may be a hell of the ever after. This choice made by the rich man can be a tempting one. The choice to shut ourselves off. To keep safe. Because sometimes the problems of the world can just feel too overwhelming. And it may seem so much easier to shut our eyes and hold our breath and walk on by the poor Lazarus at the gate What else can we do? Walk on by. Walk on by.
the faculty of memory. The seat of awareness and the spiritual as opposed to the bodily part of a human being. It can also be used as a verb, we can mind the shop or mind the children. Used in this way the word implies a sense of caring, a sense even of love.
to recollect, to care for the great gap or as Christ described it in today’s reading the great chasm between those lying at the gate and those safe inside? What would it be like and how could we begin? How could we even begin when the gaps so wide and the chasm’s so deep? There’s something about the sheer scale of the problem which overwhelms. Isn’t there?
I was thinking about this scale a week or so ago when the little girl from New Zealand was abandoned at the station by her father, thinking about how the whole country suddenly woke up and got outraged. How could a child be abandoned! Who would do such a thing! Social services leapt to action, the wee one with her shining eyes was swept up and fed and cuddled and cared for… as so she should. How different was this small ones experience to that of millions of others around the world… It seems that for one child we can manage, we can care, we can act, we can cross the gap and leap out of our own houses, our own comfort zones and we can gather up the child or give Lazarus some bread. But when the scale expands and we think of the children, the small ones, the poor ones, of the worlds developing nations, or even the indigenous children of our own affluent country we suddenly feel overwhelmed and like the rich man in the story, many of us, as a society, as a culture, just walk on by.
To choose life, to choose the heaven of the here and now Is actually not that hard And today we have all participated in something quite extraorinairy Today we have chosen heaven, today we have minded the gap. We have minded the gap by stepping out of our comfort zones and joining together on this day, as one worshipping community. We have minded the gap by leaping over barriers of buildings and traditions and cultures and habits.
And we have minded the gap between the personal and the public when we joined with the Pyle family in welcoming their wee baby boy into community. Now we could have decided not to do any of these things. We could have sat in our own private houses and kept our own private lives. But instead we chose to do something radical, something gospel, something boundary crossing and courageous. By praying together and singing together and by joining together in the blessing of a baby boy we have begun the process of opening our hearts to each other and to our God. And that, dear friends, is what minding the gap is all about.
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