No, God Didn't Stick that Piece of Toilet Paper to the Bottom of your Shoe

Some years ago, a friend of mine told me that she had prayed for me for a whole mile on her drive to work that morning.

As I always am when someone prays for me, I felt blessed and honored and thanked her for her prayer.

But I admit, in my head, I was thinking, “Okay, but was that a mile through a school zone or a mile on the highway?  Because that makes a difference.”

I am greedy when it comes to prayer.

I will take any and all prayers offered up on my behalf and then shyly ask for more.

I need prayer.  I will always need prayer.  I think it’s why I never take anyone off my prayer list because I understand that we all need prayer every day and always.

All of us.

Suffering, at varying levels, is a constant in all our lives, and even when it does seem to take a backseat, it’s not for very long.

We live with suffering.  We have lived with suffering our whole lives and yet we haven’t a clue how suffering works or why it exists at all.

Back when I was studying to become a priest and my health took a bad turn, a friend of mine commented that she couldn’t understand why bad things were happening to me.  “You’re trying to serve God,” she said.  “Good things should be happening to you.” 

All of us, at some point in our lives, have asked the same question.

Why do bad things happen to good people?

In fact, bad things happening to good people and good things happening to bad people seem so common in this world that when something bad does happen to a bad person, we have a name for the joy we feel in their misfortune.

It’s German.  It’s called Schadenfreude.  Again, it’s that perverse pleasure we get when a bit of bad luck seems to fall on someone we think deserves it.  For example, it’s the smile you had on your face the other day when the president of the United States walked up the steps to Air Force One with a bit of toilet paper stuck to the bottom of his shoe.

Good things should happen to good people.  Bad things should happen to bad people.  It’s the way the world should work.

Think of how easy it would be to maneuver about in this world if we knew for a fact that being a good person meant never having to worry about money, or our health, or our family.  Imagine how easy it would be if we knew that being a bad person had consequences.

And yet the world doesn’t work this way at all.  It never has and it never will.

Such is the point Jesus is making in today’s Gospel reading about the rich man and Lazarus.

But before we get to that, consider this—consider Job.

Job is the poster child for suffering, but he is also the oldest example we have in the Bible to negate the idea that God blesses the good and punishes the bad. 

What is the first thing Job’s friends say to him when his world falls apart?

In Job 4:7-8, “Think now, who that was innocent ever perished?  Or where were the upright cut off?  As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same.”

In other words, you reap what you sow.

Or in even other words, “Job if you’re suffering you only have yourself to blame.”

But we know this isn’t the case.  We know because we are told that Job was a righteous and good man.  We know that his suffering had nothing to do with any bad behavior on his part.

But even in Jesus’ time, this idea persisted.  In John 9, the disciples and Jesus come across a blind man and the disciples ask Jesus who sinned, the man or his parents that he was made blind?  And Jesus states, first, and rather simply.  “Neither.”

Which leads us to today’s reading from Luke 16, in which Jesus tells the parable of a beggar named Lazarus who sits outside the gates to the rich man’s house and is so pitiful and so filled with suffering that the highlight of his day, presumably, is when the dogs come to lick his sores.

And meanwhile the rich man lives his very rich and wonderful life, either oblivious to Lazarus’ suffering or just uncaring. 

Both men die.

Lazarus winds up in heaven.

The rich man in hell. 

Now I am sure this came as quite the shock to the rich man.  Why?  Because he thought he knew the rules of the game.  He was rich because he was good.  Lazarus suffered because he was bad.

The rich man pleads with Abraham, who is standing with Lazarus in heaven, to allow Lazarus to return from the dead and warn the rich man’s family that the way they thought the world worked was completely wrong.  The rich man becomes the beggar now, imploring Abraham to have mercy on his family.

But Abraham refuses stating that not even someone returning from the grave would be enough to change the hearts of the rich man’s family.

They would never understand this message.

We are not blessed because we are good.

We are blessed because of something called grace.

Likewise we do not suffer because God is punishing us.

We suffer because suffering is universal and is a condition of this world.

I was just telling someone last week how blessed I feel.  God has blessed me in so many ways, but not because I have done anything to deserve that.

Likewise I have suffered in this life.  I have experienced, like we all have, heartbreaking loss.  I have suffered, but my suffering is not punishment.  God does not punish us with suffering.

Ultimately what we are talking about here is love.

And not just any love, but unconditional love.

To believe that God punishes the faithless and the sinners and rewards the faithful is to put conditions on God’s love.

It says that God will only love us if we behave a certain way.

But the truth is that God loves us just as we are.  There are no conditions to His love.  God loves the saints just as much as He loves the sinners.

And no one will ever love us more.

Amen.