Sermon by The Very Rev Chris Yaw, 9/28/2025
Proper 21 | 9-28-25 | Luke 16: 19-31
Let me paint for you a picture of two different people - and let me ask you:
With which one of these two people best describes you:
One - You're a nice person. You're one of 8 billion in the world, so you're not that special, but you certainly have some good attributes. However, in general you are a bit of an under-achiever who fails a lot at realizing your potential.
OR - Two- do you think this best describes you:
You are an amazingly talented individual, one in 8 billion! You are wondrously made to do irreplaceable work of vital importance. Your mind, body, and personality, are sacred vessels, containing a beloved spirit bursting with love, because you embody a touch of the Divine.
Again, in which of these two descriptions do you tend to see more of yourself?
Be honest - One - or Two? Or maybe it depends on the day...
If you chose One - this is not a surprise because evolution, our families, society, even the church has conspired, to one degree or another, to make us feel that we are more like number one - flawed, incomplete, and for whom life is a struggle.
Of course, the reality is that we are more like Two - beloved and blessed, uniquely made and invaluable to the universe - this is who our faith says we are, this is what the Bible says we are, and when we listen closely to our spirits, we can hear echoes of the magical number two - but we just have such a hard time believing this!
So did the main character in our Gospel this morning.
This is a well known story about the Rich Man and Lazarus - unlike last week, this one is easy to understand.
The Rich Man lives the high life, paying no attention to poor Lazarus at his gate, refusing to share or help, in fact the dogs pay more attention to Lazarus than the Rich Man does!
And when they die, Lazarus heads to heaven, or in more modern, television parlance, to 'The Good Place' - whereas the Rich Man heads to that other place.
There is a description of the afterlife here that is not meant to be taken literally, but serves as a backdrop to the nagging predisposition that continues to plague the Rich Man -
Even when he's in Hades, he thinks Lazarus is still beneath him - and requests Lazarus run an errand for him - then the Rich Man makes a second selfish request: to benefit his estate, by going to tell his brothers what awaits them.
And while many preachers, myself included, have chosen to hammer home the guilt-inducing moral of the story: that we'd better pay attention to poor people or else we, too, will end up in Satan's AirBnB - this will miss the point that what really plagued this Rich Man - and what really plagues you and me - has much less to do with rich and poor - and more to do with how we handle our belovedness.
Belovedness - what do you mean?
Let me explain...
Belovedness is our unconditional love by God - for who we are, as we are - flawed, fragile, and frail -
And when we more fully grasp this unconditional love, this belovedness, our tendencies to behave badly - like the Rich Man - and acquire more than we need and ignore the less fortunate among us - are greatly lessened.
When we are more fully able to receive God's unconditional love, our needs for attention, recognition, self-importance, and entitlement dissipate. The more we can embody our belovedness, the less worried and fearful we become. Receiving belovedness is receiving love - and the more love we have, the more loving we are. Belovedness.
Let's unpack it - with the help of the inimitable Henry Nouwen, a Roman Catholic teacher and sage - who sees our belovedness as a four-part movement –
And he uses the same 4 parts that you and I know well because we come to Communion -
The four parts of belovedness are: taken, blessed, broken, and shared.
So what does it mean to be taken?
Remember the grade-school playground?
When you competed in a game and captains had to choose players?
Imagine that you were the first one taken. Not just once, but every time. Imagine that the captain saw in you something so needful and valuable that you were chosen first - on each occasion?
That's what God does with you.
This is your fundamental identity: you are chosen and loved by God. Before you achieved, competed, won, or were even born - God chose you.
And this is not a competition where others are rejected - it's an intentional, deliberate selection of you in your uniqueness - in which all of us partake.
Now, you may say to yourself, "God, why me? Why am I so special, so valuable, so beloved - I don't see it."
Now, I mean no disrespect here - but I would like to call into question your judgment.
Humans 'experts' - the brightest of the bright - are well-known for their relentless failure in judgment:
Decca records refused to sign the Beatles in their early days because 'guitar bands are on their way out'
The owners of Blockbuster Video laughed Reed Hudgins out of the room, when he tried to sell his struggling business to them - it was called Netflix.
And when a Kodak engineer invented the world's first digital camera - in 1975 - his bosses buried it - they refused to launch it because they thought it would cut into their business.
So, please, as beautiful as that mind of yours is - don't listen to it.
That's not what God primarily uses to talk to you!
Listen to your heart, your spirit, your soul - and marinate it in your belovedness. God has chosen you - taken you - and your spirit self is inviting us to embrace our inherent self-worth. You are taken by God as beloved.
Close your eyes for a moment.
Envision yourself sitting on a park bench.
Jesus walks up to you - and bids you to follow.
You get up and go.
You have been taken.
Now open your eyes.
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And after we're taken, we're blessed.
By 'blessed' I mean you are continually affirmed in your identity as beloved - that's what it means to bless you - it's to affirm you in your belovedness.
Blessing is an act of speaking well of someone - or some thing:
When you sing in the shower - and I know you do: "I bless the rains down in Africa"... -
That's the same way God blesses you - by affirming what you really are.
You and I have this 'blessing voice' inside of us - it's there to remind us of our belovedness.
The problem, of course, is that it gets drowned out by all those other voices -
That voice of the intellect is going to tell you how foolish this is because it doesn't line up with your experience.
That voice of your emotion is going to tell you how foolish this is because it feels like you've always been told how flawed and fragile you are...
That voice of your body is going to tell you how foolish this is because it feels like you're putting on airs and better than others.
This is why listening for that voice of your soul, your conscience, your spirit, is so important - That 'quiet voice' that speaks good things about you gets drowned out by all the others - and our job is to listen for it! It's there to bless us so we can live into the truth of our belovedness every day.
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So we're taken and we're blessed - now the third place to discover our belovedness is in our brokenness.
I know this sounds counter-intuitive - but let me tell you about my friend Conor.
Last time I saw him I noticed that he had a pump on his belt - and when I asked him about it he said it was because he'd been given the gift of Type II Diabetes.
As we used to say in the 1980's "Say what?"
And Conor explained that his diabetes was actually a source of blessing -
Because he could now see that while diabetes was a hassle, it wasn't an imminently deadly disease.
He could see that if he had lived 500 years ago, he wouldn't be here - that he was benefitting from great, new technology. He also had a renewed sense of appreciation and understanding for health care workers and the entire system.
And Conor said, most profoundly, that this 'gift of diabetes' meant that he now had enter into the world of other people who suffer in the same way - making him a channel of blessing to others.
Our brokenness, flaws, failures, and sufferings are not barriers to being loved: Aren't the broken ones the ones Jesus kept closest to him? In our brokenness we find the very place where our belovedness can be most profoundly revealed - because we see that we are beloved in our brokenness!
Stop thinking you need to be perfect to be loved.
Stop, stop, stop!
You don't need to be fixed, mended, corrected, adjusted, serviced, or repaired.
You are beloved just as you are - broken and all!
And it is out of this brokenness that we find our fourth movement - to be given.
Taken, blessed, broken, and given.
And while we may think that 'giving' is a command - think about it more as an observation:
The deeper we move into our belovedness, the more excited and energized we become about sharing it.
If we think it's a joy to be beloved, it's really a joy to be a giver.
I see enough gray hair around here to surmise that you know this very well - the real joy in life is found when we share and give blessings to others.
What does Jan Ernst say, 'Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt, and gave it away at a garage sale.'
Giving is our natural extension of belovedness.
So that God did not make you to, first, be a giver -
God made us, first, to be receivers of love - of belovedness -
But, like a bucket under a hose - sooner or later it's going to overflow - and all that extra has to go somewhere.
Just think if that Rich Man had discovered his belovedness?
His acquisitive nature and love for sumptuous living would not have been confined to his nice house. His ability to walk on by a suffering, fellow human being with callous entitlement would have been seriously compromised. But the more aware we are of our belovedness, the more we understand our belovedness - the more we are able to claim it:
We realize we become better lovers: because beloved people love - of belove - others.
What are we going to do this week to become more aware - and to better embrace our belovedness? What steps can we take to better understand ourselves as objects of God's love? How can we better live into our true identities as truly beloved?
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So, do Rich people go to hell and poor people go to heaven?
- beloved people go to heaven because beloved people are in heaven.
Amen.