Prayer: Come Holy Spirit, come.  Take my lips and speak with them.  Take our minds and think with them.  Take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you.  In Christ’s name, we ask it.  Amen

I want to begin by asking you sort of a strange question.  If I told you that it was possible to take a short test that could predict the approximate year you would die, would you take it?  Personally I don’t know if I would, but there’s at least one person who thinks it’s possible to determine death dates with reasonable accuracy.  Dr. David Demko is a well-known gerontologist in Boca Raton, Florida, who for the last 30 years has been doing research on the lifestyle patterns that either enhance or diminish life expectancy.  In 1974, while in graduate school in Michigan, Dr. Demko developed the death calculator and shortly there after received the support of the United States Administration on Aging.  Since that time the death calculator has been used all over the world as a predictor of life expectancy, based upon certain lifestyle behavior patterns.  The death calculator itself is actually a simple quiz that includes questions like the following:

“Do you have an annual physical exam?” If so, add three years to your score. If not, subtract three years from your score.  “Do you volunteer on a weekly basis?” Volunteering means non-paid service to unrelated individuals.  If so, add two years to your score.  If not, deduct one.  “Are you able to laugh at, and learn from your mistakes?” If not, subtract three years.  “Do you smoke a pack of cigarettes a day?” If the answer is yes subtract four years.  If you live or work with a smoker, subtract one year.  “Do you own a pet?” Add two years for interactive pets (e.g. dog, cat, or bird).  Add one year for passive pets (e.g. fish, reptile, or tarantula).  There are actually 22 questions in all on Dr. Demko’s quiz.

Out of curiosity, one magazine asked Dr. Demko to predict the deaths of some celebrities based on their current and past lifestyles.  Clean-living Clay Aiken, you remember of course from American Idol, will live to 82, while Courtney Love should only make it to 62, losing eight years for enjoying a smoking habit that is, among other personal habits, out of control.  At least one well-known musician has beaten the odds—Keith Richards the lead guitarist of the Rolling Stones (and my favorite classic rock and roll band) should have died in 1995—and I am glad to say he is still with us.

On his Website, Dr. Demko writes, “Long life isn’t just a result of smart genes and dumb luck.  Most of the time, it’s due to moderate eating, sleeping, diet, exercise, work and leisure.  In fact, 80 percent of the factors that control how long you live are related to your lifestyle, not your genes.”

Which brings us to Jesus’ sobering parable about a certain rich man and a certain poor man whose name is Lazarus.  Both men in the parable die and what they discover beyond the grave and gate of death turns out to be surprising to say the least.  While alive, the rich man lived a luxurious lifestyle.  Luke tells us that the rich man, “dressed in purple and fine linen and…feasted sumptuously everyday.”  All the while, Lazarus the poor man lay starving, covered in sores, dying outside the front gate of the rich man’s house.  And then as you know, and as we all will sooner or later, the two men die.  And that’s when the shocking part of the story really begins; or at least it ought to begin for those of us, including myself, who live comfortable lives while others live without access to life’s most basic needs. 

You see Lazarus, who is a person with no lifestyle choices, being desperately hungry, sick and dependent upon the kindness of the wealthy, dies and is raised to experience the eternal joys of heaven.  While the rich man, who presumably had the power to shape his lifestyle any way he wanted, also dies and is sent to suffer the torments of hell.  Only then, suffering the painful consequences of hell itself, does the rich man begin to assess whether the lifestyle he chose was such a good idea after all. 

Now as badly as those of us living comfortable lives might want to side step this parable, as Christ followers we can’t.  Those of us who have been blessed with much need to pay close attention to this parable and take it to heart—Jesus is speaking directly to us.  I have said often in this church that it matters the way we choose to live.  It matters the way we spend our money.  It matters where we spend our time.  It matters how we treat the people around us both our loved ones and…and those in need.  This parable is a wake up call for all who think how we live has no real consequences.  Dr. Demko’s quiz may predict when we are going to die, but that’s not really the point of his research.  The point is to choose to live in the healthiest and most meaningful ways possible—now, before we’re dead and have no choices at all.

In this parable, the rich man had a lifetime to honor Moses’ call to love God and love neighbor.  He had all the resources imaginable to heed the prophets’ warnings to care for the widow and the orphan, the poor and the oppressed.  Instead, the rich man failed even to notice the suffering man dying at his own front gate.  The rich man’s sin is not being rich.  His sin lies in rendering invisible the poor man Lazarus dying at his doorstep.  And it was only after he died and felt the consequences of his lifestyle that he wanted to make a change in his living.  But by then living was over…it was too late.

Now as the parable progresses we hear that, knowing that it’s too late for him, the rich man’s thoughts, actually generously, turn to his five living brothers.  These men undoubtedly suffer from the same narcissistic blindness as their brother.  Therefore, the rich man asks that Lazarus be sent back from death to warn his brothers to open their eyes to the great need and suffering that’s all around them—so that they can do something positive about it.  Unfortunately, the rich man is told that sending someone to them who has been raised from the dead will make little to no difference.  Nonetheless, the five brothers are not without hope.  Unlike the rich man, his brothers are still alive and still have the chance honor Moses’ call to love God and neighbor and heed the prophets’ warnings to care for the widow and orphan, the poor and oppressed.  And perhaps we will too.

You see by implication, we are those five brothers—we still have time to make the lifestyle choices that will bring our lives in tune with God’s will now, while we are still living.  Dr. Demko thinks we should make the right lifestyle choices now in order to live a long and healthy life.  The gospel teaches that there is more to making right choices than what will benefit us alone.  The wisest choices include shaping our lives in ways that care for the strangers at the gate, the neglected on the margins, the lonely in the shadows, the hungry on the streets.  

Bono the lead singer of U2 said of the AIDS crisis in Africa, “I think Judeo-Christian culture is at stake.  The church will be made irrelevant, if it doesn’t respond to [the AIDS crisis in Africa].  It would [be] like the way you heard stories of people watching the Jews get put on the trains during the Holocaust.  We will be that generation who watched our African brothers and sisters get put on the trains.”  Bono continues, “‘Love thy neighbor’ is not a piece of advice—it’s a command.  Christ talks about the poor [and says] ‘whatever you have done to the least of these brothers of mine, you’ve done to me.’ In Africa right now, the least of my brethren are dying in shiploads, and we are not responding.”  He concludes, “We’re here to sound the alarm.” 

You and I don’t have the same influence and power that Bono and others like him do.  Nonetheless, we do have the power to tell our elected officials and our church leaders that we care about people in desperate need around the world, and we do have the power to respond to need as it arises in our own communities beginning with our own friends and family when they’re in crisis—and moving on to those around us in Austin and at UT who live desperate lives.  The question is do we have the capacity to look around with the eyes of our heart and see suffering and neglect or like the rich man will we render those in need, even at our own doorsteps, invisible?  Will we see the suffering people who need our help?  Will we do something about it?  Amen.

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