24 years ago I preached my first official sermon to a church congregation.  I was in Mankato, MN on my internship and the pastor gave me the morning to preach.  I preached this text, Luke 16, the story of the rich man and Lazarus.  Obviously this isn’t the Lazarus we all know from John 11, yet we know this character very well.  Tradition has named this rich man Dives, and I think maybe we know his very well, too.

The sermon was called, “The Tale of Two Tables” since I was at that time a Dickens fan.  The text refers to two tables, the banquet table of Dives from which Lazarus wishes he could eat, and the banquet table of the Lamb from which Dives cries for just a drop of water.  The point of the sermon is that you have to choose one table or the other – you cannot eat at both.

It is interesting that the guilt of Dives is at best implied but at worst is absent from this story.  Dives isn’t a scoundrel or a slaver or a misuser of wealth.  He is simply a comfortably wealthy man.  Lazarus isn’t a saint, doesn’t save any children from burning buildings, and isn’t notably righteous.  He is simply poor, so poor that even the dogs lick his sores (biblically, it doesn’t get any poorer than that).  The story seems to be that everyone gets a set amount of comfort, and if you have it in this life, you don’t in the next and vice versa.  A bit disquieting as stories go.

Yet our Western minds, which have to find some guilt if there is punishment, latch on to Dives’ statement that Abraham, the voice of God in this story, should “warn” his brothers, implying his damnation is out of ignorance, not deviance.  Yet Abraham states that if they won’t believe the prophets, which they didn’t, then even if someone came back from the dead they still wouldn’t believe him, a beautiful reference to Jesus Himself.

Which table do you want to eat at?  What might that mean for how you live today?

There is so much in this passage, we may spend a few days on it.  From the story of Mephibosheth (one of my personal favorites in all of the scriptures) to the war with the Ammonites begun with bad assumptions to David and Bathsheba to the Prodigal Son… quite a day’s reading.

Let’s look at the Ammonite War today.  We all assume that others will act in the same way we do.  Nobody is afraid of being gossiped about as much as a gossip.  Nobody is as quick to see lies as a liar.  So when we are called to be different, separate, unique, holy in our interactions, we cannot assume that anyone will believe us or trust a pure motive.  The Ammonites assume David is acting as they would and sending spies to “case the joint” before a full scale attack.  David was planning no such thing and was instead showing mercy and grace, something people of this world cannot understand.  So they mistreated his envoy and brought the wrath of Israel down upon themselves.

Why do we mistrust others?  Why do we assume their motives must be impure?  Someone pays us a compliment and we look for the favor that must be coming.  Innocuous comments are scoured in our memories to find the hidden barb of ridicule.  Someone states an opinion and suddenly we have an entire world built around all that they didn’t say but we assumed they meant.  Why?  Is it because that is how we would act in their situation?  Is it because we’ve been hurt before by missing the hidden reality behind some behavior and it has made us untrusting?

This is how racism, sexism, homophobia, church divisions and even wars begin.  We hear or see something and rather than getting to know a person and asking for clarity, we put them in a box with others and then label that box, “Them.”

Can we stop assuming?  Pardon the language, but as the old saying goes, “To ass-u-me just makes an ass out of u and me.”  When someone says something, can we just take them at their word?  Can we take compliments to simply be momentary blessings?  Can someone’s statement be just that statement?  Can we spend time with a person so they remain a person rather than a member of “them”?  We will all be better for it if we can.