A young African refugee sometimes comes to our meetings at the Jesus Centre. ‘Please explain to me, Miss Julia, about Christianity,’ he said the other day, ‘I don’t get what it’s all about.’
He’s really keen to learn, this young friend of mine, and we’ve started reading parables together. He’s just had an elementary education and reading in English doesn’t come that easy – but he’s doing well. I love it! I’m so familiar with these stories but seeing them through a young African‘s eyes can put a different light on things. Well .. the fatted calf … yes, I get it,’ he exclaims, ‘In Africa we have the fatted chicken for special guests!’
Last week we read the story of the poor beggar man Lazarus (and, believe me, my young African friend has seen poverty I have never seen.) Jesus, shockingly – and not the best story to tell while your listeners are eating - describes the plight of a poor disabled man, malnourished and incapable of work, who has to be carried to the gates at the end of the drive of a rich man to beg. His skin has erupted in boils, showing serious signs of malnourishment. Although the rich man lives in luxury, eating well and is clothed in the most expensive of clothes he does little to feed the poor man and nothing to clothe him or tend his skin. The latter is left for the hungry dogs who lick his sores – even they show more compassion than the rich man.
In time both men die. Lazarus is taken to a place of comfort, no longer lying on a street corner but resting in a place of greatest honour - Abraham’s lap. Roles are reversed: the rich man is hungry and thirsty now and his place of torment exceeds anything Lazarus suffered in this life – it is hell itself. Now it is his turn to beg. Lazarus’s begging in his life has fallen on deaf ears. Abraham, from afar off (for there is a great chasm between), does hear but there is nothing he can do. ‘Send Lazarus to my brothers,’ the rich man cries, ‘Let him warn them that they must mend their ways so they do not end up here! Surely they will believe Lazarus’s testimony if he rises from death; after all he has seen these eternal realities first hand.’
Abraham, with kindness replies, ‘If their hearts are hard on earth and they do not listen to the law and prophets that tell us to care for the poor man at our gate, it will make no difference even if someone was to rise from the dead and tell them.’
The story would have been shocking, even revolting, to Jesus’ hearers, especially as the villain was a well-to-do Jew. Yet, in our western eyes, he is no villain actually - he didn’t do anything bad – he just didn’t do anything!
Jesus of Nazareth
We read the Good Samaritan next. I was happy when we finished the story and had talked about the behaviour of the three men on that lonely Jericho Road and my young friend turned to me and said, ‘Miss Julia, that’s you! Helping me read, you have been like the Samaritan to me!’
1 comment:
Enjoyed reading this.
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