The Chasm – Lent 2014 – Week 4

Luke 16:27-28 And he said, “I beg you then, Father, that you might send him to the house of my father.  For I have five brothers, that he might warn them so that they might not come to this place of pain.”

Sometimes, when my wife and I have an argument, our attempts to come together again seem futile.  Maybe we’re both tired or have had one of those weeks where it seems no one gave a hoot about our opinion, but, for some reason, a discussion that should have taken just a few minutes ends up swallowing an entire hour of our night.  And there are times when I want to throw up my hands, leave the room, and give up on ever reaching any reconciliation, ever bridging the gap that night.  There is, it seems, no hope of it.

There’s a shift in the story we’ve been following these past few weeks.  Upon finding himself in that far distant place, the Rich Man begged for aid for himself.  Just a little water upon my tongue, he asked, would cool me.

But, then, Abraham says those fateful words: no one, even if it was their heart’s desire, could cross from here to there.  And following that revelation, we see in this week’s verses, the Rich Man begins to plead for his family.

In one sense, this shows growth.  He is, at least, no longer thinking only about himself.  But this change in focus reveals, to me, something sad—the Rich Man has given up hope, any hope, for reconciliation.

Rightly so, you may say.  He’s made his choices; he lived his life divided from others who reached out to him.  He chose feasts and fancy clothes over love.  In the words of an earlier generation, he made his bed, now he has to lie in it.

And maybe that is true for the world to come.  Maybe there is no hope if one finds themselves on the opposite side of that chasm.  But, either way, it isn’t true on this side of the grave.

On those evenings where my wife and I argue and one of us decides to give up and go on to bed, it doesn’t end like that.  After a few minutes cooling off, we emerge from the bedroom and change the tone of our discussion.  We reach out over the divide, filling in the gorge that’s appeared at our feet.

Paul writes that nothing in all of creation is powerful enough to separate us from the agape of God.  His words are a reminder that God’s love is so fierce and so amazing that it can ascend any height, plunge to any depth, and bridge any canyon.  And if it can do that, then is there ever a reason to lose hope, to stop reaching forth even if it is just for a bit of cool water?