Do "good fences make good neighbors?"

 “Something there is that doesn't love a wall,” begins Robert Frost’s poem, Mending Walls.  And he goes on to reflect about the wall that separates him from his neighbor, the one about which his neighbor claims “Good fences make good neighbors,” even as they are repairing it together.  As the poem continues, Robert Frost wonders at the truth of the claim that good fences make good neighbors.  So would Jesus in today’s gospel.  So would Jesus.

Archeological excavations in Israel, Jericho and Jerusalem have uncovered mansion after mansion, palatial villa after villa from the time of Jesus.  See in these villas marbled walls, steam baths, indoor plumbing, and mosaic floors.  That is the nameless rich man’s place.  A place of the finer things in life.  Now, nowhere in the parable does it say he is an evil man, or that he came by his wealth dishonestly.   That is not how Jesus paints him in this story.  He simply is a rich man, dressed in purple, the most expensive color cloth in the day of Jesus, living in his ‘place’ – one of the multi-million dollar mansions of his day.

Lazarus, the only character named in all of Jesus’ parables – a name that means “He whom God helps” has his place as well.  It is “the gate.”  Lazarus is “at the gate.”  What is this gate?  A gate denotes access; a gate means security and boundaries.  People build gates to keep themselves in as well as to keep people out.  And it seems that we are good at that process.  Who is in, who is out, who’s acceptable, who’s unacceptable; who is worthy, who is unworthy.  Go through the rubble of ancient and modern cities and you will find gates.  Lazarus exists at the gate.   

I want you to struggle with me as we see Lazarus at the gate, existing there in the shadow of such plenty.  What if the gate in the story is not so much an iron door guarding a palatial villa long ago, but any barrier we put around our lives?  And what if Lazarus is not so much someone who lived back there, but is someone wounded and destitute, needy and hungry, sitting just outside our self-made, carefully watched gate? 

It doesn’t take much imagination, does it?  In fact, the nightly news brings those people right into our homes.  We see images of those displaced by war, those who are the newly unemployed, those who are mentally handicapped, needing help, but dismissed by the state to fend on their own.  In fact, at my parish, I didn’t even to see it on the news.  For a number of months, there was a car with Connecticut license plates – a man living out of his car – right on our parking lot.  Lazarus is always at our gates. 

And I am troubled, because I know how easily the gates go up around my heart.  It is so easy to be overwhelmed by the countless needs.  I need the fences around my world, to keep it stable, to keep it manageable, and to keep it safe. 

That is what got the rich man in trouble.  ONLY that!  Not some moral lapse, not dishonest behavior, but the loving of the walls that kept him separate from Lazarus.  NOTE WELL – he knew Lazarus’ name.  When he asked Abraham for some aid in his place of torment, he said: “Send Lazarus to dip his finger in water…”  But because Lazarus existed at the gate, it was okay to ignore his need, okay to walk past him as he went in and out of his mansion. 

Robert Frost continues in his poem: 

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.”
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.'

Perhaps it is more accurate to say:  SomeONE there is that doesn’t love a wall.  And if we want to be His follower – may we do our best to see who we are walling in, and who we are walling out this week…