Beyond The Message: The Danger of Looking the Other Way

Welcome to Beyond the Message, a midweek space where we continue the conversation from Sunday's sermon, unpacking context, exploring your questions, and growing as we listen, learn, and follow Jesus together.

Welcome back to Beyond the Message.

Uh, I'm Aidan and I'm joined by uh Pastor Caleb Finlayson.

And today we're going to be talking about Grant's sermon.

And you'll notice that Grant is not here.

He's on a governance course this week.

So we've got the freedom to unpack and talk about his sermon without his comments.

Come on now.

We will obviously be very respectful because it was a great sermon.

It was.

But as well as recapping his sermon, we're going to be talking today about who the Lazaruses are that we may be overlooking.

Is poverty always financial?

And whether we should prioritize local or global needs.

But first, uh let's recap Grant's sermon, which was on the parable of the rich man and Lazarus from Luke chapter 16, verses 19 to 31, where Jesus confronts one of the greatest spiritual dangers of our age, as Grant put it, indifference.

Luke 16:19–31

Grant explored how comfort can slowly blind us to the people that God places right in front of us, and how the kingdom of God calls us to see others as God sees them, known, valued, and loved.

It really was a great sermon, and I've uh spoken to a number of young adults already who were very impacted by it.

One of the things that stood out to me, and I know stood out to many people, and was possibly a new insight that we'd never seen before, was this name given to Lazarus, and Grunt highlighted and pointed out that he's the only person given a name in any of Jesus' parables.

Pretty pretty remarkable.

Yeah, and it's yeah, that's come up multiple times since in discussions that I've had with people as well, going, Oh wow, I had never known that this was the only person that was given a name.

But not only that, a couple of people I've chatted to actually, they said they weren't even aware that in all of their years in reading scripture that this passage here was actually in scripture.

So it just I guess goes to show that you know it is not about the destination, but it's about the journey of our faith and you know how we can continuously be coming back to this book of life and how it continues to fill us, shape us, mould us, uh, if we allow it to.

And so uh the joys of being able to read through again and again through the different gospels.

Yeah, yeah, and like to actually teach through a gospel, so we do cover you know all these passages.

So it's like you actually come across a parable like this that might not be as famous as the Good Samaritan, and people have never heard that it was in the Bible, let alone a sermon on it.

So um that Lazarus thing was crazy, and also like he's given that name, but then the links that Grant drew to Lazarus, who Jesus raises from the dead, correct, um kind of blew my mind as well.

Yeah, and if you if you haven't uh heard the sermon, encourage you to go back and to check that out.

And if you'd like to see the sermon notes to actually look and reflect on that, what Grant said, really encourage you to go back through those.

So we said we were gonna talk a bit about um who Lazaruses are.

It's quite a f application question straight away.

Correct, yeah.

And so Aidan, love to hear your thoughts around this.

Who are the Lazaruses at our gate?

Uh, who are the people that we can typically overlook and uh walk straight past with the narrowing of our vision?

Hmm.

Yeah, I I I thought about and I my initial response was kind of like so many people, right?

Because we we cross paths with so many people, it's kind of easy to overlook lots of people.

The busier the city that you live in, this I I grew up in London, people will walk like with tunnel vision, and just because you kind of have to, there's so many people, you just overlook people left and right.

Auckland's also pretty busy, so we can get trained to kind of overlook or not notice people that are in our paths.

But um, on sort of slightly deeper reflection, I I think there are two categories for me that I can overlook.

One is those who are overly familiar, so that might be neighbors who you see on the driveway.

Well, I live in a in a townhouse and it was sort of a shared driveway, so we're often doing the bins at the same time.

Yeah, yeah.

It's it's kind of like everyday occurrence, they're walking to their car.

It's like overly familiar.

I know them enough now.

I haven't hidden from them, I know their names.

Um, but it's like, oh, I'll see them tomorrow, or like I'm just going to work, so it's just like easy to overlook them because they're um they're always in my path, which I think is quite like the the Lazarus and the rich man.

Yes, it's just like an everyday occurrence, so over time you get blind to it.

The other people that uh a quite different category that we might overlook would be the opposite, would be people who are uncomfortably different to us.

Correct.

So we we we might more deliberately walk around somebody, maybe there's somebody at church or um at a workplace who is quite noticeably different for us from a range of reasons, yeah.

Uh, and just out of uncomfortableness or not knowing how to engage, we could avoid.

So so one is kind of uh just like by accident or by just over familiarity avoiding, one might be more deliberate.

Yeah, and I love that the that language that you put, the the familiar, because I I hadn't thought about that.

The first thing that came to my mind was the uncomfortable, you know, the out of your comfort zone.

Those are the ones that we choose to tend to ignore.

But that's actually really interesting around the the familiar spaces, you know.

Uh I and that as an extrovert, I generally tend to love to, you know, connect with my neighbours, but there are other familiar spaces, like for example, my kids' school, where there are these like contexts of I'm in that space all the time, but yet can so quickly avoid or you know adjust my posture because it it's almost like the meeting of those two worlds, right?

Where you go, oh, like this can be a little bit uncomfortable.

Do I do I really want to do this?

And yet it is still so familiar.

Yeah.

And one of the things that I really liked, and you kind of allude to a little bit there, that Gran actually said in his his message was it's not the danger of what our possessions do, or the danger of what our possessions do is the narrowing of our vision.

And so these places and spaces that we walk, the people that we encounter, it's in the narrowing of our vision because of the the affluence in the life that we live.

So it's yeah, it's super interesting.

Yeah, it's like a familiarity that and like I'm a new parent, you've been a parent for a bit longer than me.

And I remember when we first started going to like things with Rio, my son, and it's like quite exciting because you meet other parents, and it's it's a novel thing for us to go to you know, a swimming lesson, and oh wow, there's these other parents that I can talk to, and we have this little bond, and it's quite exciting.

Um, or even before having a kid and you've got antenatal group, it's like, oh wow, there's all these people, and but then as you as you go on, it I guess it becomes normal to have you know other parents involved and you can kind of easily be less intentional, or you can choose to be how am I gonna rub shoulders and yeah.

And I think I actually was having a conversation with one of my youth leaders the other day about this of you know, in life, there are natural off-ramps that nobody is going to judge you for, you know.

For example, uh, you know, if you are, you know, going along and you go, Oh, well, I've just had kids, so I'm not gonna do this anymore, or I'm gonna step away from this, and oh, that's a completely understandable off-ramp or change in career or whatever it might be.

And I wonder how often we actually are doing this narrowing of our vision and acting like the the rich man in this story, and we we often give ourselves credit for that of going, well, you know, for me personally it could be, oh well, I'm just I've narrowed my vision to my kids and I'm focusing on them, and so I'm not actually looking at what's happening around me, so that because you know it's it's familiar, but it's also uncomfortable, so I'm just gonna focus on my my kid, or or I'm in this space at my work, and so all of a sudden I I I'm just gonna focus on this thing, which seems like a natural off-ramp, which is okay.

It's sort of justifiable, yeah.

Justifiably walking away from and stepping out of God going, Well, I've actually placed this person in your life, or I've replaced you into this situation for such a time as this.

So And it might be different to a different time of year, because we talk about seasons a lot in church, right?

Everyone loves a season analogy, come on.

Yeah, uh like you know, I'm in this season, and for this season I'm gonna be stepping back from XYZ because of you know this thing.

And that might be necessary, but God might be putting an opportunity in your life for that season, yeah, uh, which might be different to other ones where we talked about, you know, parenting, but it could be retirement or it could be, you know, uh a certain structure at work that changes, it presents a new opportunity.

So what are the kind of people at your gate in that changing season?

Yes, yeah.

Um because we don't get sort of like a free pass in this, and we always kind of have opportunities.

And knowing that God's the one that gives us the strength to, you know, in those moments and in those seasons again where you go, Oh, I don't have the capacity to do this, or I don't think that I have the skill set currently.

It's like, well, this is a perfect opportunity for us to rely on him in those uncomfortable spaces, you know, as we walk past and try to widen our vision, as it were.

Uh, this kind of first question is related to our second question.

So we talked about who are the Lazaruses at our gate, and we've shared a few uh examples.

Um, but I guess one of the things that I noticed uh as we as we talk about stuff like this at church and as we discuss parables of Jesus like this, is that Jesus talks a lot about the poor.

Um but in my experiences, churches, particularly ones in places like the North Shore, um, we often speak about the poor in broader terms, um, like spiritually poor, socially poor, emotionally poor.

Um, but when Jesus talks about the poor, is he primarily referring to those who are economically disadvantaged?

Or are we right to kind of broaden the category?

And I I I don't have an answer for this.

Um I have some thoughts around it, but it's more of a question, like, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, and it's good.

I think uh it's something to always be wrestling with in scripture around as we navigate and read through these passages, thinking through the process of who was this originally written to, what is going on here, who's the writer, all of that sort of contextual sort of stuff.

And I do think that there is a degree of you know particular focus on economic engagement here that that uh Luke is writing to.

And but actually the the first thought that I had initially held in that space was we live in a context in our world at the moment where we do definitely talk about you know the the four walls of Hawada, you know, the the spiritual well-being, the physical well-being, and the social and the mental emotional.

And so I think we do have this immediate tendency to go, like, oh well, if any one of those is affected, rightfully so, because it is a great model, and I'm not wanting to knock the model by any means of Tefada Tapafa, but actually going when we we don't want to take away from the context of what is being written.

You know, yes, we can translate it into our world, but you know, if you today with that model, we would say that if you were poor in any one of those spaces, you are poor.

And and push back if you don't agree that's a great model to look at it through because it's uh it's a holistic, right?

Yes, holistic poverty could encompass any of those things.

Um but in light of you know, as Grant had said in the the message at the start and in the week before, this is written together in this, you know, the the two weeks in a row that we've kind of addressed here, this it is following this theme of finance.

And Luke has a particular emphasis on money and this upside-down kingdom that's going on here.

So I think if we are to step away from the significance of Luke's engagement with money in this space, we can quickly cheapen what he is trying and intending uh to bring out.

Okay.

So so it's kind of like a I agree, and I think I think it's good to think about poverty in broader terms.

And a hundred percent there's so many significant needs in terms of emotional well-being, social isolation that um you'd be aware of, you know, through your work with 24-7 youth work.

There'd be plenty of people there who might not be materially poor but experience other types of poverty.

Um but I I agree, we don't want to do that at the expense of or or actual economic poverty engagement.

And I I think sometimes it links with this parable because the parable and the questions we've asked are all about who's at our gate.

And and if you know we live in an area where we don't see abject poverty, uh, we don't see maybe homelessness in the same way that we would in other parts of the world, we go, well, what are the needs in front of me while my coworker is struggling in their marriage?

So that's like a valid way of going, well, that's a need that's in my vicinity that I can step into.

Yeah.

Um but at the same time, I think we still have to ask the financial kind of questions.

Like Grant said, are our material possessions blinding us or our comforts kind of slowly blinding us to the needs around us?

Whether those needs are economic or social or emotional or spiritual.

Um and my young adults pointed the spiritual element out as well to me this morning at Bible study when you know, maybe one of the needs that we overlook the most is actually people's need to know about Jesus.

And we could walk past people all the time, uh and actually we, in terms of our faith, are rich, we we have been blessed with knowing about Jesus and and knowing him.

And are we sharing that with those who are have not been blessed with their upbringing?

So, like, I was like, man, that's a challenge that I didn't think about.

Love it.

Yeah, all of these things uh force us to ask something that that Grant kind of triggered me to ask in his sermon as well.

And and he mentioned this phrase duty of care, uh, and he has a lot of governance experience.

He's on a governance course this week uh and kind of talked about what duty of care means in that context.

And it made me think who's within our duty of care or our scope of care, who is Caleb responsible for?

Uh who's Aidan responsible for?

Who are those listening responsible for what's within their duty of care?

Um, and it's as we think about that in our day and age, when we're so aware, like we just have to look at our phones or our news, and there's so much need, so many causes.

How do we decide like what what we step into?

And is it like, does it need to be something at our gate?

And because that's kind of the implication of this parable.

It seems that it's kind of a local thing, but these days we're so aware of global needs.

How do we choose what we engage in?

Yes, yeah.

And I think it's it is definitely one of those things that is immediately captivating in that space, right?

Of plenty of us have uh, you know, this sense of or of whether it's a sponsor child or donating to different spaces, and you know, yeah, we as a church, you know, go beyond the walls as we talk about it, which is important.

We are called to do that, but I think that's the key word is calling.

What is the calling that we are invited into by what the spirit is leading and guiding us into in that space?

Uh, however, you know, to discern where God's calling us is a broader picture, but in relation to this specific passage, uh I have no doubt that God is still calling all of us at a local level at somebody or some uh situation that is at our gate, you know, because to go to the ends of the earth beyond our four walls, you still have to walk out your front gate.

And so that in that image of itself for me is powerful, you know.

To if I want to be able to go out and to practically support or spiritually support, I still have to understand that there are in my local vicinity somebody sitting at my gate.

So understanding who that is is is is key.

So maybe that is a starting point for us and for young people, you know, if you pastor and you kind of one of the things you do is uh activate your faith and get young people thinking about how they can, you know, go beyond the walls.

Correct.

But that normally starts pretty local, yes.

Um and supporting local ministries or other churches.

Yeah.

Um yeah, for example, one of the things that we're doing this term with that is we're going and supporting other local churches by how can we help you out with our young people?

It puts our young people's faith into action and we get them to go and it might be serving at another youth ministry and going, we take a group of them and you know, we might be serving uh uh what's it called, uh supper.

Or we might go clean the church, or we might go pray through the church, whatever it might be.

Last term we took a group of year 13s through Queen Street to talk to and to hand out beanies and food uh to homeless people or people sleeping rough, and so those are ways in which we can go, hey young people, let's introduce you to and and again widen your perspective of those who are you know yeah, sitting in our game.

Yeah.

Um yeah, I love that.

And I'm just thinking about like that, you know, widen your perspective.

You you've used that phrase, and we often talk about exposure, exposure trips, um, but it seems you know that that youth model is quite a good model because it's not like um immediately take people up and drop them in an environment that is the biggest exposure ever, you know, like in global poverty and step from here in the North Shore right to there.

It's kind of like a gradual build-up of like what's in your local area, what needs are around you, and then maybe you go to Queen Street, same city, but some maybe some more dramatic, obvious needs, and then maybe you know, other exposure trips that in the past have done through Windsor Park at LA, which is kind of first world poverty.

And then I know you know grants hope with with India and kind of doing that third world or developing world poverty where um it's even probably another step removed from your everyday experience.

Yeah, so it's like a you're doing exposure, but you're doing it kind of wisely and um progressive overload, um, just kind of like a training principle.

Yeah, totally.

Um to come back to the parable again because this idea of like local versus global, it's different in the days of this parable because that rich man wasn't sitting at home with his phone, seeing all these other needs, right?

It's a different time and place, and we we have access to a lot of other needs which can be you know a blessing and a curse.

But I do find it interesting that that in this parable the rich man is seems to be called to account for neglecting Lazarus specifically.

It's almost like uh Abraham in this in the parable is saying, he was your responsibility, like he was at your gate, don't worry about all those other people.

Yeah, he's not called to account for all of those other people because I'm sure there was plenty of people, you know, beggars and people in need, but it's like this person was at your gate.

Yeah, you walk past him every day.

Yeah, he was kind of the thing.

Um, so I think there is something to be said, like that we all have that kind of local calling, who's in your life, um, that we started this conversation, that we're walking past, that we're overlooking.

It doesn't mean that we may not be called and we shouldn't care about other causes in the world.

Uh, we do have access to that, and that's a great thing.

Um, but like you said, it to get beyond the walls, to get beyond your border, you still got to go out the gate.

And yeah, um, if we're overlooking needs in our own local life, um, in order to go somewhere else, yeah, it seems kind of counterintuitive.

But also, it kind of makes me think about you know, the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God and then to love your neighbor as yourself, you know.

So there there is this neighbor mentality, this loving that is it is not exclusive, it doesn't hold to I'm loving only these people and not those people, right?

Yeah.

And and I think, you know, if he's walking out his gate, some of those days that, you know, rich young ruler may have been walking to the synagogue or to his local church premises to sit and to listen to a sermon or two.

And in my mind, I go, you know, what if Jesus was to walk into our church and to say those very words to us, who did you walk past or who did you drive past on your way to church today?

That who are those Lazarus?

Yeah.

And you know, would we be challenged enough to actually go, Oh, okay, yeah, actually you've got me there, Jesus?

You know, and would we turn around and and see that person on the way home?

Yeah, it makes me it reminds me of the Good Samaritan, you know, that we've we've gone through in this series of the same kind of thing of like that kind of question comes up, who is my neighbor?

Um who who is my neighbor?

And yeah, I remember Miko preached on it and talked about this experiment where people were on their way to give a message on the Good Samaritan, and then there was a staged incident where they had to walk past somebody in need, yeah, and then literally on their way to give a talk about the Good Samaritan and then didn't stop most of the time.

Put it into practice because of because there was a time pressure, yeah.

Um, so yeah, it does it does link up, and obviously that's the gospel of Luke, and we're seeing this repetitive theme about um caring for people, about the boundaries of who's in and who's out and who is our neighbor, not being confined to um ethnic groups or religious groups.

Um but I I don't think we can get away from this locality thing of like who is in my circle.

Um but we still we still I I I personally find it very challenging, you know, today when you can be there's every kind of cause, every kind of fundraiser, every um need that we're aware of.

How do we discern what we're involved in?

Like you said, how do we know what God is calling us into?

And I mean, when people ask me about that, when I really think about it, I think we have to be okay that we can't give our lives to every single one of these causes.

We can't um serve every Lazarus, yeah.

Uh, and we have to be okay with that.

Um, but if you give your life to one of those causes for God's kingdom, that is a beautiful thing.

Um that is a life well lived, and you won't be going, well, why didn't you advocate for this or that?

Why didn't you advocate for this cause or this war or animal rights or you know if there's something that God's put on your heart that that is in line with his kingdom and that advocates for the least, the last, the vulnerable, the marginalized, go for that, you know, and ask for his strength and don't feel bad that you're not then doing ten other causes.

Um, yeah, some of you might be uh able to juggle multiple, yeah, yeah, but there might be a specific thing that God has called you to.

Um, and I think go go for that.

Yeah, I think just yeah, last thing for me is that I think that Jesus in this parable, what he is ultimately illustrating is to just keep it simple.

You know, that you can't get more simple than caring for somebody outside your gate, you know?

He's not saying here's the ten steps, and here's this complicated thing.

It's just there's somebody outside your gate that you walk past every day.

How are you engaging?

How are you supporting?

How are you stepping into that space?

Keep it simple.

Keep it simple.

And and I love how Grant said, like simple can start with a name.

Yeah.

That was the most powerful thing in the sermon was the Lazarus.

Uh, and the first step for the rich man Grant suggested could have been getting to know his name and having a short conversation.

So we can keep things simple.

Uh, when we talk about serving causes and and giving our lives to something, that kind of leads me to the message I'm preparing now for Sunday, which will be our next episode of the podcast.

Uh, and I'll be uh moving into Luke chapter 17.

Luke 17 · chapter mention

And one of the themes that we'll talk about is is that of duty, of dutiful service, of giving our lives to something, maybe in unglamorous and unspectacular ways, yeah, but um doing our job as Christians.

So uh I'm gonna be talking about that on Sunday, and we'll be back next week on the podcast to to discuss that sermon.

Uh, but until then, uh may God continue to shape us as we listen, learn, and follow Jesus together.