How Was This Chasm Established?

[Note: Today’s guest blogger is Kateri Boucher. Kateri grew up in the Spiritus community, where she loved attending church and goofing off in youth group. She now lives in Detroit, Michigan (Waawiiyatanong). She is the Ministries Coordinator at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church and a remote Masters of Divinity Student at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities.]

In today’s gospel passage, Jesus tells a story about a rich man and a poor beggar named Lazarus who slept outside the rich man’s door. When Lazarus dies, he is “carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham.” But when the rich man dies, he ends up tormented in “the netherworld.” The rich man tries to bargain with Abraham to save himself and his family from this fiery fate, but Abraham basically tells him, “There’s nothing I can do.”

As soon as I read this story, I thought about a man I know named Eugene. 

Eugene is a regular guest at Manna Community Meal, a Catholic Worker soup kitchen in Detroit, Michigan, based out of the Episcopal church where I work. Now, I should clarify: Eugene is actually a little more than a “regular guest” at Manna Meal. For the last year and a half, he has spent most of his nights sleeping outside the soup kitchen door. Somehow, he has survived harsh winter nights and blistering summer days. He has lived off of whatever the soup kitchen can offer him: bottled water, PB&J sandwiches, spaghetti, black bean soup, donated blankets and clothes. We have tried countless times to find him shelter elsewhere, but there are incredibly few options in the city for someone like him. 

Just like Lazarus, he has spent much of his life in great need and suffering, sleeping outside someone else’s door.

Perhaps because of my experiences with Eugene, there is another detail that I think Jesus may have left out of this story: it’s likely that Lazarus did not smell very good. In fact, it’s likely that Lazarus smelled quite, quite bad. When asked what one needed to know about the poor, the first thing Dorothy Day said was, “They tend to smell.” This may sound like a harsh word from someone being considered for sainthood, but there is a matter-of-fact-ness to her statement that I have come to appreciate. 

The way that Eugene smells has indeed been an issue of contention over these last many months. Not only does he spend his days and nights exposed to the elements, but he also suffers from incontinence and other health conditions. Although there is a shower and laundry facility in the building, he didn’t want to use it for his first few months of staying at the church. At that time, I found it physically uncomfortable – at times nearly unbearable – just to be in his near vicinity. And I wasn’t the only one: guests at the soup kitchen began refusing to stand in line near him, and complaining that he shouldn’t be let in. 

I found myself sympathizing with them, wondering, “Well, maybe we could just give him his food outside. . . That would be better for everyone, right?” But when the Manna Meal workers discussed it, they held firm in their belief that Eugene, truly the “poorest of the poor,” deserved a full seat at the table. After all, isn’t he just the kind of person who Jesus would welcome fully, even embrace? Who Abraham would hold close? 

The workers encouraged Eugene to begin using the shower and laundry facility, and they worked with other guests to help them navigate the smell. But they never stopped letting him in. They never turned him away. They never allowed him to feel less than or other.

This was a great lesson for me. And I see it reflected in today’s gospel. 

As the desperate rich man is begging to be saved from his misery, Abraham tells him that it is simply not possible. With Lazarus at his side, Abraham says, “Between us and you a great chasm is established to prevent anyone from crossing who might wish to go from our side to yours or from your side to ours.” 

I wonder: How might this chasm have been established? Could it have been created by the rich man himself, distancing himself from Lazarus, not able to see that he would one day wish he were by Lazarus’s side? 

It is so easy for me to create distance between myself and people like Eugene, people like Lazarus. But I hear this gospel passage as an invitation to stay connected to those who live on the margins of society – even when it feels uncomfortable or hard. 

I’m not sure I believe in the kind of divided afterlife that Jesus describes here, but I do deeply hope that Eugene can someday experience the kind of comfort given to Lazarus. And in the meantime, Eugene’s presence helps me recommit daily to working towards a world where no one has to live on anyone else’s doorstep . . . Where all are fully known, welcomed, and fed . . . And where all the great chasms between us are crossed.