Most people would agree that listening is important. And yet, in our fast paced, super polarized culture, it’s a rare skill. Listening is far more than simply hearing. It’s an act of interpretation that involves reading expressions and body language. Really, it’s a cross-cultural exercise. Because if we are to listen well, we must not minimize the differences between us. Listening requires that we respect the divide that separates my unique experiences from yours. And at the same time, listening builds bridges of connection as we receive and honor each other’s stories without judgement.

Some years ago, we had a “Befrienders” program here at First Church. In the training, we practiced our listening skills—including the 90/10 rule. The listener should encourage the person to whom they are listening to do 90% of the talking, while they do only 10%. That’s challenging! We also considered carefully what sort of responses a listener ought to make using that 10% of airtime. The temptation is strong to respond to what others share by shifting the conversation toward our own experiences… “That reminds me of a time when I….” Instead, nodding, leaning forward, making small interjections and paraphrasing their words to check your understanding all show that you’re listening. Silence makes space for them to process. Questions are tricky. Yes and no questions shut down conversation. Some questions feel intrusive. Open-ended questions can encourage a person to go deeper. Most of all, it’s important to follow the cues of the one to whom we’re listening and allow them to set the direction of the conversation. A core principle of the Befriender program is “caring not curing”. We have to recognize that our very natural impulse to want to give advice, or fix things for others is generally about making ourselves feel better. Instead, listening means learning to accompany and support people as they find their own way.

The focus of Jesus’ parable, as it draws to a close, is on listening. The rich man failed to listen to Creator Helps Him as he lay in the dust and cried out for food day after day. He refused to heed the teachings of Drawn from the water and the Prophets. The witness of these Jewish ancestors is extremely clear—the rich are to care for the poor; the feast is to include widows, orphans and strangers; and society as a whole should embrace economic fairness, even to the point of redistributing wealth and returning land. The implication is that the rich man’s siblings were treating beggars with the same contempt. That they, too, were tuning out their tradition’s call to compassion and justice.

Clearly, Jesus story is an indictment, not just of one family, but of an entire society that was failing to live up to the most basic moral responsibilities. Despite the oppressive economics of the Roman empire, their culture, too had an expectation that the rich would care for the poor. I learned that outside wealthy homes in those days, there were generally benches for people to wait to receive assistance. These sorts of benches were found when the ruins of Pompeii were excavated, for example. ¹

The rich man man’s lack of listening culminates in that ironic moment in Hades when he cries out to Father of Many Nations. “Send Creator Helps Him to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my thirsty tongue” Father of Many Nations said to him, ‘My son, do you not remember?’ My guess is that the rich man, pleading for a drop of water, probably didn’t care that Creator Helps Him had once begged for a crumb. Even then amid agony of facing consequences, the rich man still could fully grasp or take responsibility for the evil he had done. Because he continued to treat Creator Helps Him like a servant who ought to be sent to wait on him. That is the chasm between them. The rich man’s erasure of Lazarus’ humanity and dismissal of his story, his unconscious yet also intentional refusal to listen to another’s voice.

In these difficult times for our nation, I’m aware that rather than listening to each other, we too, are yelling across canyons. As the gaps widen between rich and poor, hungry and fed, housed and unhoused, with and without health care, we all grow more and more polarized. We talk to people with whom we share similar culture, class, life experience and views of the world. We sling memes at those on the other side of the divide. This intense polarization is not an accident. The ones who benefit from our lack of unity and solidarity are fanning the flames of misunderstanding, contempt and hatred.

I’m intrigued by the work of Braver Angels in fostering real conversations across political differences. Jarret Guajardo, a workshop facilitator in Denver, reflects on how difficult it is to overcome the polarization that is part of our human nature and our present culture. He shares this experience: “I sighed and called the workshop audience back to attention. They, and I, had just taken a six-question ‘Recognizing My Inner Polarizer’ self-assessment. It wasn’t their assessment scores I was lamenting; it was mine—the moderator of the Depolarizing Within Braver Angels workshop. I scored the equivalent of 75%. As in 75% polarized.”

He continues: “As a moderator and incorrigible believer in getting-along already, Depolarizing Within is one of my favorite Braver Angels workshops. That’s because the workshop recognizes that if we truly want to get-along-already, someone has to make an effort to stop the cycle of mistrust; a cycle fueled by stereotyping, dismissing, ridiculing, and contempt. That someone, it turns out, is not the person on the other side.” “The self-assessment” he explains, “includes questions such as ‘How often do I find myself thinking about ‘those people’ on the other political side without regard for the variation among them?” and ‘How often do I find myself focusing on the most extreme or outrageous ideas and people on the other side, making it hard to see how a reasonable person could remain in that group?’²

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus’ economic teachings provide a constant drum beat. The message is: the accumulation of wealth and possessions, and all that they represent is seductive and yet ultimately empty and death-dealing. The abundant life Jesus invites us into is about belonging to each other. So we really must choose to which we will give our loyalty: God or wealth, relatives or possessions, polarization that fosters authoritarianism or listening that allows a real democracy to flourish as it never has before.

Today’s parable is a kind of exaggerated fable that plays up these choices. It’s a stark story, very black and white, with flat characters. It portrays people as all good or all bad, and their lives as either sorrow and pain or ease and comfort. There’s no in between, no complexity, no gray zones. The point of this parable is to disturb us, to startle us, to pierce our excuses and denials, and to turn our attention to the weight of choices before us. This story help us see our society of inequality clearly for what it is— Hades on earth. I draw comfort and courage from what the rich man hopes his relatives will be able do—that is, “turn their hearts back to the Creator”

The point of Jesus’ story is not the threat of hell after we die. It’s the promise that listening will enable us to cultivate a community of belonging strong enough to sustain us all. As we do this work, we’ll have good days and bad days. One moment, we’ll go out of our way to help someone in need. The next we’ll ignore the cries of someone suffering. We’ll protest injustice even as we play into the hand of those who seek to divide and conquer. We need not seek perfection, nor live with paralyzing guilt. What we need to do is keep listening and learning. Orienting our hearts again and again toward the compass of belonging, turning and returning, over and over again, toward kindness, toward justice, toward the teachings of our ancestors, toward the heart of our Creator.

Amen.

1 Commentary on Luke 16:19-31
2 Depolarizing Within – My Self-Assessment