It was a beautiful July day. A man was sitting at his desk in an air conditioned room. The temperature in the room was a comfortable 72 degrees. He felt full of energy. From his window he saw that the sun was shining brightly outside, and every now and then a slight breeze stirred the tops of the trees. It was such a beautiful day!
He was watching a teenage boy working on the grounds. Judging by the slowness of his movements one would think that he was a prisoner doing forced labor. He rested frequently. “What’s the matter with him? How can a young man be so lazy?” the man asked himself.
But later in the morning the man went outside on some business. As soon as he stepped outside, he was hit by a wave of heat which stopped him in his tracks. It was 90 degrees out there, and the humidity was almost as high. Now he realized what the boy was up against. And, given the kind of day that was, he was amazed that the boy hadn’t fainted.
Though his world was separated only by the width of a wall from the world of the boy, those two worlds could hardly have been more different. Yet unless he left his own world and entered that of the youth, he would never have known the difference.
We can be within arm’s reach of someone, yet be living in a different world from that person. But we’ll never know the difference unless we leave our world and enter that of the other person. We will never understand it from the outside.
The rich man and Lazarus lived in opposite worlds, yet those worlds lay side by side. But the rich man never once entered the world of the poor man. He didn’t see Lazarus as a human being, much less as a brother with whom he shared a common humanity. He was indifferent to him, and indifference is a great evil.
The rich man didn’t do anything wrong – he didn’t hurt or exploit the poor man. He was condemned, not because he was rich, but because he didn’t show compassion to the poor man. He lived only for himself.
Sin is not only about doing wrong. It is also about not doing good – the sin of inactivity, of doing nothing, and worse still, of indifference.
May the Lord, who entered fully into our world, help us to enter the world of those who are in pain or in need. As people who stand in daily need of God’s mercy and goodness, as people who pray with hands held out like a beggar’s bowl, we should in turn try to be kind, generous and merciful with others, because the measure we give will be the measure we receive.