It is not my problem.  Certainly if we have any degree of awareness at all we can all agree that there are many problems in our world today.  There is a tremendous amount of suffering caused in a large part by our human failings.  There is poverty, prejudice, isolation, loneliness, hunger, homelessness, illness and disease, lack of access to a quality education, erosion of human virtues and values, bitter ideological divisions, ecological disasters, people enslaved and subject to human trafficking and the list just goes on and on.  Often we look at this sorry situation that diminishes us as human persons, that diminishes our capacity for hope, that threatens the stability of our communities and we declare rather smugly that someone should do something about this before it destroys us all.  We see the need and recognize that something should be done and that someone should act – but that someone is too often someone else.  Rather than engaging in community life and striving to use our gifts and resources  to address the problems and challenges of our times we have a tendency to withdraw and isolate ourselves from human suffering and human trials.  It is not my problem.  Thank God that’s not me.  We isolate ourselves in our comfortable world of material prosperity and we turn away from the disagreeable situation of human need and suffering.  We want to be left alone to live a quiet and peaceful life, enjoying what is ours in this world.  We don’t want to be bothered with other people’s problems.  We don’t see ourselves as part of the problem and therefore we don’t feel that we have any responsibility to be a part of the solution.  Someone should clean up the mess but that is someone else’s job.  It is easier for us to hide in our comfortable homes and close our eyes to what is going on in the world.  We pretend that somehow it will work itself out.  We can’t be bothered with someone else’s problems.  The prophet Amos points out the very human tendency towards complacency that infects our societies.  We become complacent in pursuing our own interests and enjoying our own pleasures and we grow blind to human suffering.  Complacency allows us to convince ourselves very clearly that it is not my problem.  We think that if we ignore the problems and pretend that they don’t exist that they will just go away.

    Complacency allows us to isolate ourselves from the suffering of humanity.  We separate ourselves and create a distance between ourselves and those who are struggling with life.  We withdraw more and more into our isolated existence and close ourselves off from those who fall outside of our ideal worlds.  We begin to form a gulf between ourselves and the real world and this allows us to safely enjoy the goods that have been given to us. We shield ourselves from the misery of the world and convince ourselves that we are good persons and don’t deserve to be troubled with the anguish of human suffering.  The divide that we create grows larger and larger until we have formed a great chasm of callousness and heartlessness.  In our gospel parable today Jesus tells us about a rich man who built a great chasm between himself and the poor Lazarus.  This rich man was not an evil person, he didn’t do bad things, he wasn’t abusive, he just didn’t care.  He didn’t care enough even to give Lazarus the scraps from his table.

    The poet John Dunne reminds us that “no man is an island”.  We cannot isolate ourselves from others.  One day the bell will toll for us and we will be called to be accountable for our actions or inactions.  Being a good person and not causing any problems doesn’t get the rich man into heaven rather he finds himself surprisingly in hell, in a hell that he has created by his callous behavior of complacency and self-comfort.  His separating himself from the world’s suffering has built a great chasm between himself and Lazarus, between himself and a God who has compassion and hears the cry of the poor.  In isolating himself and separating himself from Lazarus the rich man has also separated himself from Jesus who made himself poor and who shares the plight of the poor.  The God that the rich man believed in was a false image that he had constructed for himself.  This false God would never deny him anything.

    As Jesus points out in his parable, we have the prophets and the Word of God to reveal to us the true God of compassion and mercy.  This God knows Lazarus, he knows his name and he cares about his suffering.  If we want to be in eternal union with God we have to be with the suffering servant Jesus who empties himself out of love and lays down his life to heal the wounds of sin and suffering.  We have this life to come to know God through Jesus and to identify ourselves with his love and suffering.  To isolate ourselves now is to face the prospect of eternal isolation in hell, separated from God by the chasm of indifference that we ourselves have built.  The problems of others are my problems and now is the time to do something about them.