Abraham: Tour Guide to the Afterlife

September 25, 2022
Abraham: Tour Guide to the Afterlife
Luke 16:19-31; 1 Timothy 6:6-10
Rev. Kerra Becker English

Welcome everyone.
My name is Abraham, and I am happy to have you join me on this guided tour of the afterlife.
People ask me all the time how I got this job.
Well, in my life on earth, I always thought it would be fun to do some traveling when I retired.
When I was 75 and still hadn’t gone that far from home, God said, pack up your suitcase and grab your wife, I’m going to take you on the journey of a lifetime.
I looked out my window hoping God had an RV parked out front to make the journey a little more fun.
That wasn’t the case. It was going to be a walking tour and a lot of tent camping.
We would end up getting a lot of steps in, me and my wife Sarah.
I’m glad I packed both pairs of sandals.
That’s not all that happened either.  We became parents on that trip.
God promised us that travel would be an adventure and a blessing.
And it most certainly was. 
I am so glad you decided to come on my tour today.
I hope God will also give you an adventure and a blessing.
But I have to ask before we get to our destination,
“How many of you have you ever been to the Holy Land before?”
Back in my day – we just called it – the land.
Sure, I guess it was holy. It was home. It was where life happened.
But I can’t believe all the Holy Land Tour companies that are around today, can you?
Those places are crawling with tourists of every kind.
It’s kind of like Disney too, where every ride has a gift shop.
Every venerated site has its own holy trinkets, water from the Jordan River, olivewood nativity scenes, dead sea salts, rosary beads, tree of life jewelry. Religious tourism is a bustling industry, so watch how you spend your money.
You can find tchotchkes for every Jew, Christian, and Muslim if you check out all the vendors trying to make every tourist feel like they’ve been on a deep and faithful pilgrimage.
Maybe that’s also why they let me give the tours here in the afterlife.
All manner of believers recognize me.
I’m not all that different from the mouse in Florida, I guess.
Father of all faiths. Patriarch of all patriarchs. Founding ancestor of the Abrahamic religions.
Yes, they were all named after me when you lump the three big monotheistic faiths together like that.
They all know me as the original traveler, willing to uproot everything to go where God wanted me to go.
So, I suppose now that you are on this tour with me, you want to know where we are exactly.
We are in the afterlife.
You there, question from the back.
Is it heaven or hell, you ask?
That’s a good question.
You know that the journey is largely what you make of it, right?
Some folks can find creative ways to enjoy an 8-hour plane delay,
And some are furious if their traveling companions are even 5 minutes late.
In part it’s a matter of perspective.
Most of the folks who think they know all about the afterlife before they ever get here
end up being surprised at what they find.
Jesus likes telling stories about the afterlife, and his followers, well, they eat those stories up.
But most of the time – he’s just handing out a few crumbs to inspire curiosity.
You really can’t really know a place until you’ve been there for yourself.
But you can prepare yourself ahead of time for what lies ahead.
A good tour guide will have exactly two rules.
The first rule is: Plan ahead.
The second rule is: Be flexible.
Then to have an intention with your travel plans gives you eyes to capture a vision about the place.
Like God promised me descendants, Jesus promised his followers eternal life.
The joke was on us though, right?
I thought that maybe it was up to me to make that promise come true.
Sarah did too, even to the point of giving Hagar to me in hopes of a child from that union.
Together, we ended up with many nations-worth of descendants, and yet those descendants don’t always get along with each other. Siblings, am I right?
Maybe you think it’s up to you to earn your eternal reward.
I guess that’s part of it.
What you do with your life now has something to do with the spiritual life beyond.
But it’s also about a way of seeing.
When it comes to heaven or hell, what do you see?
What will end up being a reward or a punishment?
Today, on our tour I want to show you what Lazarus saw when he showed up.
This is Lazarus, the poor. Lazarus, the hungry. Lazarus, the sore-infested beggar.  
His life had been hardship on top of hardship, a living hell.
But the instant that he died, angels surrounded him, and carried him home.
For a guy who never had a home, we made him feel like he owned the place,
without a care or worry in the world.
I got to see him soon after his arrival, and the hug he gave me was the kind that melts your heart,
ya know.
It’s like the dreams of a beach person who lives hours away from the shoreline.
They get there, and smell that salt air, and hear the waves lap against the sand,
And all is well with the world.
That place, the one that makes you feel most you, and most alive, and most treasured.
Lazarus finally found it, and we spent a lot of time together wondering about how some land becomes Holy, and other places become desecrated.
Even afterlife land.
Because afterlife land treasures are glimpsed in the world you are in right now.
But that rich guy, the one who stepped around or over Lazarus every day, was building his own afterlife as well.
He made my past mistake of thinking he had control over the outcomes of his destiny.
We do and we don’t, right?
We have opportunities to shape our world, but as my good friend Paul wrote to Timothy,
“There is great gain in godliness combined with contentment. For we’ve brought nothing into this world, and we’ll take nothing out of it.”
The rich guy imagined he could take everything with him - hitch the U-haul to his hearse so to speak.
He surrounded himself with things that he loved and had no regard for the hardships of others.
When he died – he landed in the dirt – buried, not only literally, but figuratively he was buried in regret.
His regret did not meet the category of remorse though.
He wanted was Lazarus had.
His afterlife was Hades, as in, hotter than Hades. And all that heat was making him thirsty.
Through the burning fire of his choices, he caught sight of me and Lazarus hanging out together,
And called out for mercy – my mercy. Asking me to dip my finger in water and put it on his burning tongue. Gross.  
As if the tour guides are at your service for any and every request.
That’s not my job, by the way, to let every stupid tourist do every stupid thing.
I’m trying to help them acclimate to their surroundings, not make it exactly like they have it at home.
Not every town in the world has a McDonalds!
But anyway, he thought he could get my help.
I had to explain the rules.
“Child” I called him a child because he was acting just like one.
“Child,” I said, “remember that during your lifetime you received your good things and Lazarus in like manner evil things, but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.”
He had already missed the bus.
There was no getting back to what he would like to have.
No refunds for jerks.
Well, that’s company policy, but I rather like it.
You’ve heard about what happened next.
He thought I could go to his other corrupt brothers with a warning.
Like that would even work.
You can’t help people understand somewhere new if they are blind to where they already are.
I wasn’t trying to be difficult, just obvious.
They had heard of Moses and the prophets before.
Jesus wasn’t the only one trying to help their communities learn how to live with grace.
I love how Jesus finishes this story.
He’s really a good tour guide too, letting people discover the truth about a place for themselves.
He had heard me say a million times that anywhere you go, you still bring yourself with you.
That is to say, that if they haven’t listened to Moses and the prophets by now,
I could return from the dead, and they wouldn’t listen to me either.
Oh I know. Jesus eventually would make that sacrifice, showing them so much more.
But still – the tour guides are listened to only so much.
We can only be helpful to those who pay attention, who make the effort to learn and grow.
Otherwise, it’s just a trip, just a venue change.
For me, I like to pay attention to the music of a place.
The angels sing – a lot. And sometimes your earthy musicians strike that chord, with words or a tune you just rest into because it feels like home.
I heard one of those songs the other day by an artist who had felt the presence of Jesus.
In Pokey LaFarge’s song about his own afterlife musings, the refrain says, “There’s always more.”
Maybe he had heard this story.
The rich man, he never thought there would be more, so he had to have everything here.
But for Lazarus, there was more, and more, and more.
Grace says, there’s always going to be more, more than you could have ever imagined.
Travel can open you. Or travel can make you afraid.
Allow yourself the possibility to see more.
Then follow the tour guide rules.
Plan ahead.
Plan to be generous, and loving, and kind.
Plan for justice. Prepare for freedom.
And Be flexible.
You never know who you might see walking around with me in the afterlife.
May it be someone who reminds you what a good friend you were here.
Thanks for joining me on this tour.
I hope it’s been all that you expected, and more.
Remember, this is a tour we will all take – one day.
So, for now, aspire to godliness and be content with what you have been given.
When it is time for you to make this journey, all you take with you is you. Amen.