Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Lazareth, Then and Now” Luke 16:19-31

Imagine Saranac Lake on July 25, 1890 when an organizing service of worship took place right here, the sanctuary so new that it lacked windows and seats. Rough wooden benches held worshipers, and hymns were sung a cappella, the sounds of Presbyterian harmonies gently drifting across the village. Church Street was unpaved, the street alternately dusty or muddy, dotted with riders and horse-drawn wagons. The village’s ten-block commercial district was two years away from its first phase of construction. The surrounding hills of Pisgah, Dewey, and Baker were clear cut, the trees sent down the Hudson to build New York City. Helen Hill was a grassy knoll called the Sheep Meadow, but it would soon undergo a residential building boom. The local population had swelled to 1,582 permanent residents, tripling in size over the past few years. In the next decade, it would quadruple.

Everywhere, the sounds of construction rang out. That summer, the Adirondack Cottage Sanitarium built three cure cottages and a large open-air amusement pavilion. Local residents were adding additions to their homes, tacking on porches, and taking in borders. New homes were rented at a premium that enabled owners to pay off their building debt within two years. With our short Adirondack building season, even Sunday mornings would have been punctuated by the sounds of hammers and saws, workman’s shouts and teams of horses hauling wagons.

We were booming, thanks to the “White Plague” of tuberculosis.  The crowded living conditions, poor air quality, and squalid poverty of American cities were a breeding ground for the disease. In those days before antibiotics, a tuberculosis diagnosis felt like a death sentence. It started with coughing, night sweats, fever, weight loss, and bloody sputum.  It progressed to organ failure and death. By 1907, 400 Americans were dying of tuberculosis every day. Dr. E.L. Trudeau spurred the hopes of patients everywhere that a miracle cure had been found in Saranac Lake when he publicized that the cold air, rest, good food, and leisure of the Adirondacks had put his TB into remission. Hurting people from across the nation and around the world, desperate for healing, rode the new railroad to the village looking for renewed health. These TB patients, desperate, sick, and far from home, would have been among the most isolated and vulnerable people that we could possibly imagine.

In our reading from Luke’s gospel, Jesus told a story about a rich man and the desperately ill neighbor who languished at his gate. Jesus used the Greek word plousios to describe the rich man, meaning a wealthy landowner who did not labor for a living. He lived large, clotheded in royal purple and fine linen, feasting on sumptuous food, and hosting lavish parties. Jesus described the sick man, Lazarus, with the Greek word ptoxos, meaning the abject poor, a homeless beggar without the support of property, friends, or family. He was so weakened that he couldn’t even shoo away the dogs drawn to his festering wounds. Although they were neighbors, the rich man didn’t seem to see Lazarus, while the sick man dreamt of eating the crumbs that fell from his rich neighbor’s table. Jesus painted a stark and uncomfortable picture of the extremes of our human condition.

According to Jesus’ parable, death brought a great reversal. Lazarus, who suffered so in life, found a privileged position in death, seated by the Patriarch Abraham at the heavenly banquet. The rich man, on the other hand, was in Hades, tormented by flames and an unquenchable thirst. It comes as a surprise to hear that the rich man not only knew Lazarus, he also felt he could order him around: come and relieve my thirst with a glass of cold water; go and tell my brothers to change their ways. We can imagine the shock that the rich man felt when he learned that his indifference to the suffering of his neighbor, his flagrant disregard for the requirements of scripture, had built a great chasm, not only between himself and Lazarus, but also between himself and God.

When our seventeen original members signed their names to the church’s brand-new, leather-bound session ledger on July 25, 1890, they made a bold commitment to love and worship God right here. They also made a sincere commitment to their vulnerable neighbors whom they knew to be at their gate. Jane “Jennie” Conklin came to Saranac Lake from Rochester in the spring of 1890 with her husband John as he sought the cold air cure for tuberculosis. By year’s end, John was dead, leaving Jennie with three young children and a small sum that she used to build the Conklin Cottage at the corner of Main and Church Streets. There she tended patients in need of compassion and care, much as she had tended her husband. Likewise, the Podmore and Lattrell families, who were also among our founding members, were proprietors of cure cottages.

By 1893, the church had created what was known as the Fellowship Fund, which benefited neighbors in need through personal pledges. Poor boxes to receive donations for the relief of the “sick poor” were installed inside the church door. The church welcomed tubercular patients that never entered this sanctuary and certainly never made a pledge to the church, like Miss Fletcher, who was received into the membership of the church by two elders, dispatched to her bedside at the O’Malley Cottage. Our third pastor, the Rev. Armitage Beardsley, came to us in 1895 fresh from seminary. He saw the sanitoriums and cure cottages of the village as his mission field. He soon contracted TB, and by September 1897 was so ill that he was forced to resign. His touching letter of farewell is pasted into the session minutes of the time. News of his death followed within weeks.

Without question, our most dedicated advocate of the “sick poor” was Rev. Hiram Lyon, who served the church from 1927 to 1937. He came to Saranac Lake in 1925 in need of the cold air cure, following his graduation from Union Seminary in New York City. When our pastor Rev. George Kennedy Newell died of pneumonia shortly before Christmas in 1926, the church looked to young Hiram to fill the pulpit. Afraid that his newfound health wouldn’t last, he agreed to serve for a one-year trial period, and against all odds, he thrived. Hiram believed that God had placed this congregation in a unique position to care for vulnerable neighbors with tuberculosis. He cast the vision for the church to hire a Parish Visitor, who would travel to cure cottages, sanitoriums, and local hospitals to bring patients hope, cheer, and the love of Christ.  In October 1928, the job went to Miss Christine Burdick a recent graduate of the Boston University School of Religious Education and Social Service. Christine made as many as 2,000 visits in a year, offering compassionate listening, caring presence, and fervent prayers. Walls of loneliness, isolation, and fear came tumbling down as Christine shared the love of Christ with neighbors who must have felt every bit as vulnerable as Lazarus at the gate.

Jesus’ parable of the rich man and his desperate neighbor is a story about a failure to love. The rich man failed to love God with all his heart and mind and soul and strength. He also failed to love his neighbors as himself. The rich man saw Lazarus as a blight on his landscape, not as a brother, a fellow child of Abraham, deserving of love and compassion, mercy and care. It never occurred to the rich man that his abundance was a gift from God, meant to be shared for the common good and the particular care of his vulnerable neighbor. Today as we commemorate our anniversary, we celebrate our ancestors in the faith, those saints who gathered on Sunday mornings to express their heartfelt love for God and then went forth into the week to love their neighbors, especially the most vulnerable ones.

Today, we are called to claim that legacy for ourselves. We honor Jane Conklin and Armitage Beardsley, Hiram Lyon and Christine Burdick when we dare to go forth and do likewise, expressing our love for God with our worship and music, and opening our hearts and hands to care for those who need it most.

I want to wrap up my message by naming some of the ways that we bless neighbors in times of vulnerability. Now, if you have ever participated in any of these ministries or perhaps been blessed by these ministries, let me know with an “Uh-huh,” an “Amen,” or perhaps a clap offering. Ready?

We knit prayer shawls, lap robes, and baby blankets to bless those in need of blessing.

We give generously to our Deacons Fund, to help neighbors pay rent or make car repairs, cover medical bills or make essential purchases.

We visit folks who are hospitalized, homebound, or live at Will Rogers and Elderwood, sharing love and communion.

We cook delicious meals and deliver them to those who are bouncing back from surgery, illness, or grief.

We grow beautiful produce to feed our Food Pantry friends, and we bring in paper goods for neighbors at Grace Pantry.

We raise funds and awareness about hunger in the CROP Walk.

We partner with our ecumenical friends to house the homeless and help them transition to independent living.

We pray our hearts out on the prayer chain.

We love and welcome immigrants and refugees.

I could say more, but brunch is waiting. Thank you to those bold seventeen original members who launched this great endeavor to love. Thank you to all of you, who so boldly claim that legacy with care and compassion, near and far. Lazarus is at the gate, my friends. May we go forth to love.

Luke 16:19-31

19 “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. 20 And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, 21 who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. 22 The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was being tormented, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. 24 He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in agony in these flames.’ 25 But Abraham said, ‘Child, 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. 26 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.’ 27 He said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house— 28 for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.’ 29 Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’ 30 He said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ 31 He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’ ”

First Presbyterian Church of Saranac Lake