There are some strange words in the Bible. Actually, you can find a lot of them. I suppose a collection of books that spans thousands of years will deliver a handful unfamiliar terms.
Among the strange words: chasm.
I dare you to use this word in ordinary conversation today. No, I triple-dog dare you! First, what is this word?
Chasm appears but once in the Bible, referring to a gulf, or a great big separation. In Luke 17:26 it describes the empty space that stands between the rich man and Lazarus (the poor man) in the afterlife.
Can you imagine it?!! A monumental gulf between the rich and the poor? As if.
The rich man likes it not one bit. “Yo, Abraham,” he bellows from the fiery side of the chasm, as though Abraham is the bouncer. “Can you fix this chasm? Get me across?”
“Nope,” comes Abraham’s reply before reminding the rich man how he spent his life on earth ignoring Lazarus, stepping over his suffering body each day. The rich man’s control on earth did not accompany him into the afterlife.
On the news, I have seen this rich man. I have seen him cut programs that will primarily impact the poor and leave him and his ivy league cronies in the safety zone of wealth. I have seen him.
He has sent innocent immigrant families into a dangerously chaotic panic, even though these many (not all) of these families have improved my community with their hard work and dedication. I know this rich man.
The problem, as you well know, goes beyond the chasm between the rich and the poor. The more troublesome chasm in the United States runs between truth and baseless lies, between those who are loyal to President Trump and those who are less impressed with the past two months.
The real problem is not the chasm, but the fact that the chasm exists at all.
What is a chasm? It is the human presumption that “they” are wrong and “we” are right. No matter who is cast as “they” and “we”, the chasm is hugely problematic for the poor.
The gospel writer of Luke consistently points to the injustice of those who are left systemically poor. It is the unique spirit of this particular book. The writer concludes this chapter by insisting that not even a resurrection could fix the chasm that stands between the rich and the poor, which is a dismal forecast, yet more than 2,000 years later, seems correct.
Not even the resurrection of Christ reduced the gulf between the rich man and Lazarus. Not even religious wars or world wars or the invention of the internet. Not the expanse to the west or even into outer space fixed the chasm between those who have enough and those whose children will not survive past the age of one because their water is unclean.
Chasms are stubborn that way. Fed by the fertilizer of fear, the chasm between the rich and the poor, between versions of the truth, between political sides is not a far-away problem, but a here-and-now-problem.
- How might the way that you speak of “them” and “us” affect the chasm? Who is listening and learning from your rhetoric?
- Is there a news source you have not explored, a side of the coin you might explore in order to keep the chasm from expanding?
- Name it. What are you afraid of as you stand on your side of the chasm? What is it about “them” that incites fear in you?
If the Bible teaches us anything, it is that hate and bitterness are not change agents. Only mercy engenders change.
Mercy. There’s a word. That word makes avalanches of appearances in the Bible. It is spoken and acted out repeatedly. Perhaps mercy could make more appearances among us today, beginning in our homes, on our devices, and among our next-door neighbors.
Lisa Lewton 