I can still see her in my mind’s eye.  
 
It was 1969, and I was part of a choir premiering the folk musical “Good News” in Europe. (In Baptist circles, it was the trailblazing work that brought – gasp! – guitars into a lot of churches.) One of our stops was a large gathering in Berne, Switzerland, of Baptist youth from all over the world. 
 
Bag lunches were served every day to all of us at the Youth Congress, several thousand people. The meal included a piece of luncheon meat. (I remember distinctly that it was tongue one day.) There was a hard roll, about the size and consistency of a baseball. A piece of fruit. And a candy bar that tasted like instant coffee flakes dipped in chocolate. We groused a lot about the lunches and tossed a lot of food in the trash.
 
We were on our tour bus, about to leave the dorm where we had been staying, when a few of us saw her. She looked about sixty years old, and she looked like she could have been my grandmother. She came quietly around the corner of the building, went straight to the big trashcan, and started digging out our thrown-away lunches. She put what she could find in a bag, and she was gone.
 
Sheltered life that I had led, I had never before seen someone using a trashcan as a food source.
 
The focal passage for today is one of Jesus’ most famous stories. What a study in contrasts! The rich man “feasting sumptuously” every day. We may feast on Thanksgiving and Christmas, or even for regular Sunday dinners. But every day? And
he dressed in the finest clothes. He clearly had it made.  By contrast, Lazarus ate whatever crumbs he could find, and his health care was provided by the neighborhood dogs.  The contrast continues after both have died. Lazarus finds himself in heaven, comforted by none other than Father Abraham. Rich Man finds himself in hell, not comforted by anybody.
 
And what was Rich Man’s sin? Why did he end up in hell, looking over to the other side?  The passage doesn’t say for sure. It does not say that his failing was simply his wealth. There’s nothing to suggest that he had gotten rich directly at the expense of Lazarus. Or that Lazarus was his oppressed worker. Or that Rich Man kicked Lazarus every time he went by.  There’s really nothing to indicate that Rich Man ever even paid any attention to Lazarus.  And maybe that’s it. Maybe Rich Man had managed to come and go, day after day, without really seeing Lazarus outside his house. How could Rich Man help if he didn’t even see the man in need?
 
John put things in the proper order when he asked, “If you have the world’s goods and see your brother and sister in need, yet close your heart against them, how does God’s love abide in you?”  (I John 3:17).
 
I first had to see the woman in Berne. And, while I can’t tell you that we piled off our bus and rushed over to help, I can tell you that her image had a lot to do in pointing me towards ministry that addresses the laws and systems that force people to become dumpster divers.
 
For those of us who are comfortably middle class (or above), the situation of our brothers and sisters who toil away at low wage jobs is something we just don’t see. The minimum wage is currently $6.15 per hour (and only this year up from $5.15).  You can run the math on that. $6.15 per hour. Forty hours per week. Fifty-two weeks per year. One person working full-time, all year, with no vacation, no time off for anything, would earn $13,972, before payroll taxes.
 
We could talk about how that’s less money than the federal poverty level for a family of four. And we could talk about how that poverty level is an outdated measure of poverty, how a family living just above “poverty” can’t pay for its basic needs. 
 
Instead, I want you to imagine yourself as a single parent with one or two kids. Try figuring out your family budget. Start with rent. If you are not a renter, check out what rents are in your community. Find out what kind of place you and your kids would have for $500 per month. It’s another part of actually seeing Lazarus.
 
Then there’s food. Transportation to get to your job. Child care, if your kids are too young to be at home by themselves. Telephone. Clothes.  Can you imagine what that life would be like? For those of us who have never been there, I doubt that we can. But it’s those of us who have never been there who, like Rich Man, most need to see our modern-day Lazaruses.
 
And then, as John says, we will be inclined to help, because, after all, we do know God’s love. 
 
That help may take the form of charity. Giving canned goods and used clothes. Helping out at the free clinic. Working on a Habitat home.  But our response also needs to include justice. It’s just not right for someone working full-time not to earn enough to support her family.  For those of us who are employers, the justice response means paying our employees a living wage.  And being sure that our churches and other religious institutions are paying a living wage. To all our employees. 
 
And for all of us, the justice response means working to raise the minimum wage to something that is actually adequate to support a family’s basic needs. In the summer of 2006, a strong coalition of faith-based activists—bishops and laypeople, pastors and children, conservatives and progressives—came together to secure passage of legislation which increased the minimum wage. We can do it again. We must do it again.
 
Because low-wage workers still struggle to make ends meet. And because, having seen them, how can we not help?