With: Sunday, September 28, 2025 | After Pentecost Proper 21 | Year C

In Luke 16:19-31, Jesus tells a challenging parable about a rich man and a poor man named Lazarus that goes far deeper than a simple morality tale about wealth. Drawing on Robert Frost's poem "Mending Wall," Samuel Wells' A Nazareth Manifesto, and contemporary insights about isolation and community, this sermon explores how we create and maintain barriers between ourselves and others - barriers that can become permanent spiritual chasms if we're not careful. The parable invites us to examine what walls we build, what we're walling in or out, and how we might work toward the kind of beloved community God intends, where no one suffers alone outside the gate.