Luke 16:19-31 Amos 6:1-7
The
parable we just heard comes at the end of an extended section of Luke that teach
about the dangers of wealth and the challenge of using it wisely. Jesus starts off by setting the stage with a
story about a dishonest manager who spent his master’s money to meet his own
desires, and who then forgives the debts of his master in order to build up
good will for himself when he has been found out and fired. Then it moves into the familiar section in
which Jesus challenges the Pharisees with the words, “no [one] can serve two
masters…. You cannot serve God and
wealth.” In the finale, Jesus pulls the
curtain on the fate of those who enjoy the power and luxury of wealth at the
expense of others with the story of the rich man and Lazarus, and we should
probably pay close attention since this parable sums it up in pretty drastic
terms.
As R. Alan Culpepper notes, this parable can be seen as a
drama in three acts, the first two of which set the stage for the real show at
the end. In the first act, neither man
moves or speaks. The characters are simply
introduced, and their way of life is described, and the rich man takes pride of
place. He wears purple (which may mean
that he was a high-ranking official or royalty). He lived in a house with gates to separate
himself from the riffraff of the city.
He dressed in and slept in fine linen and feasted sumptuously every
day. He was “at ease in Zion” –
basically he had everything a person could want.
Lazarus is a crippled beggar whose body is covered with running
sores. He is thrown before the rich
man’s gate, and we are told that he would have gladly eaten the soiled bread
from the rich man’s table. The depth of
Lazarus’ deprivation is described with one final detail: the dogs lick his
sores as they pass by.
In the second act, the positions are reversed and Lazarus
goes first. He dies, which comes as no
surprise, but the parable does not dwell on that fact. It quickly moves on to the angels that come
and take Lazarus to bosom of Abraham.
The Bosom of Abraham was one name used by the Jews of Jesus’ time for
the place of highest bliss. It might be
the equivalent of saying that Lazarus was transported to the seventh heaven
which makes the point that while the poor man was neglected by others during
his lifetime, Lazarus is prized in the sight of God.
Meanwhile, the rich man also dies. How he dies we never learn. Though our society might choose to make the
point that the rich food and decadent lifestyle may have come back to bite him
in the end, the parable doesn’t seem to care what caused his death. It simply says that he was buried – another
nicety that Lazarus didn’t enjoy, and that he ended up being tormented in hell.
In the third act we finally have some “action” in the form of
a conversation between Father Abraham and the rich man. During the course of the three exchanges, the
rich man makes some real headway. He
starts just as he finished his life – concerned for himself: “send Lazarus to
dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue.” Then he finally looks outside of himself for
the first time: “I beg you, [then,] to send [Lazarus] to my father’s house …
that he may warn [my five brothers], so that they will not also come to this
place of torment.” And then he goes even
further. He pleads with Abraham on their
behalf: “but if someone goes to them form the dead, they will repent.” In the end, his efforts still have no success,
and his brothers’ only hope is to pay attention to the teachings they already
know.
The first act showed us the way things tend to be: the poor
appear to be poor and the rich appear to be rich. The second act contains a reversal: the poor
become rich and the rich become poor.
With Abraham’s final response, the third act underscores that reversal
with a finality that offers no space for argument. If one refuses to hear Moses and the prophets
and repent, then they have chosen their fate.
There will be no further warning.[1]
Are you more like Lazarus or is your life more like that of
the rich man? I’m just going to skip
over Father Abraham and the angels; although if you do relate to them the most,
please come and see me after worship. We
may have something else to talk about….
So, Lazarus or the rich man…. If your life is anything like mine, you will
probably see yourself most in the rich man.
We may not have linen sheets or royal clothing, but we do have more than
enough to keep us comfortable. We may
not feast on rich food every day, but we are not often starving. We may not live in a walled estate, but our
homes are generously sized, and we have enough privacy that we don’t have to
worry about people wandering in to surprise us.
We certainly are not laying in the street begging for food as we slowly
waste away from illnesses because the only medical care we can get is stray
dogs licking our wounds.
We could stop there, and there would be a strong warning for us to be careful of the wealth we have … to use what we have in unselfish ways or, at least, to make sure that we don’t have too much now so that we can have more later. I think that would be a mistake. That gets us into the realm of trying to manipulate God into getting us what we want, and if we pay closer attention to the parable we might discover that there is a deeper message that addresses exactly that self-centeredness.
I think a story told by John Stendahl in the Christian
Century illustrates that
message quite well ….
“Years later I still feel the
shame. I was visiting a young man in a
facility for people with severe brain injuries.
he was agitated and eager to walk, so I joined him as he went from room
to room and looked in each room as if he were searching for someone. Eventually we came to a big room that wan not
in use. AT the far end a couple of
janitors were at work buffing the floor.
I saw that no one was sitting at any of the tables and said to the young
man, “There’s nobody in here.”
Then, from the other side of the room,
came the voice of one of the janitors.
“What do you mean, nobody? We’re
not nobody.”
I don’t recall what lame apology I
offered, but I remember the heat risign in my cheeks. I really hadn’t seen those two men, although
of course I’d registered that there were janitors at work. My mind was elsewhere. [I was just like the
rich man who didn’t really see Lazarus either; although this poor man was right
there at his door or right under his nose, as we say. His mind was elsewhere too.] He saw Lazarus, of course – enough so that he
could step over him and not stumble.
Perhaps he thought about for a moment about the problem of the poor, or
considered the difficult question of whether it’s good or bad policy to give
money to beggars. Maybe he even dropped
a coin in the man’s hands as he moved past him.
But he didn’t really see Lazarus, [and so he didn’t see the chasm that
existed between them until it was revealed when he found himself on the other
side of it.”[2]
The more fundamental way that we are like the rich man is
that we often simply don’t see. We don’t
see the people who ask us for change on the street. We don’t see the people who are struggling to
find shelter … be it from harsh weather or from the equally harsh climate of
our society. We don’t see the people who
have neither the money or the insurance they need to get medical help when they
need it.
It may be more accurate to say that we don’t pay
attention. We see individuals in exactly those situations a lot. We just don’t notice … or worse, we choose to
ignore. Most of us are so caught up in
our own lives – our needs … our plans – that we sail right on past the dramas
unfolding right in front of us. We
prefer the romantic comedies or the heroic epics that we are writing for
ourselves to the tragedies written by life and played out all around us. In that way, we are exactly like the rich
man. We create the chasms that stand
between us and our neighbors in this life just as surely as he created the
chasm that divided him from Lazarus.
Now I have to admit that I have led you astray in this
journey down the road of analogy. I’m
only a little sorry for that. This is
how parables work, after all. Like every
good mystery, they draw you down one path after another until the truth is
finally revealed. Each path you follow
teaches you a little more, though, and we do need to see just how much we are
like the rich man in order to understand the lesson that Jesus was trying to
teach his audience. We need to learn that lesson just as much as they did. But the truth is that there is another
character (characters really) that we are more like than the rich man.
So here’s the next twist….
We are most like the brothers, and that’s a blessing … sort of. The brothers are no better than the rich
man. They are just as misguided – just
as greedy and proud … just as self-centered and blind, and they are clearly
headed in the same direction as their brother.
But there is one very big difference: They are still alive. They still have the chance to change. If they just pay attention to the voices of
the law and the prophets, then there is hope for them. They can still rewrite their future.
And here’s the final reveal.... There’s even more hope for us. Those brothers got no extra help despite the
appeals of the rich man. They will have
no angels come to them. There will be no
Lazarus rising from the dead to get their attention. But that’s exactly what we have been sent – a new voice calling us
to change … the voice of one who has died and risen from the dead … the voice
of the one who is telling this parable … the voice of Christ.
So, the real question for us is not who we are most like in
this story. It’s not, ultimately, what
we can learn from it (though that is important). The question is, will we pay attention. Will we hear … really hear the warning Jesus
has buried in this little drama? Will we
pay attention to the hope that he offers?
Will we accept the call to change?
I like to think that I will…? How about you?
[1] Culpepper,
R. Alan. “The Gospel of Luke: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections” in The
New Interpreter’s Bible: A Commentary in Twelve Volumes, Volume IX
(Abingdon Press, Nashville) 1995. 315-19.
[2]
Stendahl, John. “Reflections on the
lectionary” in The Christian Century, September 18, 2013. 21.
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