Compassionate God, help us to see what you would have us to see and not be blinded by the distractions all around us ☩ in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
If last Sunday’s parable of the dishonest manager is the most difficult parable there is, we might have run into the second most challenging parable this morning. Sure, it seems like a fairly straightforward parable about the consequences of ignoring the needy, but, as always, Jesus doesn’t give us the parables as moralistic fairy tales. Instead, the parables are about the shocking, subversive, and saving grace of God. What makes this parable difficult is that there are so many things going on in it that we can be distracted from those notes of grace.
Primarily,
this is a parable about encounters: the encounter between the rich man and
Lazarus on both this side of death and the other, the encounter between the rich
man and his actions, and our encounter with a God who would do something so audacious
as coming back from the dead to make sure that we encounter his love.
Jesus
tells this parable is such a compelling way that we might forget that it is a
parable, which means that Jesus is not describing something that happened once,
he is describing the nature of reality. This means that there was no specific
rich man and there was no exact poor man named Lazarus. Lazarus attends our public
schools, Lazarus stands at intersections holding a sign, Lazarus sleeps in the
alleyways around downtown, Lazarus crosses the border in search of a better
life for their family, Lazarus lives in the tent city behind the movie theater
that we don’t want to know is there, Lazarus is the one who serves us at
restaurants and delivers our Amazon packages. This parable is told to every
single one of us because every single one of us knows Lazarus – we have seen
him, seen her, seen them.
One
of the ways that this parable becomes a challenge is that we get distracted by
asking the wrong questions. The parable has no interest in the question of “why?”.
We are simply told that Lazarus was a poor man. What led to his poverty and his
sores do not matter. Maybe he had done time in Jerusalem Correctional, maybe he
was a veteran of some of the clashes with Rome and had PTSD, maybe he was
intellectually disabled, maybe he had a gambling problem, we don’t know and it
doesn’t matter. And the same thing is true today when we see Lazarus. Jesus
does not speculate as to how Lazarus got there and instead of asking “why?”,
Jesus seems to suggest that the question to ask for us is “what now?”.
In
the setup of the parable, Jesus makes it quite clear that this is a parable
about encounter. It’s obscured in English, but it’s clear in the text of
Scripture. Luke’s writing does not say “at his gate lay a poor man.” No, it’s
in the passive voice. It should be translated as “at his gate was laid a poor
man.” Scholars generally think that this is what is known as the “divine
passive,” suggesting that it was God’s doing. Now, this doesn’t explain why
Lazarus was poor, but it does explain why he was at the rich man’s gate. Lazarus
was there because the rich man had something he could do about it. The rich man
was faced with a divine encounter right at his front gate, but ignored it.
The
reason for this ignorance is that, as Jesus says, the rich man was feasting sumptuously
every day. He was so overcome with affluence and comfort that he was blinded
from seeing what God had put in front of him. One of the challenges of this
parable is keeping our eyes focused on what this parable is about instead of
speculating on what it is not about. This is not a parable about money being
evil and poverty being commendable. If that’s what this was a parable about,
then we’d all expect it to work towards a conclusion about the importance of
living in poverty here and now so that we can obtain heavenly rewards. But that’s
not how it works. God will not be manipulated by our efforts to decide our own
fates by either hoarding wealth or taking vows of poverty. This is not a
parable that says money is bad and begging is good. Abraham, who is featured in
this parable, was a man of exceeding wealth and is in paradise, so having wealth
is not necessarily damnable. We have to be on guard against getting distracted
in this parable and missing the point that Jesus is trying to make.
Nor
is this a parable about the mechanics or specifics of what happens after death.
We know from literary scholars and anthropologists that Jesus is adapting a well-known
story-telling formula from the Ancient Near East. Stories about two people who
died were a common way to talk about the things that matter most in life.
Furthermore, what really tells us that this isn’t a parable about heaven and
hell is the introduction to the parable that we didn’t hear read this morning.
In the verses prior to where we began, Luke calls the Pharisees, to whom Jesus
told this parable, “lovers of money” and that they had been making fun of Jesus’
previous statements about our inability to serve God and wealth. The parable is
told in the context not of “what happens after death” but rather “what is our
relationship to money and others all about?”
In
the parable, Jesus includes an important detail that this rich man had five brothers,
meaning that there were six of them in all. Six is a number that represented
human weakness and evil. Remember that Jesus suggests that Lazarus was divinely
placed at the rich man’s gate. If this rich man and his five brothers had
encountered, instead of ignored, Lazarus and welcomed him then things could
have been very different. When the rich man is in Hades, he calls out to “Father
Abraham” using familial language. Lazarus, clearly, is a child of Abraham as
well, as Jesus says that Lazarus rested in the bosom of Abraham. Had Lazarus,
who is a child of Abraham, been encountered as such by the rich man and his brothers,
there would have been not six of them, but seven. Seven is a number of
wholeness and completeness. Welcoming Lazarus as a brother would have
transformed Lazarus’ life for the better, it would have transformed the
brothers’ lives for the better, and it would have changed which side of the
chasm that the rich man found himself on.
It’s
a question of encounter. The rich man was distracted by his wealth and his
feasts and did not pay any attention to Lazarus. How interesting it is though
that the rich man in Hades calls out to Abraham and asks if Lazarus can be his
errand-boy and fetch him some water. And he mentions Lazarus by name. He cannot
claim ignorance – he had encountered Lazarus, but ignored him. He had seen him,
but chose to be blind to him. Even the dogs tended to Lazarus and noticed him,
licking his wounds. But the rich man couldn’t even muster up as much compassion
as a pack of street dogs.
This
is getting us closer to what Jesus is saying in this parable – that money is not
bad in and of itself and poverty is not redemptive in and of itself. Instead,
what makes money so dangerous is that it makes us blind. Money insulates us
from those in poverty. Call it residential covenants, call it a gated community,
call it red-lining, call it gentrification, call it reassessing property
values, call it whatever we want – wealth segregates the haves from the have-nots.
Too much money prevents us from seeing and knowing the struggles that most
people have. Money makes us delude ourselves into thinking that we deserve wealth
instead of being stewards of the blessings that God has given us. There’s a
reason why some of the wealthiest people in the world are also described as the
most out-of-touch and egotistical. Wealth is dangerous because instead of
seeing ourselves as lucky and generous, we see ourselves as deserving and
better.
To
be clear, we don’t need to live in a mansion with a gate to be considered rich
by this parable. As I’ve already said, we all know Lazarus, which means that we
are all the rich man. If we can’t see that, then we really have been blinded by
money. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, poverty is
defined as the inability to experience a minimal standard of living – and about
37 million Americans live in poverty. The numbers, as a percentage, are about
the same globally. We know the numbers are significantly higher for what would
be called the “working poor,” those who are living paycheck-to-paycheck and
would be financially ruined by something as simple as needing to buy a set of
tires for their car. I’ll speak for myself – this is a reality that I do not
live in. And I don’t think that I am alone in my relative affluence.
The
rich man tried to claim ignorance about this – he begs Abraham to let him warn
his brothers. But Abraham counters that they already have the Law and the
Prophets. We have the words of Scripture and the witness of Jesus – we cannot be
excused for pretending that we did not realize that we are stewards of what we
have been given. The rich man then says “if someone came back from the dead and
tells them, then they will repent.” Abraham says “No, not even that would do the
trick.” Sadly, this is the truth.
We
are all here this morning exactly because someone did come back from the dead
and yet we still hoard as private treasure, we still have an economic system
that rewards the rich and punishes the poor, we still refuse to welcome Lazarus
into our prosperity. It’s a truth that we all know to be the case – that there
is plenty for everyone, but only if we encounter the other and welcome them in.
Of course, it’s tempting to say that those with extreme wealth should be the
ones to share and address extreme poverty. Yes, of course, a billionaire can
give more than I can; but I can do just as much as a billionaire can. The only
thing that Jesus commends in the parable is giving comfort to those in need.
Jesus does not tell the rich man that he needed to trade places with Lazarus,
only that he denied him comfort, and comfort that the rich man is now lacking.
An
early Church theologian said that if we cannot find Christ in the beggar at the
church door, we will not find Christ in the chalice either. Historically, those
who have taken the sacraments most seriously and received them most transformatively
have been those most committed to encountering and serving those in poverty.
The Anglo-Catholic movement, as it is sometimes called, began in the poorest of
slums in London. St. Luke’s, along with most Episcopal congregations, is a
Eucharistically-centered congregation and the only thing that can keep us from
turning into ritualists is encounters with Lazarus in which we provide comfort
to those in need and are transformed by those encounters with Jesus.
Our
Mission Committee is gearing up as we are back in the habit of having regular
meetings and the St. Luke’s Foundation had a great retreat yesterday in which
we discussed the last 50 years of the Foundation’s existence as we look ahead
to the next 50. This is also stewardship season, a time when we are encouraged
to consider our relationship to money and are given the opportunity to invest
in a place where all can encounter abundant grace, intentional worship, and
beloved community. This parable is not only a challenge to us as individuals,
but also as a parish. Our witness to him who died and rose again is connected
to our encounters with the least of these in our community.
In the parable, Jesus mentions that there is a great chasm between the rich man and Lazarus. By his own becoming poor, through his death, and as a result of his Resurrection, Jesus bridges that chasm so that we can encounter the riches of God’s grace and love. We, of course, give God thanks that Jesus has done for us what we could do not for ourselves, and we show this gratitude by making sure that our money has not blinded us to the things that God would have us to see.
