Text: Luke 16:19-31Revised Standard Version (RSV)
The Rich Man and Lazarus
19 “There was a rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. 20 And at his gate lay a poor man named Laz′arus, full of sores, 21 who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table; moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. 22 The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried; 23 and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes, and saw Abraham far off and Laz′arus in his bosom. 24 And he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy upon me, and send Laz′arus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in anguish in this flame.’ 25 But Abraham said, ‘Son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Laz′arus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. 26 And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’ 27 And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house, 28 for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’ 29 But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’ 30 And he said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if some one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ 31 He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead.’”
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen
Spoiler Alert: It’s not as bad as it sounds!
Anyone reading Luke’s Gospel with even one eye closed can’t help but get the strong impression that he doesn’t like rich people very much! At least, he certainly seems to spend an awful lot of time on talking about rich people in not very flattering terms. The farmer who builds larger barns to store his crops is called a fool because he hasn’t spent any effort on the state of his soul, which would be required of him that very night; the well-to-do Pharisee who invites Jesus to dinner is cast in a negative light because his real motive is to discredit Jesus and his teachings; the rich man of last week’s lesson is shown to be less than attentive because he doesn’t know what his steward has been doing right under his very nose; and today we read of a rich man who strutted through life with no regard whatsoever of that poor man, Lazarus, who languished, day in and day out, at his very gate.
Although there are a couple notable exceptions – the example of the rich, but also compassionate, loving and generous father in the parable of the prodigal son comes most immediately to mind – for the most part, when we read of rich people in the New Testament, they are by no means to be admired, much less emulated.
I’ve mentioned before the little monograph by Martin Hengel, Property and Riches in the Early Church, in which Hengel traces the development of thinking about riches and property in early Christianity. We discover a generally negative attitude toward riches and the rich that runs like a red thread through the entire New Testament.
Hengel tells us that early Christianity was heavily influenced by what is called “apocalyptic” thought – basically, the notion that the world is going to come to an end very soon, so worldly things like property and wealth should be done away with. He writes, “These communities which continued the tradition of Palestinian Jewish Christianity, with its apocalyptic stamp, condemned riches in a form which was often quite crude. Thus the Epistle of James sharply attacks the way in which the rich and well-to-do have pride of place over the poor when the church is gathered together, for ‘[h]as not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which he has promised to those who love him? … Is it not the rich who oppress you, is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme that honourable name by which you are called?’ (James 2:1-7)…Similarly, the author utters a lament on the rich which is reminiscent of the polemic of the Jewish prophets and apocalyptic writers: ‘Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you and will eat up your flesh like fire…” (James 5:1-6, excerpted).[1]
In other words, “You rich folk are about to get your comeuppance, and it ain’t going to be pretty.”
When we consider the condition of Palestine in the First Century, this attitude is really not surprising. There was no such thing as a “zoning ordinance” in those days, so you would routinely see a fine palace or other stately home right next to dwellings that could hardly even be called hovels. And, of course, today’s lesson tells us that Lazarus was no stranger to that rich man, because he spent his days literally at his front door. As the Rev. Anthony Clavier writes, “The picture Jesus paints vividly is one his audience immediately recognized. They lived in a culture where rich and poor lived in close proximity to each other, where beggars were part of the scenery as were stray dogs. Both beggars and dogs were held in contempt. Beggars were thought to be those abandoned by their families, or who were suffering for the sins of their parents or even great-grandparents.”[2]
So this attitude has been part of our Christian faith since the beginning, and we have been uneasily struggling with it ever since, right up to today. The issue of economic injustice is as current as this morning’s newspaper, just to name one example.
But what, really, are we to make of this? Are we really to believe that those of us with so much as a dollar bill in our wallets are automatically condemned like that rich man?
No, not at all!
We have to remember here that Jesus himself neither condemned rich people just because they were rich, nor did he lift up the poor as being especially virtuous just because they were poor. The word used in this passage and elsewhere that we translate as “poor,” πτωχός (ptóchos), usually is translated in terms of economic poverty, but that is not the only possible interpretation. It can also mean “pious,” to refer to those who do not belong to the religious establishment, to the faithful disciples who have renounced worldly possession, to those who suffer, especially Jesus’ persecuted disciples, to the nation of Israel itself, to the “faithful remnant” within Israel, as well as to those who are destitute.[3] Even Jesus’ declaration to a potential disciple in Luke 9:58 – “Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head,” which most people understand as a declaration of poverty, might actually refer to the fact that ‘everybody is at home in Israel’s land except the true Israel,’[4] or simply to say that, if that man chose to throw in with him and his little band, he needed to be aware that it would be a very precarious and nomadic existence.
In short, in this passage, as in so many others, there’s more (and less) than meets the eye. But the simple fact is that it’s not – or at least, not primarily – about wealth or the lack thereof. I thought it was important to get this background out of the way so that we could, with clear consciences, get to the point of what this passage really is all about.
So: What, then, is the point for us here today?
The key to the passage is a detail we easily overlook: The gap.
The Gap?
No, I don’t mean that retail chain!
I mean the gap, the gulf, which arose between the rich man and Lazarus. This gulf is the product of the rich man’s indifference. He was so self-absorbed, he focused so totally on his pursuit of what the Italians call “la dolce vita,” “the good life,” so blind to the needs of that desperate man, that it was as though Lazarus didn’t even exist. As David Lose writes, the rich man “obviously knew Lazarus was there and understood his plight, because he knows Lazarus by name. Yet he did nothing. Further, even in the afterlife the rich man continues to treat Lazarus as a non-entity, a servant who should fetch him some water or, failing that, be sent as a messenger to his brothers. In both his earthly life and in the life to come, the rich man refuses to see Lazarus as a person, a human, a fellow child of God, and so ignores him and his plight.”[5]
It’s been said that the opposite of love is not hate, but apathy. If you hate someone, you still have a relationship, albeit a negative one, with that person or persons. Apathy is an entirely different animal; if you’re apathetic about someone, he or she is about as important to you as the man in the moon. They don’t exist.
Every now and then, we hear or read about crimes committed in broad daylight on crowded streets – and no one does a thing to help. No one steps in. No one tries to intervene. No one even calls 911. The excuse we usually hear is that those witnessing the crime “didn’t want to get involved.” That is what apathy is.
The “church term” for this is that such behavior is a “sin of omission.” We’re pretty much in tune with sins of “commission,” or things that we do that we shouldn’t. But we’re not quite so astute when it comes to sins of omission, those sins that we confess to when we admit to God that “we have sinned against you, through our own fault, in thought, and word, and deed, and in what we have left undone.”
Our old friend William Barclay really drives the point home: “What was the sin of [the rich man]? He had not ordered Lazarus to be removed from his gate. He had made no objections to his receiving the bread that was flung away from his table. He did not kick him in the passing. He was not deliberately cruel to him. The sin [of the rich man] was that he never noticed Lazarus, that he accepted him as part of the landscape and simply thought it perfectly natural and inevitable that Lazarus should lie in pain and hunger while he wallowed in luxury. As someone said, ‘It was not what [the rich man] did that got him into jail; it was what he did not do that got him into hell.’
“The sin of [the rich man] was that he could look on the world’s suffering and need and feel no answering sword of grief and pity pierce his heart; he looked at a fellow human being, hungry and in pain, and did nothing about it. His was the punishment of the man who never noticed…
“It is a terrible warning that the sin [of the rich man] was not that he did wrong things, but that he did nothing.”[6]
Friends, being true to the call of the Christ who claims us as his own means not “doing nothing.” It means doing whatever we can, in small ways and large, to be his hands, feet, eyes, ears, and voice. He calls us to be the ones who help the Lazaruses of our own day. It’s as simple as handing out a fistful of change to a homeless person at the top of a freeway off ramp, or volunteering to watch a neighbor’s children for an hour or two so that Mom can get some rest, or signing up for a session at Feed My Starving Children – well, you get the idea. It doesn’t have to be a major effort to have a major impact.
I’ll close by quoting – one more time – Teddy Roosevelt: “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
[1] Hengel, Martin, Property and Riches in the Early Church, Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1980, p. 47
[2] Clavier, the Rev. Anthony, “What Separates Us from Each Other and from God? (Proper 21C),” Sermons That Work, episcopaldigitalnetwork.com
[3] See Holbrook, Warren North II, “Luke’s Attitude Towards the Rich and The Poor,” “A Puritan’s Mind,” http://www.apuritansmind.com/stewardship/northbrookwarrenlukerichpoor/
[4] Bruce, F. F., The Hard Sayings of Jesus, Downers Grove, IL, InterVarsity Press, 1983, p. 160
[5] Lose, David, “Pentecost 19C: Eternal Life Now,” “…in the Meantime,” http://www.davidlose.net/2016/09/pentecost-19-c-eternal-life-now/
[6] Barclay, William, The Gospel of Luke: The New Daily Study Bible, Louisville, Kentucky, Westminster John Knox Press, 1975, 2001, p. 254