Luke 16:19-31
The Eighteenth Sunday in Pentecost
(5th in a series of 5)
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| Photo by Paul Sapiano, Creative Commons |
There are churches that seem to be obsessed with forever. The question ask over and over again in one way or another is this one: “If you were to die tonight, where would you spend eternity?” It’s all about eternity. It’s all about forever. I confess that I can’t remember a time in my life that I was anxious about my eternal destination. I guess maybe I’m just the trusting sort. All my life I’ve heard that Jesus said, “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also” (John 14:3). For some reason, threats of flames and tortures in hell were never as compelling to me as the promises of Jesus. Maybe I’m just the trusting sort.
There are other churches that seem to be obsessed with here and now. Their mission isn’t framed in terms of saving souls for eternity; their mission is to save the world right now. The most recent legislation, the latest social or political hot-button issue, the big new local or global crisis is what’s most important to them. These churches don’t ask questions; they take stands: “the Christian response to this” and “the Christian response to that” is what they are all about. There are here-and-now conservative churches, and there are here-and-now liberal churches; and both of them strike me as the religious equivalent of ambulance chasers. Maybe I’m just the cynical sort. All that “Christian responsing” seems to me to reduce the church to just one more special interest group jockeying for influence, lobbying legislators and the public, using the pulpit to bully. The gospels don’t portray Jesus as framing his ministry in relation to the social and political winds blowing in Rome or Jerusalem either one. Jesus didn’t seem to have the crisis of the day or the week or the month or the year on his mind. Maybe I’m just the cynical sort.
Then there are the churches that seem to be oblivious to both now and forever. They are unresponsive to the world around them, and they are equally unconcerned about the prospect of a world to come. They are not moved by anything, and they are not moved to anything except the preservation of their own existence. This third category of churches sounds very much like the rich man in the parable that Jesus tells in this morning’s gospel lesson from the sixteenth chapter of Luke’s gospel. They are dressed in their Sunday best, purple and fine linen, and all their needs are met and sumptuously so. They can’t see far enough beyond their own creature comforts to notice the hungry, homeless man, woman or child right outside the door, much less see far enough to notice that the insulated life they are living will not last forever. It never does. They are oblivious to both now and forever.
The most fascinating thing to me about this parable is that Jesus doesn’t seem to buy that either/or dichotomy between “now” and “forever.” In the teachings of Jesus, now and forever, our time—the present—and God’s time—eternity—are inseparably linked. And if we do not see that inseparable linkage, we risk reducing the mission of the church to forever, to now, or to neither. Let’s look at the parable.
It is a curiosity long noted by commentators on this passage that the rich man in the story is anonymous, while the poor man lying outside the rich man’s gate is named: Lazarus. You might have heard this parable referred to over the years as the parable of “Lazarus and Dives,” but the name “Dives” is nothing more than the Latin word for “rich man.” The story could have been called, “the poor man and the rich man,” except that the poor man is given the respect and dignity of a name, “Lazarus and the rich man,” while the rich man is a nameless cipher. He could be anyone. He could be us. Richard Vinson, in his commentary on Luke, says, “In real life, things mostly happen in the opposite way; the street people are faceless and those who starve daily are nameless, but the wealthy have their faces all over the media and their names on buildings” (Luke [Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2008], p. 531).
It’s not a pretty picture, this one: Lazarus hungry, covered with sores and licked by the dogs in the street. I grew up in a family that never experienced hunger, hunger as in going without food because there was none to be had. Whenever we were tempted not to clean our plates, my grandmother would remind us of the “starving Armenians” who would be grateful to have the food that we were about to throw away. I confess that even when I was young I never understood how my eating that food would help the starving Armenians one bit. But what I did grow up understanding is that there are people in this world who are starving while I am wasting food, and the moral cloud of that reality hangs over the head of every one of us who is not hungry on a daily basis. In Luke’s gospel, Jesus says, “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled” (6:21). And then he goes on to say, “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry” (6:25). This morning’s parable is an illustration of that very reversal of roles that comes with the kingdom of God, and it reminds of the inseparable linkage between now and forever. Since the early centuries of Christian preaching and teaching on this passage, commentators have pointed out that even the dogs in the street show more compassion for Lazarus, licking his sores, than the well-fed fellow human in the house. The dogs are the set-up for the judgment on the rich man in the story.
Jesus does not suggest in this parable that rich’s man’s crime was being rich. Augustine rightly said, “Christ did not object to the riches of the rich man” (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, III.262). Jerome detailed the picture: he “is not accused of being greedy or of carrying off the property of another, or of committing adultery, or, in fact, of any wrongdoing” (ACCS, III.260). The rich man’s sin was his unresponsiveness to the suffering and needs of another human being. His failure was his lack compassion. Augustine says, the rich man in the parable received no mercy in the life to come “because he did not show mercy in his life” (ACCS, III.260). Now and forever, anyone? “The rich man in the parable does what most people . . . do: we turn our eyes away from the world’s needs and spend our attention, and most of our resources on ourselves” (Vinson, Luke, pp. 531-32). Richard Vinson puts it pointedly: “We live in a time and place that teaches us that self-indulgence is good, that we have a perfect right to spend all our money on ourselves if we want, and that we’re being good citizens—helping the economy—when we do. We are bombarded by psychologically sophisticated advertisements designed by clever people, ads that try to convince us that we need what they have to sell. Every year the definition of what we actually need expands. How many computers does your family own? How many cars? How many televisions? How many cell phones?” (Luke, p. 533). “Ouch!” We live as though we are oblivious to now and to forever.
There is one final touch of obliviousness in the parable. The rich man in his torment sees poor Lazarus comforted at last, not by the dogs but by “Father Abraham,” the parable says. And when the rich man sees that, he calls out, “Father Abraham, send Lazarus down here to relieve my suffering!” Do you see the irony? The man who ignored the suffering of Lazarus now wants Lazarus to alleviate his suffering. Instead of responding, “Forgive me, Father Abraham, for I have sinned! Forgive my selfishness and have mercy on me,” he says instead, “Hey send that guy to serve me!” Now and forever, this guy thinks the world exists to meet his needs and provide for his wants. The “great chasm” in v 26 that “has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us” is nothing more than the chasm of pride and arrogance and self-absorption that keeps us from loving our neighbor—especially our poor and hungry and homeless neighbor—as ourself.
Even when the rich man sort of “gets” it at the end, he’s still trying to send Lazarus on an errand, an errand that is still focused on himself and his own: Send Lazarus, he says, “to my father's house—for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment” (vv 27-28). Do you see that he still chooses not to see the torment of the living in hunger and poverty and neglect? It’s still all about himself and his own. We should not be surprised, then, when at the very end of the parable, Father Abraham speaks chilling words about our inability to change. The brothers, he says, “have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.” “No, father Abraham,” replies the man who was formerly insulated in his comfort, “but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” To which father Abraham replied, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead” (vv 29-30). On this side of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we are all “without excuse,” as Paul puts it (Romans 1:20). We have seen the now and the forever revealed in the life and ministry and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and yet, fulfilling the prophecy of father of Abraham, we do not repent.
This morning’s gospel lesson offers us a now-and-forever message about the mission of the church. It’s very simple, really.
See what you can respond to. The rich man had evidently stepped over Lazarus lying outside his gate so many times that he did not even see him any more. Tell me you and I have never had that experience, either literally or figuratively. See what you can respond to.
Respond to what you can see. You don’t have to travel to an exotic place a long way from home to find poverty, hunger, homelessness, suffering and need. The rich man’s sin was his unresponsiveness to the suffering and need that was right in front of him the whole time. Respond to what you can see.
Seek to serve, not to be served. Jesus said of his own mission, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). If that’s the mission of Jesus, then it’s also the mission of the church. In Luke’s gospel, in chapters 9-19, Jesus is preparing his followers to carry on his mission after his earthly ministry is over. So the church’s mission is Jesus’ mission.
God’s redemptive mission in the world is both now and forever. In Jesus life and ministry and death and resurrection, forever has already begun in the here and now. When we respond in faith to the grace of God revealed in Jesus Christ here and now, forever takes care of itself. That’s a promise from none other than Jesus himself. In the meantime,
see what you can respond to;
see what you can respond to;
respond to what you can see;
and seek to serve, not to be served.
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