Pentecost 17

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: Pentecost 17
PROPER: 21 C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: September 27, 1998

TEXT: Luke16:19-31 - Parable of The Richman & Lazarus

ISSUE: There are two possible considerations of this Parable of the Richman (Dives) and Lazarus. One aspect deals with the insensitivity of the Richman to those in need around him. He can never quite get what it means to care for the suffering, other than the crumbs of bread that are thrown out the window. It is also a parable about an abundant grace of God. The poor Lazarus has no merit of his own. He is the fallen. He is his society's outcast. He is even thought to be the cursed of God. Out of no merit of his own, Lazarus is lifted up into the bosom of Abraham. Like Christ, he is the one who suffers and through faith is lifted up. The richman goes on manipulating and struggling for success. He can't get it, any more than his brothers will if someone goes to them from the dead.. It is in seeing ourselves as Lazarus, fallen humanity, do we recognize through faith our need of God's love and have the hope of resurrection.
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The parable of the Richman (often referred to through tradition as Dives) and Lazarus the poor man is another one of those great reversals that we find in Luke. The richman has it good on earth, while poor Lazarus lives in misery. But both of them die in the story and there is the great reversal of the Richman in Hades, the Judean concept of living in the shadows after death, and is tormented, while Lazarus resides in the comfortable bosom of Abraham. According to the surface understanding of the story, each one gets their just reward. At first we may be led to believe that this parable was told by Jesus to get people to be more sensitive and compassionate to the poor. For some it makes a good Stewardship Parable. Can't we all get to be a little more giving, or you had better watch out! When you die, you'll get yours!
Let's first get a handle on this parable in terms of what it may have meant in Jesus own time, as he told it. Prior to where this parable begins, Jesus has noted that the pharisees are lovers of money, and that they made themselves look good in people's sight, but God knew well what was in their thoughts. (Luke 16:14f) In Jesus' time to be rich was considered suspect. Rich people were thought of as greedy. In a society with no middle class, the rich simply had more than their share. It was believed that to be rich was in a sense was to be a thief. There were limited goods to go around in this society. To have a windfall or to have an abundance meant that you were supposed to share with others.
In the parable the richman is clearly affluent. He was the picture of success and achievement. He dressed in royal purple and had fine linen underware. He feasted sumptuously daily. He was also separated from the rift-raft and the poor of the world by the gate. The richman may well have been a symbol of the pharisees. While they may not all have been rich and affluent, they were considered the successful men of God. Outside the gate in sharp contrast is the poor Lazarus. He is one of the outcasts. He gathers up left over bread thrown out to the dogs. He is cripple and covered in sores which would indicate that he is cursed by God, according to the beliefs of the time. His sores are licked by unclean animals, wild dogs, which enhances the picture of his terrible poverty and depravity. He would have been banned from the temple, and hearers of the parable would not have had much respect for this poor Lazarus who does nothing to reclaim his honor, so much as even begging.
In the story, both men die, even the successful one. Much to the great surprise of the first listeners of Jesus' parable, the poor man resides in the bosom of Abraham, while the rich go to Hades, a place of torment, modeled on the burning garbage dumps outside the city walls. In death, the richman asks Abraham to send Lazarus with some water to cool him off. Even in death, the richman still thinks of himself as a hotshot worthy of having Lazarus serve him. Abraham will not buy into the richman's manipulation, and says that there is a great chasm that cannot be crossed. The richman still trying to be the hotshot, and still seeing Lazarus as a servant, tells Abraham to resurrect Lazarus and send him back to his five brothers to warn them to shape up and help the poor. The richman still, even in his misery, can't get it through his head that his behavior has been reprehensible and he has no clout with Abraham. Furthermore the brothers have the Scriptures which are full of teachings about caring for the foreigner, the poor, the widows and orphans. (Exod. 22:21-22; Deut. 10:17-19; Amos 2:6-8; Jer. 5:25-29) Even if someone came back from the dead, these obsinate pharisees would continue their merry way, just as the richman himself continues to see the poor Lazarus as his assigned lackey.
The parable has real shock value. The idea that Jesus saw the poor Lazarus, outcast and miserable sinner, as worthy of being in the bosom of Abraham over the pharisees was really shocking and humiliating. It was a shocking condemnation of the condescending abundantly righteous affluence of the pharisees. The very ones who think by virtue of their bountiful righteousness that they have an "in" with God, and who are so insensitive to the poverty around them are really hopelessly the real outcasts and are too dumb to see it. They are the spiritually derelict. They know better and can't grasp what it means to be the caring people of God. They are the ones who are really the spiritually poverty stricken and worthless.
Now we can see this parable in a merely moralistic way. Luke may well have had that in mind as he preserved the story for the early church. It vividly calls for compassion for the poor and the out cast. In an affluent country, and in an affluent community and church, we might well consider what kind of givers we all are, and the kind of stewards we are. We might in our own righteousness and conservatism be as insensitive and discompassionate as the hopeless pharisees. We might want to reconsider our stewardship and generosity lest we need a drop of cool water on our tongues.
Yet, I think, there is another whole side to appreciating this profound parable. We are inclined to identify with the richman in the parable. We are the ones who live and strive for affluence and success. All we have to do is remember the poor old Lazarus' and make sure they get some bread, and we will carry on. We just have to keep on plugging and working, and being busy, and occasionally remember the poor, and pass on a token of our success. But how many people like the richman in the story who keep on plugging without ever really changing anything are particularly happy? We live in affluent society that has a great deal of personal misery and unhappiness. There is often a great deal of personal dissatisfaction and the constant persistent struggle for more and more things to keep us happy. Yet nothing changes. We still live with the hassle of the needs of the poor, the threat of violence, terrorism, fear of the future and what the stock market will do or not do. Trying hard to stay alive and on top we only give way eventually to death.
The other character in the story that we fail and resist identifying with is Lazarus. Lazarus is a Christ-like figure in the story. He is the outcast, the suffering figure. Yet living out his life he is the one who is lifted up into the bosom of Abraham. You see, to try to avoid the world of Lazarus and take good care of ourselves we in fact set ourselves apart from real life and the hope of renewal and resurrection. Lazarus lives only in the hope of God. Lazarus accepts his falleness, his inability to achieve and through his dying is resurrected. Without any work of his own, the saving grace of God is freely given. God's love is feely bestowed upon the broken, bruised, and fallen. The pharisees could not grasp this fact. They could not appreciate the ways and teachings of Jesus as one who lived among, and loved the poor, the broken, the least, last, and lost. He suffered with them and entered into their way of life.
The rich man won't accept death and his falleness. As a result he assures the deepening hell of his life. Lazarus in his poverty is able to be raised. In order to live we have to die. We have to let go of the old life, the old concepts, the old notions that we can live alone without God and on the basis of our own abilities to achieve and be successful. Adam and Eve's notion they could make it on their own was their curse. Ancient Israelite leaders who abandoned God, knew only the devastation of their country. Jesus' understanding of entering into the Kingdom of God was a matter of dying to live. "Whoever tries to save his own life will lose it; whoever loses his life will save it." (Luke 17:33) The whole life and ministry of Jesus who came to accept humaness and lived a humble accepting life, who died on a cross, was the very one to rise again.
This parable certainly has its moral implications. But it is also a parable that expresses the enormous and profound grace of God. It also teaches that in accepting our spiritual poverty we live and are raised up by God. Seeing one another in our shared falleness, we all participate in a brotherhood that lifts one another and carries one another to the presence of God's blessing. We don't send a lackey.