Year C

Luke 16:19-31

The Rev. Denise Vaughn

God’s Faithfulness From Generation to Generation

The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus in our gospel today is an old parable, one full of contrasts and reversals. It flows from a prior dialogue between Jesus and the Pharisees about the love of money and the search for riches and true riches. It was believed in Jesus’ day, and is still believed somewhat today, that riches were a sign of God’s approval and reward, a sign of God’s blessing because of hard work, initiative and intelligence. The danger is we choose to believe that “God helps those who help themselves,” and we have a tendency to ignore Jesus’ message that God helps those who cannot help themselves. This parable today, which is unique to Luke’s gospel, warns its readers that the messengers of God will come to them in the form of the poor in their path. If they ignore them, as did the rich man, there will come a time when they will recognize their error, but it may be too late.

Capturing the meaning of this parable quite well are the words in this African American spiritual.  Rich man Dies he lived so well. Dip your finger in the water, come, and cool my tongue, cause I’m tormented in the flame. And when he died he went straight to hell. Dip your finger in the water, come, and cool my tongue, cause I’m tormented in the flame. There is a sense of divine retribution in the words of this spiritual. The rich man lived so well, yet now he is the one begging, desperate for a drop of water to ease his fiery torment. The great reversal of the rich and the poor is nowhere more vividly put than in the story of the rich man and Lazarus.

This is the message in the readings today, that God’s persistent challenge to the comfortable from generation to generation is part of God’s faithfulness. Throughout Luke’s gospel is the word of reversal that the first become last and the last first. God is on the side of the poor, and cares for the outcasts, the prostitutes, tax collectors, widows, orphans, lepers, the blind and the deaf. We read of the God who “has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” Yet, nowhere in the scriptures are we told God does not care for the rich also or that it is a sin to be rich. Jesus’ story does not suggest the rich man got his money by oppressing the poor or by robbing widows and orphans. He may even be considered generous because he had the beggar living at his gate as his personal beggar, which means he was probably feeding him according to the requirements of the law.

Lazarus, when he was healthy enough, more than likely ran errands and carried messages for the rich man’s household. After his death, the rich man asks Lazarus to run one more errand, to take a message to his brothers. He still believes he is in charge and can direct the course of a poor man after death. Even from below, he thinks he is higher up than Lazarus. The torments of hell have not managed to wipe out the rich man’s social definitions. He was entrenched in his privileged attitude. Even while he is parched with thirst in the flames of hell, he is not able to see Lazarus as anything but his beggar, certainly not his brother. His sin was that he allowed his money to blind him to the needs of others. He never took the time to get to know his brother because he does not see him, yet, Jesus came to say God sees each one of us.

Rich or poor, it doesn’t matter to God. What matters and what God looks at is our hearts. Does our heart and mind cry out with God for all those like Lazarus, because this parable is challenging us to see the needy at our gate and to respond by exchanging lives of comfort for habits of radical generosity? We are being challenged to become more attentive to the poor and the suffering around us. This text presents us with what I believe is one of the greatest moral challenges of our day; the challenge of seeing the invisible suffering of this world, and making it visible. We are more aware of the suffering around the world because of technology, but we have become more adept at ignoring the suffering. Despair over being able to do something and cynicism temp’s us to close our eyes. I say this knowing that most of us are generous to the poor and needy in this community and elsewhere. Thank goodness for the many churches and charitable foundations made up of all kinds of people like us who are busy offering help and meeting human need in this country and abroad. Yet, there continues to be an ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor. The truth is; we live within political and economic systems that feed upon the sufferings of others and choose the rich man’s perspective.

For the rich man, it is too late to change his ways, but it is not too late for us. The contrasts and disparities described in this parable between the rich and the poor are meant to evoke a reaction from us. Jesus is telling this parable to those who love their money more than people, their possessions more than the poor, their extravagant feasts more than sharing food with the hungry. This story is a gift of clear insight into God’s choices for our lives because it becomes a word for us “warn them so that they will not also come into this place of torment.”

Abraham says to the rich man “they have been given what guidance they need, but they may not listen even to a voice from the dead.” Break through, shouts the man. In fact, God has broken through; beginning with Abraham and in God’s word spoken through the prophets, and his Word in Jesus the Christ. We have been given what we need to live faithful lives. Abraham says, they will listen or not. They will respond or they will not. The power of this story is in the opportunity it brings for transformation in our lives; the transformation that Paul speaks about in his first letter to Timothy where he instructs us to grasp, catch and take hold of that which will lead to eternal life.

He gives us a perspective upon life that is meant to shape the way we relate to others and to the material world. “As for you, pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you have been called.” This requires more than a commitment to a set of rules it requires qualities of life that demand our bodies, minds, spirits and hearts to be lead in the ways of “faith, love, endurance, gentleness, and richness toward others.” We are to set our hope on God who provides for us, not on the uncertainty of riches that cannot save us. We are to use our riches to do good works, be generous and ready to share, “thus storing up treasures of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.”

This is the faith to which we have been called and this is the faith to which the rich man was called to. Yet, because of his lack of action and compassion, because he does not see what is before him, he cannot cross over to the place of faith.  Abraham says, they will listen or not. They will respond or they will not. Our example is the generosity and unconditional love and grace of God that gives us life, identity, meaning, hope and ultimately satisfies.  It is the generosity and grace of God that calls and empowers us to live out our identity faithfully with justice and generosity.  A life that calls us to exchange lives of comfort for habits of radical generosity, and perhaps through that small opening a drop of cool water may fall upon our parched tongues.