Proper 21 - Lazarus and the Rich Man

When I was confirmed in Evanston Illinois, I was given a “red letter bible”.  For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s a bible where all of Jesus’ words are written in red print.  I must admit that I was originally perplexed why there were no red letters in the first half of the bible, and little in the end.  It all seemed to be concentrated in what I now know to be the Gospels.  Funny, huh?

In any case, if you look at a red letter bible, and look particularly at the Gospel of Luke, it’s hard to find any red letters that don’t talk about wealth, power, privilege, and the dangers of these.  Or something singing the praises of the weak, poor and sick.  Today’s Gospel reading continues, following on the prodigal son, and Jesus lambasting the Pharisees for the hoity toity dinner party and power-grabbing seating chart, and it being easier for a camel to go through a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven.   Today, we hear about the rich man who walks past Lazarus, not the same Lazarus we hear about around Easter.   To be sure, these are difficult words to hear, particularly as Americans, as Episcopalians, as St. Thomas. Compared to the other Episcopal Churches in the area, we are one of the most wealthy.  As a denomination, Episcopalians, are one of the most wealthy, and as a nation, the United States is the most wealthy.  I would love to say something pastoral that would make this lesson easier to take, easier to preach, easier to hear.  Easier to think it’s not talking about us.  But that’s not my job. And in fact, it is precisely aimed at us. 

Lest you feel too depressed before I even begin, or tune me out at this point, the end of the story gets better.  There is hope. But not before there’s a call to change, and some serious self-examination to be done. 

Every day, when the man came and went, he’d see Lazarus, who was so hungry that he’d have been happy with the crumbs falling from the rich man’s table.  He was so sickly that dogs licked his wounds.  In your mind you might envision Fluffy, the neighbors Pekinese, licking his nose.  But that’s not what this was. This was much more likely a pack of wild, mangy street dogs, trolling the streets for trouble – or food.  To say the dogs were licking his sores tells you something about how sick and defeated Lazarus was, how unable he was to fend off the dogs.   And the rich man walked by this scene, every time he left his home, in his expensive clothing. 

Both men die, and Lazarus goes to Abraham’s bosom, while the rich man goes to Hell.  The rich man asks Abraham to “send Lazarus to dip his finger in the cool water”.

Abraham responds that when the rich man was on earth, he had nice things, and Lazarus was in agony. Now the tables are turned. He further says that a great chasm has been fixed so no one can go between where Lazarus ends up and Hell.

The rich man doesn’t give up. He begs Abraham to send Lazarus to earth to warn his brothers.  Abraham responds that if the rich man didn’t listen to Moses  and the other prophets, neither will they listen to someone who rises from the dead. 

Why did the reach man end up in hell?  It wasn’t his wealth per say.  But the wealth certainly contributed.  I’ll agree with Martin Luther King, who wrote about this very passage, and concluded that it wasn’t the wealth, but the rich man’s actions that landed him in hell.

He didn’t see Lazarus.

MLK wrote that the first sin of the rich man was that he passed by Lazarus and never saw him. He went to hell because to the rich man, Lazarus was invisible. And worse, by not intervening, he allowed Lazarus to become invisible to everyone. Anecdotally, I can tell you that one of the greatest challenges and most disheartening truths for the poor of today is that they’re seen as invisible.  Few people make eye contact on the streets, and they begin to feel like they are, in fact, invisible. 

Acted superior in life, as in death. 

The second grave error the rich man made was that he acted superior to Lazarus both alive and after they’d died.  Alive, he walked past as if Lazarus wasn’t there, wasn’t suffering.  Once they’d died, he repeatedly asked Abraham to have Lazarus do things for him. Never asking Lazarus, but ordering.  Dip his finger in cool water.  Go warn my brothers.  Even in death, Lazarus is seen as a lesser man. 

Set rules about chasm on earth. 

Finally, it was the wealthy man’s refusal to acknowledge the chasm between he and Lazarus on earth that fixed the chasm forever.  Being a pretty visual and literal person, I thing of this as two men and a big pit.  On earth, Lazarus was in the big pit. Lazarus definitely knew there was a gap between he and the rich man who stood on the edge  But while coming and going, the rich man never noticed the pit or Lazarus, or maybe he noticed but couldn’t be bothered.  Now in death, the rich man is in the pit, and he now clearly sees the chasm between the bottom of the pit and the top.  But he set the rules while on earth.  Pit? Chasm? What pit? I see no chasm that needs to be crossed.  The rich man  set the rules on earth. He refused to see the distance, the need between himself and Lazarus, thereby cementing the chasm as uncrossable in death. 

Hearing this Gospel is pretty condemning.  Comparatively speaking, we all have nice things. All of us in this room have riches that far exceed many others in this world.  To tell you just how wealthy we are as a country, there’s a website, globalrichlist.com, where you can enter your income, and it calculates your relative wealth compared to everyone in the world. For me, in a middle management government job, I am in the top 1% worldwide.  Sobering. 

Paul talks more about wealth in this letter to Timothy, and his letter provides some context and instruction on what to do with that wealth.   He does this after some pretty stern warnings too.

Paul warns that you can’t take it with you.  He tells the people that they came into the world with nothing, and will leave with nothing, so why be trapped by senseless and harmful desires that happen when they want to be rich.  He tells them that the love of money is the root of all evil.  Note that he says it’s the love of money, not the money itself.  It’s not about the money. It never really was.  It’s about what the money does to a person, if they’re not careful. 

That’s the real danger of money.  If we’re not always watchful, wealth can distort our interactions and perceptions of God, of our neighbor, and even of ourselves.  Regarding God, wealth makes man lose sight of our need of God. We think money can solve our problems, or we can buy our way into heaven, or we forget that God does not really keep track of our earthly wealth.  With our neighbor, the Gospel illustrates the problems that come with wealth. Wealth creates a sense that one is superior to another, makes us invisible or immune to the needs and plight of others, and it creates an uncrossable chasm between us and them.

 Finally, within ourselves, wealth creates a great sense of discontent. We begin to desire wealth, and more things that wealth can provide, rather than being content with food, clothing and shelter we need today – with “our DAILY bread”.  As Paul reminds, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment. 

I can’t overemphasize the importance of contentment. It comes from a place of deep gratitude for what you have, rather than what you don’t.  Socrates said it well.   “He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have”. 

Again, it’s not about the money itself. It’s about what the money does to a person.  Paul concedes this by offering consoling words to people with wealth, which again would be all of us.  He commands them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on uncertain riches.  Today, the same is true.  For those who find themselves with riches, focus on God and our deep and always need of God, on helping your neighbor, on being content with what you have.

We are called to do good, be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share.  Talking about Lazarus and the rich man, Martin Luther King said that the greatest challenge of the church is that we need to be as concerned as Christ is for the least of these – for our vulnerable brothers and sisters in Christ – for the Lazaruses of our time.  He wrote, “And we must do it because in the final analysis we are all to live together, rich and poor, lettered and unlettered, tutored and untutored.  Somehow we are tied in a single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.”  We need to see the chasm now, and cross it now.