Luke 16:19-31
19 “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. 20 At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores 21 and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.
22 “The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. 24 So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’
25 “But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. 26 And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’
27 “He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, 28 for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’
29 “Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’
30 “‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’
31 “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”
We have been working through Jesus’s parables in the book of Luke over the last few weeks; today we are going to consider the fifth and final parable in this section. We’ve looked at the Parable of the Lost Sheep, Lost Coin, and Lost Son. Last week we considered the Parable of the Shrewd/Dishonest Manager. That’s probably one of the least-frequently preached parable, because even after studying it and preaching on it, I still don’t know for sure what Jesus’s point was. Today we go from one of the least-preached parables to what is probably one of the most commonly preached parables.
Before we get to our text for this morning, I want to point out that there seems to be two different themes among the parables of Luke 15 and 16, and they can be divided right along with the chapter divisions. We have the lost/found theme in chapter 15. Chapter 16 forces me to recall the words lyricist Calvin Broadus Jr., “With my mind on my money, and my money on my mind.”
Last week I emphasized that money is not a bad thing in and of itself. Remember that the Bible doesn’t say “Money is the root of all evil.” It says, “The love of money is the root of all evil.” But today we are going to bring a little balance to that statement, because things don’t turn out too well for the rich man, and it is the poor man that seems to be doing well for himself.
Our text last week ended with the phrase about not being able to serve two masters: you cannot serve both God and Mammon. But we skipped over a few verses before we arrived at our parable for this morning, and I think it would be helpful to look at a few of them quickly. Verses 14-15 say, “The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus. He said to them, ‘You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts. What people value highly is detestable in God’s sight.’”
God knows your heart. What people value highly isn’t necessarily what God places a high value on. Keep that in mind as we look at today’s parable.
Today’s parable starts with the exact same five words as last week’s: “There was a rich man.” How do we view rich men today? They have power and authority simply by virtue of having money. Some Christian traditions will even assume that they must be men of great faith. God has blessed them with so much money! He was dressed in purple and fine linen. He ate well every day. Steak, lobster, biscuits and gravy any time, not just for breakfast! Okay, maybe not the best example for a fictious Jewish man. But you get the point.
There was a homeless man who would sit and beg outside the rich man’s home. The beggar’s name was Lazarus. We are told that Lazarus wished for even the table scraps from the rich man’s table. Lazarus also suffered some kind of skin disorder resulting in sores on his body. Jesus includes a strange line in this parable about dogs coming to lick the sores of Lazarus. Of course everyone loves dogs. Dog is just God spelled backwards, after all. This was before dogs were really domesticated in that region and kept as pets. They were scavengers living in the street, getting into your trash. Though dogs were not considered “unclean” based on the Torah, they were dirty animals.
So why does Jesus include this strange line about the dogs licking the wounds of Lazarus? The dogs show more sympathy and mercy to Lazarus than the rich man does.
Jesus criticizes the Pharisees for chasing after things that people of the world place a high value on: money, power, authority. Then he tells this story about a rich man who fails to offer mercy to a poor man. I’m drawn back to Micah 6:8, every progressive Christian’s favorite verse, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
The thing we need to remember here is that this is a parable, and when looking at a parable it is important to focus on the point, and not the supporting details. The supporting details are not there to make a theological point. They are there to make the story make sense.
For instance, I would say that this was not meant to be a story about who is saved and who is not; who is going to heaven and who is going to hell. We have absolutely no information about Lazarus’s life, or what else the rich man did. If this was a story about who goes to heaven and who goes to hell, we would have to assume that Jesus is saying that all poor people go to heaven and all rich people go to hell. I don’t think that’s the point, though I would mention that the two places where Jesus seems to spend the most time discussing a place of punishment and a place of reward, here and in Matthew 25—the separation of the sheep and the goats—it is those who ignore the poor and needy who enter a place of punishment.
But again, that’s not the point. I also don’t think the point is that we will be able to see from heaven to hell and from hell to heaven. Way too many Christian leaders have said that we will have great joy in watching the damned suffer in hell. There is even a hymn that says, “What bliss will fill the ransomed souls,/When they in glory dwell,/To see the sinner as he rolls,/In quenchless flames of hell.”
The Mennonite Church is working on a new hymnal. I may make a suggestion…to leave that one out.
That’s some messed-up theology, but again, that’s not the point.
I’ve heard people quote Matthew 20:16 as an explanation of this parable. The first shall be last, and the last shall be first. That’s a fun one to quote, especially on days when we have carry-in meals. I think that is moving us in the right direction, but I think it still misses the point.
I think the point is that the rich man does nothing to alleviate the suffering of Lazarus when he clearly has the means to help and the opportunity to help. And if we look at this text, notice it is only when he believes Lazarus is able to do something for him that the rich man seems to acknowledge Lazarus even exists. Look at verses 24 and 27, “So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’” And “He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family.”
Even after his death, the rich man is still treating Lazarus as a servant. Go get me something to drink. Go deliver this message. He never sees Lazarus as a fellow human being in need of help and mercy, but as someone who can provide him with a service. And the irony of it all is that while the rich man has the means and opportunity to help Lazarus, it is the dirty, mangy dogs who actually do more to bring him some relief from his suffering.
I was introduced to an interesting theory this past week. I’d heard of John Rawls before, but never actually read anything he wrote or studied his thought. Rawls was a late 20th century political and moral philosopher who wrote a lot on money. Rawls introduces the idea of a “natural lottery,” saying that if you are rich, or have a high paying job, you may have worked very hard to get where you are, but it is very likely that much of what you have is the result of good fortune. Sure, you are smarter than the average person, but a large part of that comes from your genetics and probably because your parents could send you to a good school. Perhaps you are a great athlete and have earned millions of dollars. Sure, you have put in a lot of work, but you also inherited a certain amount of athleticism. Again, Rawls says that while you have surely worked for what you have, a large part of what you have today has nothing to do with what you did. Had you been born in a different country, with different parents, things would be different.
In the church we use words like “grace” and “blessings” to describe what Rawls called the natural lottery. It is by the grace of God that you have been blessed with what you have. It isn’t that you haven’t worked hard. But if you had the same intellect and were born in a third-world country, you would probably not be as successful as you are, financially speaking.
Rawls then goes on to say that since much of what we have is because of the natural lottery, we don’t deserve to keep all of it. He isn’t a communist. Rawls doesn’t say that we all need to sell everything we have and live like the poorest among us. But the neurosurgeon has a responsibility to use what she has been given to help those who were not as fortunate in the natural lottery. That may mean donating money to the Valley Mission, and it might mean traveling to underserved countries and using your gifts for to help someone else. Rawls understood that there were indeed inequalities in this world; inequalities of income, physical and mental abilities, and so on. What Rawls argued for was justice in the midst of inequalities. How do we use what we have to make sure everyone has what they need.
Rawls wrote in a very secular manner. He was, after all, writing political theory for a secular nation. But it isn’t hard to read Rawls and guess what his religious background was. Rawls was a Christian, and when he finished his undergraduate studies at Princeton, he considered going to seminary to become an Episcopal priest. When I hear Rawls talking about the natural lottery, I hear words like grace, blessings, and stewardship. When I hear him saying a neurosurgeon needs to give back, I’m reminded of a few parables earlier in Luke’s Gospel. Particularly, I hear Jesus’s words from Luke 12:48b, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”
So now we come to the really difficult part of the sermon. I need to ask which person I more closely resemble. Am I Lazarus, or am I the rich man? We all naturally want to associate with the heroes of the Bible. We like to think that we too will be swept away to Abraham’s bosom, or something like that, when we die. I’m not the rich guy. I’m a part-time Mennonite pastor. What about that screams “RICH MAN!” to you?
How about the two cars in my driveway? How about the fact that I have a driveway and that driveway is on my own property, where my house sits? Yeah, if we really think about it, those of us sitting here are probably more closely related to the rich man than Lazarus.
I was directed to a really interesting website this week. It is called “Giving what we can,” and can be found at this website: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/
If you click through this website, you will find a place where you can put in some information about your household income and how many people live in your house. It will then tell you where you stand among the rest of the world in adjusted income. For sure, there are some problems with the methodology. It never asks for things like cost of living in your neighborhood. But the website reveals some interesting data, like an income of $50,000 in a four-person household puts you in the top 8.6% of the world’s population, and 13x the global median. If you keep scrolling, the website says that if you donate just 10% of your income, you will still be in the top 9.9% and earning 12x the global median. And that’s just for a $50,000 household income.
For the last few weeks, I have been going for a long run in the northern part of Washington, DC early on Wednesday mornings. During that time, I have run past more homeless people than I can count, but one sticks out to me. There is a simple tent set up outside a nation’s embassy (which I won’t name in writing). I don’t know why this tent is set up there, but I assume it has something to do with the person’s nationality, likely calling that country home. And every week I look at the cars parked inside that embassy and think, “Isn’t it a shame that they can afford those limousines and don’t even help their own countryman?” Like Lazarus, this man slept right outside the gates of the rich man and begged for scraps.
My friends, I think the story of Lazarus and the rich man isn’t meant to tell us who is going to hell and who is going to heaven. And I sure don’t think it is meant to tell us that we can see people suffering in hell while we are in heaven. I believe the parable of Lazarus and the rich man is meant to point out that this rich man had all of the world’s riches, every resource was available to him, but didn’t do anything to help the one in need right outside his front door.
The one who did what he could was the dog who licked Lazarus’s wounds.
Inasmuch as he echoes Jesus, I believe John Rawls is right. To whom much is given, much is expected. Am I a rich man? Compared to the guy living in the tent outside the embassy, I sure am. Rather than criticizing the embassy for not helping, maybe what I should be doing is helping the guy in whatever way I can. Maybe we are called to be less like the rich man, and be more like the dogs.
Because, as we all know, dog is just God spelled backwards.
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