LUKE 16: 19-31

Evangelist – n., ‘A bearer of good tidings, particularly (in a religious sense) such as assure us of our own salvation and the damnation of our neighbours’ (Ambrose Bierce).

Luke 16 has a collection OF Jesus’ warnings about riches: in essence he says wealth can have a narcotic effect on us, dulling our conscience and concern for others. Jesus aims his teaching particularly at the Pharisees, pious religious people who ‘loved money and jeered at him’ (16:14). Jesus says these Pharisees have organized their religion to appear godly to others, but their deep motives are selfish: the things we think are essential and good are worth nothing from God’s perspective (16:15). The Pharisees had a complicated religious system which got in the road of people’s finding a loving, compassionate God. So when Jesus healed people on the Sabbath he was criticized – probably not only because he broke their regulations (would any of them have complained if they were healed?) but because it’s the unattractive members of society he was caring for. So with us: the pharisaic mind-set is part of all forms of Christianity. Why for example, is 90% of the church’s income spent on 10% of the world’s Christians? These Pharisees like us only used a small fraction of their wealth to benefit the poor; they may have good social standing with their peers (perhaps because of their wealth?), but they do not have it with God. (See Richard J Cassidy, Jesus, Politics and Society: a Study of Luke’s Gospel, Orbis, 1978, pp. 28 ff., note 33 p.145-6).

Every parable has a ‘key’ that unlocks it. The key here, says Thielicke, in none other than the speech of Abraham: we must hear Moses and the prophets if we are to come to terms with our eternal destiny. Three times in this chapter we find the phrase ‘Moses and the prophets’: the people who more than any others in the ancient world spelt out a law-code and a theology about the co-existence of poverty and wealth. The rich man’s destiny is not determined by his affluence, but by his relationship to this Word. (Helmut Thielicke, The Waiting Father, James Clarke & Co., 1966, p.42).

Poverty is as likely to turn people’s hearts to God (in the OT ‘poor’ are a synonym for the pious) as wealth turns us away fom the will of God, but there does not need to be an inevitability, either way.

Parables make one major point: we should not use this story to spell out a complete theology (or geography!) of the after-life.

This story has two characters: Rich Man – a privileged person, enjoying the good things of life. Lived for himself and his family. So far as we know he doesn’t commit any of the ‘gross’ sins (murder, adultery) but he certainly committed a few of the deadly ones – gluttony, maybe sloth, greed. When he dies the mortuary people come to his nice home to arrange a nice funeral (with his nice insurance-money) with nice people attending (the pastor says some nice things about him) in a nice funeral parlour. His body is buried under a nice gravestone in a nice cemetery.

Lazarus is one of the wretched of the earth. He can’t provide for a family, and the nearest thing to affection he enjoys are the wet noses and the fuzzy tongues of the scavenging village dogs. Indeed he was too weak to fend them off. He’s just a bit of human scum floating painfully through a short life. But ‘Lazarus’ is the Greek form of the Hebrew ‘Eliezar’, which means ‘the one whom God helps’: although he gets little if any help from other human persons, God’s on his side. When he dies, as unwanted, unlamented, and unknown in death as in life, the public works department collects his body and tosses it on the town’s garbage-dump as food for the vultures. But his heavenly Father arranges for as special squadron of angels to carry Lazarus into paradise.

What an immense difference in the fortunes of these two men after they die. The rich man had everything, but his ‘solid and substantial’ holdings didn’t hold. The poor man only had his relationship with a heavenely Father: but that was everything. As the medieval mystic said: If you have God and everything else you have no more than if you had God only: and if you have everything else and not God you have nothing.

The rich man did not go to hell because he was rich. (Lazarus the poor man did not go to heaven because he was poor – the poor may lust for wealth too). Abraham was rich, but rich in faith as well as material possessions. The rich, says 1 Tm 6:18, are to be ‘rich in good works, generous, ready to share with others. In this way they will store up for themselves a treasure which will be a solid foundation for the future. And then they will be able to win the life which is true life.’ Like the rich fool in Jesus’ other story, this rich man simply collected material possessions for himself and his own, and did not want to understand the spiritual nature of investing wealth by giving it away. You only keep what you share; you lose what you retain for yourself.

The rich man probably felt contemptuous about Lazarus: his poverty was probably due to his laziness or stupidity or sin. Such no-hopers or non-copers ought to pull their socks up. It’s interesting how those who have, rationalize about those who have not: the real point about the first half of this story is that we can easily miss the real truth about life. But the second half of the story suggests that in the world to come the real truth about life is unavoidable.

The rich man went to hell because he didn’t respect Lazarus as a person. His sin was apathy, indifference, not doing the good he should have done, which, says James, is sin (James 4:17). It is possible to go through life and miss the whole point. Jesus said we are to do to others what we would want done to us: in we were in Lazarus’ position, what would we have wanted the rich man to do? Jesus’ criticism of the rich is that they do not share their surplus possessions with the poor. All Lazarus wanted was the rich man’s garbage: the food he threw out. The poorest quarter of the world would dearly love access to the garbage of the wealthiest quarter (that’s us). McDonald’s throw out enough hamburgers to feed millions.

Hell, says Jean Paul Sartre, is the ‘place of no exit’. Accounts are squared, roles are reversed. Lazarus had no exit from his poverty and misery: he was caught in ‘the poverty trap’. The rich man had a lifestyle of multiple choices: for the poor that must be heaven. The poor don’t have choices. The poor man is with Abraham, enjoying the infinite choices and delights, the joys and luxuries of paradise. The rich man is in the place of ‘no exit’, with no choices – not even the choice of organizing an evangelistic crusade to his five brothers.

The rich man is in hell, and from there he looks at his own funeral. Often in his lifetime he might have imagined what a splendid affair it would be… large numbers, the best preacher in the town… but from the viewpoint of hell, it’s so oppressively different. True, it is a magnificent funeral. But it no longer pleases him. His cronies say ‘He lived life to the full’ (‘but I am in anguish in this flame’); the politician says ‘He served on many charitable committees’ (‘but I am in anguish in this flame’); the pastor intones ‘He donated bells, windows, a seven-branched cnadlestick to the church; peace be to his ashes’ (‘but I am in anguish in this flame’). (after Thielicke, p.46).

Notice two things about the after-life: (1) We take our memories of this life into the next; we realize then with utter clarity what we have done and what we have become. (2) We take our personalities into the next life: notice how the rich man is complaining from hell (the rich in this life, too, complain more than the poor) and there is no sign of repentance. But Lazarus is silent – neither complaining nor exulting: often the poor throughout the noble have a kind of dignified nobility about them the rich know nothing about.

And notice two things about the relationship between the rich man and Lazarus: (1) he knew Lazarus, the man who was close to his gate, and in the afterlife he still knew his name. It wasn’t as if the rich man did not know of the existence of the poor man. So with us: our news bulletins about Ethiopia, or World Vision ‘TV specials’ tell us all we need to know about the poor people at our gate (ie fairly easily accessible to us these days wherever they are on the earth) (2) Even in the next life he still despises Lazarus and regards him as an inferior – he arrogantly wants him to be a servant still, and do his bidding. That’s all he’s good for. (It’s an interesting comment on CS Lewis’ idea that we take our essential personalities into the next life!) So again with us: if there’s a natural or human disaster in some place where the people are not like us (the desertification of the Sahel in Africa, the displacement by flood of a million Bangladeshis, the killing of a million and a half Moslem Afghans or Tibetan Buddhists), then it doesn’t matter too much: that piece of news can go later in the 6 o’clock bulletin, after a local road smash (for which the news producers have more graphic pictures).

For both the rich man and Lazarus, justice was experienced beyond death in the working out of their spiritual choices and relationships formed in this life. The rich man’s pathetic ‘If only I’d known!’ won’t save him now. He’d had plenty of opportunity to ‘know’. His failure to relate to Lazarus as a fellow human person made in the image of God now carries eternal consequences.

But the Good News is that there is a way to heaven from the very gates of hell. Remember the story in the previous chapter of the rich prodigal? He too spent all his money on himself; then he endured hell-in-this-life: like Lazarus, he suffered through hunger and the poverty trap: all he wanted was the food-garbage of the rich that was given to pigs, and says the story, he was not allowed access to that. But before it was too late, he chose in that hell to go back to his father, to repent of the selfish lifestyle he had been living, and even be a servant to others.

SO?

WE HAVE MET THE RICH AND THEY ARE US

Who are the rich, and who are the poor? It’s very difficult to get anyone to admit to being rich: the measure of affluence is somewhere ahead of where we are. But, on world standards, we here are ‘filthy rich’. Rich intellectually, because of the great educational advantages we enjoy (why don’t the unskilled work harder at their education?); many of us are rich emotionally, with loving families (why doesn’t that lonely single person go out and make friends?); materially, most of us are not only able to eat well (and if people saved as hard as we have they would have nothing to complain about).

Of course we are better people than those other rich. Into our minds comes a list of good works: our donations to missions appeals, to church fairs for the society of … Probably this rich man too gave impersonal donations like that. (You can arrange for it to go automatically from your cheque account to the society’s account). But he still didn’t relate to Lazarus: that was his problem. Loving humanity is easy; loving unlike persons is hard. We really are afraid of the smell of poverty.

# An ‘old maid’ with a bitter, tightly closed mouth, is the victim of a hundred little gestures that exclude her, and she grows more and more bitter, ‘and her bitterness will be our accuser on the day of judgment’ (Thielicke)

# There’s a suicide or nervous breakdown in our neighbourhood, and we are shocked. Someone suffered from lovelessness right at our back door. He or she was driven into deeper loneliness because we avoided him/her.

APATHY AND INDIFFERENCE

‘Mind your own business’ ‘I couldn’t care less’ ‘ The problems are too big, what can I do?’ The worst sin we can have against our fellow suffering human beings is not hatred, but indifference. Thirty-eight men and women in New York who watched from their windows while Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death, and do nothing.

David Augsburger says of 20th century Westerners that we have arranged our lives to guarantee security and in the process we’ve brought indifference to perfection: ‘We route our children from comfortable homes through comfortable schools to a comfortable education for a comfortable career with a comfortable salary to buy a comfortable home, raise a comfortable family, retire to a comfortable hobby, and go toward a comfortable coffin in a comfortable cemetery.’

John, who knew our Lord better than anyone, says to us (1 Jn 2:6) ‘ whoever says he or she remains in union with God should live just as Jesus Christ did.’ He cared: he made the hunger of the world his own (Mt 25:35-40); he made the sin of the world his own (2 Co 5:21); he made the death of the world his own (2 Co 5:15). Everyone’s hunger was his hunger; everyone’s sin was his sin; everyone’s death was his death. (Leighton Ford, sermon November 22, 1970). The greatest act of indifference by those who gambled for his clothes as he hung there, naked bleeding dyiong, and sitting down they watched him there (Mt 27:36). They watched – callous, indifferent

Elie Weisel: ‘I have learned the perils of language and of silence… I have seen children being thrown in the flames alive. So I have learned the fragility of the human condition… I have learned the danger of indifference, the crime of indifference. For the opposite of love, I have learned, is not hate but indifference.’

Paul says when people do not have the ‘true knowledge about God’, their minds become corrupted, and this is evidenced, among other things, in showing ‘no kindness or pity for others’ (Ro 1:28,31).

Our love for others should not be just words and talk; it must be true love, which shows itself in action’ (1 Jn 3:18)

PLANNED POVERTY

Ivan Illich (Celebration of Awareness, Doubleday, 1969) has a masterly essay he calls ‘Planned Poverty’. The rich, he says, have organized the world to depend upon an increasing production and consumption of goods and services. Progress equals the expansion of all sorts of industries. ‘The consumer is trained for obsolescence, which means continuing loyalty towards the same producers who will give the same basic packages in different quality or new wrappings.’ We consumers are caught in a bind: our lifestyle does not ‘promote life’ among the poor but traps us into financing the consumption of new models of our staples, and the rest of the earth is there to produce the raw materials to feed our consumption habits. Because we all ‘need’ a car, ‘our cities must endure longer traffic jams and absurdly expensive remedies to relieve them.’ And we have foisted our consumerism onto the Third World: ‘traffic jams develop in Sao Paulo while almost a million northeastern Brazilians flee the drought by walking five hundred miles… Each car Brazil puts on the road denies 50 people good transportation by bus… Every dollar spent in Latin America on doctors and hospitals costs a hundred lives… Had each dollar been spent on providing safe drinking water, a hundred lives could have been saved.’ (pp 162-3). ‘The world is reaching an impasse where two processes converge: ever more people have fewer basic choices… Even where per capita consumption is rising, [more and more] have less food now than before; more suffer from hunger, pain and exposure [than before]’ (p 165) Solutions: more people walking rather than being locomotized by machine; an adult can be taught to read in one-tenth the time and for one-tenth the cost it takes to teach a child, and in the case of the adult there is an immediate return on investment: the adult can teach the child, and can be more aware of how he or shPie can improve the family’s health and well-being.

TERRITORIALITY AND HOSPITALITY

The rich man kept Lazarus at his back door, so he wouldn’t be troubled by the sight of him when he exited in his chariot. Organize our lives to prevent us from meeting poverty. Most middle-class people have never met a starving person, and don’t know a homeless person. The tourist trails avoid the slums, so we don’t truly ‘meet’ with people in their filthy rags. So with us: the pharisaic mind-set is part of all forms of Christianity. Why for example, is 90% of the church’s income spent on 10% of the world’s Christians?

HUNGER

World food justice a very complex issue: complex politically, economically, agriculturally etc. But some simple things can be said. World food situation: # 1985/6 – Earth has produced more food than people on this planet need # In 1986 probably more people dying of starvation than ever before in history # Right now – one tonne of excess food for every starving person – 375 million of each. # These stockpiles of edible food are mostly in so-called Christian countries – Western Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand and a few others # Australia alone, if we had the will, could provide the food to prevent a lot of hunger and starvation.

Why isn’t the food getting to the starving people? Because they don’t have money to buy it. Well then, why don’t the rich countries give some of their food surpluses away? Because they’re greedy. This government pledged to fulfil the United Nations appeal to give away .07% of GNP to the poor in foreign aid. Result? Each successive budget and mini-budget that amount is getting less and less – letter from Bill Hayden the other week – now about .34%.

But here’s the worst aspect of all this: the Christians in those rich nations don’t care either. Potentially the most powerful lobby in those communities: more Christians meet together each week in those rich countries than any other group. Australia – lobbies – fringe benefits tax, Bill of Rights, Australia card – all issues that affect my freedom, my income etc. (2000 letters on the Bill of Rights issue from clergy alone: what happened? shelved). Any lobbies for the hungry? Not really, not from grassroots Christians, church-members. Only one in three hundred Baptists ever done anything to contact their Federal member about this injustice.

Teacher – exams – give them the questions. Bad news and good news: each face the final exam (bad news). Examiner – judge – has given us the questions (good news). Mt 25 – when I was hungry, what did you do about it? Told a story to press this point – Luke 16. Rich man, poor man, rich man went to hell: may not have been an evil person, but didn’t care.

Back to Moses and the prophets: Abraham said if only people would read, no listen to the The Bible it has everything we need to understand the relationships between us rich, and the poor. Ah no, father Abraham – first realistic thing he’s said in the whole conversaiton. It’s quite possible to read the Bible without understanding the Bible (the Pharisees were deeply into Bible study, ‘searching the Scriptures’, Jn 5:39,40). All sorts of warped social institutions (like apartheid) have been sanctioned by a misreading of the Bible. And the modern pharisee is marvelous at splitting doctrinal hairs, but really doesn’t care very much about the poor either.

It’s possible to study the Bible and not perceive what it’s really saying. The punchline is simply If people won’t listen to Scripture nothing else will convince them. In the Word of God in Scripture we have all the truth we need. Indeed if, as the rich man claimed a resurrection would be the ultimate proof – well, now, we’vbe got even that! (Friend of mind who teaches at a British university once said he doesn’t need any faith to believe in the Resurection of Jesus: the evidences are overwhelming.

JUSTICE

Justice is sorting out what belongs to whom, and returning it to them (Brueggemann).

But let us come closer to home. Justice, mercy, humble relationship with God. (Micah 6:8, Mt 23:23). Try finding hymns about justice; choruses – God loves me and I love him, ain’t that nice. (Only Micah 6:8 in the AV which does not carry the full weight of the great Hebrew word there). Try finding a reference to justice (or love, for that matter) in any of the orthodox creeds or evangelical statements of faith. Ours is essentially a selfish religion. We get into it, according to the surveys, through the primary motivation of fear; fire escape from hell; and our church becomes a comfortable club for us and people like us…

RESOURCES: Walter Brueggemann, Sharon Parks, Thomas H. Groome, To Act Justly, Love Tenderly, Walk Humbly, Paulist, 1986. Helmut Thielicke, The Waiting Father, III: The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, James Clarke & Co, 1966.

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