The Rich Man and Lazarus

In the 16th Chapter of St. Luke's Gospel Jesus tells the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. It's a powerful Gospel passage and one of the important things to understand about it is that Jesus has already warned us about the outcome of the rich man in the parable.

Jesus tells the story of a very rich man. He has a wall around his house and a gate that anyone who wishes to enter must pass through. The gate serves to protect him from intruders, but it also serves another purpose. it separates him from the beggars and the less fortunate. he doesn't have to see them and can pretend they don't exist.

Then there's Lazarus. We don't know much about him except that he's a poor beggar with sores who sat outside the gate to the rich man's house. Lazarus was hungry and only desired scraps from the rich man's table. I'm sure the rich man had seen Lazarus several times sitting outside his gate, but completely ignored him. Well, the guy's rich; he's got beautiful clothes and plenty of food. He's obviously an important man. why should he waste time with a beggar with open sores? I'm sure he thought that beggar should get a job and make something of himself, or at least get away from the gate so decent people don't need to see him. So the rich man just ignores Lazarus. He doesn't give him the table scraps. He feeds those to his dogs. Even the dogs have more compassion that the rich man. At least they try to make Lazarus feel better by licking his sores.

Well, both men die and what happens? Lazarus goes to heaven and the rich man goes to hell. Now to the rich man that was a very unexpected turn of events. Naturally, he had been a powerful man. He probably attended the temple regularly. I'm sure it was a shock to him that he should end up in hell and the filthy beggar at his door should end up in heaven.

The rich man sees Lazarus in heaven in the embrace of Abraham. What does he do? He asks Abraham to allow Lazarus to dip his fingers in water and bring the rich man relief from the flames. Now the tables are turned. It's the rich man who is begging for help from the poor man. Interesting, isn't it?

Abraham tells the rich man he has had his warnings from Moses and the prophets. he says not even sending someone who could rise form the dead would change the hearts of these callous people. what's more, Abraham tells the rich man there is a chasm between him and heaven that is so broad no one can cross it.

There are several truths here and they all point to one bottom line. Let's look at them now.

first, let's look at the rules. Jesus Himself set them and they're very simple. Anglicans hear them every time we attend the Eucharist in the Summary of the Law. Jesus said:

"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul and all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment and the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

The Summary of the Law contains the rules, all two of them, that encompass everything Jesus wants us to do. The first is to love God unconditionally and the second is to love other people unconditionally. Period...dot! There is no equivocation here.

To love others as you would love yourself means that you should always treat every human being as you wish to be treated. However, it goes deeper than that. It's a requirement that we are, in fact, our brother's keeper. We have a responsibility to care for others. To care for them even if they don't look like us, or smell bad and have sores.....especially if they smell bad and have sores. The focus is on others and not ourselves.

In St. Matthew's Gospel, chapter 19 verse 24 and St. Mark's Gospel, chapter 10 verse 25, Jesus says that it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. He's not condemning the rich. it's O.K. to have a lot of money or power. The question is, "What do you do with that money or power?" There are always two choices: 1) Squander it on oneself, or 2) Reach out to help others.

In the camel metaphor, Jesus is saying that the rich often have themselves as the total focus of their lives and you can't get to heaven if the only one you care about is yourself. Although Jesus uses a rich man for this example, He could be talking about anything that causes us to focus on ourselves over loving and caring for others.

Looking out for number one is not the way of the Cross. It's not the path to heaven.

If this metaphor about the camel isn't enough, in Matthew, 25:34 - 46 Jesus warns us of what happens to us when we don't follow the second great commandment:

"Then the King will say to those at his right hand, 'Come o blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.' Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?' And the King will answer them, "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.' Then he will say to those at his left hand, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' Then they also will answer, 'Lord when did we wee thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to thee?' Then he will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.' and they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

Here the people all respond to the king and ask when they snubbed him and failed to care for him. The point is that they would have absolutely taken care ofthe king if they had known it was, in fact, the king himself. You can almost hear them: "Wow, sire...I mean if I'd know it was you....well, I'd surely have taken care of YOU."

Jesus says we are Him and he is us. If you fail to care for anyone, you fail Him. Even more specifically, He says when you fail to care for the least important person, then you fail the most important person....Jesus Christ.

In our man-made values we might look at a less fortunate persona and say, "Well he should just go get a job." Or maybe we'd say, "He's responsible for his own plight, why should I help him .. hey, I've worked hard to get what I've got. Why should I share it with someone who has no job?" You've heard all of those types of arguments. Well, they're obviously a result of man-made values, not God-made values. God's values don't discriminate between rich and poor. God's values don't allow us to put ourselves first over the pain of others. God's values don't have qualification statements like man-made values do. god's values only say we must care for all people.

You see the chasm that Abraham said separated the rich man in hell and Lazarus in heaven is an understanding of God's grace and love for others. It's love freely given. What did we do to merit the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross? Nothing. There is nothing we could do. We don't merit salvation in and of our own doing. It's only by God's grace that Christ's sacrifice is possible. It's grace that is totally lacking in the rich man. Without the acceptance and recognition of our failings and our unworthiness we can't understand how God's grace can save us. Just like the rich man can't understand how he could be an instrument of that grace by caring for others.

If you're living with grace you can't step into hell and if you're in hell and oblivious to grace you can't step into heaven. Notice, nowhere in Jesus' parable did the rich man repent. He just asked for someone to tell his relatives to improve their behaviour. He still didn't understand. That's when Abraham told him that eve someone coming back form the dead wouldn't convince people with such hard hearts. The problem with Abraham's statement is that it's as true today as when Christ told the parable. Even God's extension of love and grace through the death and resurrection of Christ won't impress people who can't soften their hearts and understand the second great commandment.

If we can't understand grace, how it applies to us, and how we are to be instruments of grace, then we are like the rich man. We just don't get it and we're going to end up just where he did. Given the passage from Matthew I quoted above, what happened to the rich man should come as no surprise. Jesus has already given us fair warning. We and we alone are free to choose how we are going to respond to those in our global home who are helpless, or in need.

We can turn a deaf ear and rationalize why we shouldn't care for others, or we can respond to the command of Christ and reach out our hand and feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give water to those who are thirsty, and be the physical hand of God through which love can be transmitted.

We've heard what our Lord has to say and there's no equivocation to His statements. It's not always what we, in our comfortable lives and surroundings want to hear. However, Jesus doesn't really care what we want to hear. He cares about our salvation and he cares about all of the children of His Father's creation. he's telling us how much to love and He has given us the warning. Now it's up to us, through our actions, to show we have the capacity to love others as He loves us. For..."When you have done it unto one of the least of these, You've done it unto me."