We are still in the travel narrative from Saint Luke’s Gospel. During these weeks, we are journeying with Jesus, the Twelve, and his closest disciples from Galilee to Jerusalem. Luke's travel narrative really constitutes the heart of his Gospel. Along the way, Jesus teaches about the kingdom, about what it means to follow him, even as he heals and casts out demons. Traveling by foot, as on a pilgrimage, Jesus and his band of followers are not in a hurry.
Our Gospel today follows immediately on the heels of last week’s. The subject of the Lord’s teaching is the same: the danger wealth presents to our eternal prospects. According to Jesus, to be wealthy and own a lot of things is not freedom. He clearly teaches- if you want to be truly free, like he is free, give everything away and daily trust God to meet your needs.
But even in Luke’s Gospel, where his teaching on wealth is laid out clearly, Jesus does not require everyone who follows him to give away everything and join his itinerant band. What is important is to discern God’s will for your life and then spend your life doing God’s will. But no matter what manner of life you live, if you are indeed a Christian, your life cannot be centered on mammon, that is, worldly wealth that consists of money and possessions.
You must be willing to share what you have with those in need. This is the unambiguous point of our Gospel today. Jesus makes this point by telling the very dramatic parable of Lazarus and the rich man. As with the Parable of the Good Samaritan and that of the Dishonest Steward, today’s parable is part of the material only found in Luke.
What these parables have in common is that they clearly teach what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Being a Christian, according to the teaching of Jesus found in Luke, is to selflessly serve others for the sake of God’s kingdom. Jesus’ teaching on wealth in this Gospel makes it clear that wealth cannot save you and can surely damn you. This means that wealth and prosperity are not signs of God’s favor. It’s hard to think of anything more antithetical to Christianity than any version of the so-called “Prosperity Gospel,” even in its less virulent manifestations.
Lest the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man be misconstrued, it is important to point out, as the late Catholic New Testament scholar, Fr. Raymond Brown did, that their “different fates after death are not based on the rich man having lived a life of vice, and Lazarus having been very virtuous.”1 Where they wind up is the direct result of the rich man living “a comfortable and well-fed life, while Lazarus was hungry and miserable.”2 Moreover, it was within the rich man’s ability to at least give Lazarus what he needed, as the old saying puts it, “to keep body and soul together.”
In a move echoed by Charles Dickens more than a thousand years later, in his novella A Christmas Carol, realizing the he blew it, the rich man asks Father Abraham, on whose breast Lazarus now comfortably reclines, if Lazarus can journey back to alert his five brothers to the danger they’re in by their manner of life. Unlike the grace given to Ebeneezer Scrooge, the rich man’s request, according to Father Abraham, cannot be granted. When reading this parable, I am always struck that, even in death, the rich man wants Lazarus to cool his tongue, Lazarus to go back and warn his brothers. I think this is an acute case of not getting it.
In denying the rich man’s request, Abraham points out that, like him, his brothers are able to hear and heed Moses and the prophets. What is meant by this can be seen very clearly in our first reading, which again, is from the Book of the Prophet Amos. Failing to heed the prophet’s call to return to fidelity with God’s covenant and choosing instead to luxuriate and satiate themselves with all the “good” things in life while ignoring the plight of the widow, the orphan, the foreigner, and the poor, they will be exiled.
The Rich Man and Lazarus. Illustration for The Life and Lessons of Our Lord by John Cumming (John F Shaw, c 1890)
Exile is not God punishing them directly. Rather, it is the natural consequence of their embrace of injustice, their failure to be compassionate, merciful, their lack of hesed. Hesed, which is often best translated as “lovingkindness,” is God’s defining characteristic. In other words, they refuse to live in thanksgiving for God’s goodness to them. Thanksgiving is expressed by loving your neighbor as you love yourself, just as God set forth in the Law.3
Jesus over and over again in his various disputations with the Pharisees, which is the context for this parable, insists that Law is but the means to accomplishing the ends of loving God with your whole being and loving your neighbor as another self. If you fail to recognize not only the necessity but the urgency of doing this, like the rich man, you are left without excuse. You simply make a different choice. As we all know, choices have consequences.
It’s clear that, despite presumably knowing Moses and prophets, the rich man felt he had no obligation towards this beggar, covered with sores, who sat at his gate day after day. In his parable, Jesus makes clear the consequence of this choice.
Again, this can all sound quite dire, even a little scary. What gets lost is that helping those in need is not just the way to eternal happiness but, because it makes God's kingdom present, it is a key to happiness now. Each of our lives place daily demands on us. Other people rely on us. Meeting these demands and obligations isn’t just okay, it’s necessary. But each of us and all of us together as a parish community need to see those who are in need, recognize their need, and look for ways to help them. Our recent participation in the food drive for the Bountiful Food Pantry is a good example. So is the parish council’s endeavor to distribute parish funds set aside to help those in need. Our Ladies of Charity, with eager help of many in the parish, as well as our Knights of Columbus Council, do much for those in need. Of course, there are many individual acts of charity done routinely by a lot of you.
The Lord isn’t asking you to save the world. The rich man was not held accountable for all the world’s needs, or even for all Lazarus’ needs. But, from his abundance, he certainly could’ve provided food to someone who was clearly starving and maybe paid for some medical assistance to deal with his sore-marked body.
A story is told about C.S. Lewis: one day, while walking down the street with a friend, a man approached and asked him for money. Digging into his pocket, Lewis extracted and then gave the man some money. His friend said something like, “How do you know he won’t spend that money on drink?” Lewis wittily replied, “It’s alright. That’s what I was going to spend it on.”
While funny, this tale about C.S. Lewis is a great lesson in not holding on to mammon too tightly. In contrast to the disturbing stinginess of the rich man in Jesus’ parable, Lewis gives us an example what is meant in our second reading when, as Christians, we are exhorted to “pursue righteousness, devotion, faith, love, patience, and gentleness,” what it looks like to “Compete well for the faith.”4
Abraham goes on to say, in response to the rich man’s request for Lazarus to pay a posthumous visit to his brothers in order to warn them, nodding to Jesus’ future resurrection, “If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.”5
1 Raymond Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament (New York: Doubleday), 250.↩
2 Ibid.↩
3 Leviticus 19:18.↩
4 1 Timothy 6:11-12.↩
5 Luke 16:31.↩
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