Twenty-sixth Sunday in Course 2022
It’s difficult for most folks in North America, especially those who aren’t fluent in several languages, to understand the full intent of the first word of our first reading today. The English has “Woe to those who are at ease in Zion, and to those who feel secure on the mountain of Samaria” that is, the leisure class in the northern and southern kingdoms of Israel. That first word, “woe,” also appears in Jesus’s rebuke of the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew’s Gospel. We instinctively know that it’s not good news for anybody involved. It’s a prediction of trouble in the future, maybe the near future. But have any of you ever heard, maybe on Seinfeld, the expression “oy vae”?
Right, it’s bubbled into American usage from Yiddish culture. It’s a lament, like “all I see ahead is trouble and pain.” The people Amos is deriding here are those who are supposed to be living by the Law of Moses, but look how they are living. This is in the time of the Israelite king Jeroboam II, in his early reign, when there was an economic boom in Israel, and a population boom. So the rich are getting very rich, and buying luxury goods from all around the Middle East. They dine on veal and lamb while minstrels sing them popular ballads, not the psalms of David. They drink the finest wine and use extra-virgin olive oil, never the cheap stuff. And how do they afford it? By creating inflation that hurts the poor more than anyone else, by listening to preachers who tell them to do the minimum, and never find fault with their donors. Israel was crumbling because it was rotten in its core, and its hubris was crying out to God for vengeance. “Jeroboam's reign was the period of the prophets Hosea, Joel, Amos and Jonah, all of whom condemned the materialism and selfishness of the Israelite elite of their day.” A huge earthquake struck toward the end of Jeroboam’s reign, and that may have contributed to Israel’s decline. The kingdom was destroyed by Assyria about thirty years later.
St. Paul may have been contemplating the wages of sin paid by his Israelite ancestors when he wrote to Timothy, because right before the passage we heard minutes ago he wrote: “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” That sounds like the fate of Jeroboam’s rich friends. Timothy is advised to flee from that kind of greed and materialism. His time and effort would better be invested in “righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness.” Isn’t that the kind of person we all want to be? But Paul doesn’t hold back. If we want to be right and godly and faithful men and women of love, endurance and gentleness, we are going to have to work and even battle against our tendencies to greed and materialism. In that, we are strengthened, graced, by the Holy Spirit given to us when we made our “good confession” at baptism and confirmation, and when we take communion together. God put the plan together and built His Church on the teaching of the apostles and prophets, with Jesus, His Son, as the cornerstone of it all.
Perhaps now the story of Lazarus and Dives–the traditional name of the rich man in Christ’s parable–is easier to understand. The rich man clothed himself in imperial purple, a symbol of his materialism and pride. He had a banquet every day, but it appears that he didn’t invite anybody but himself. Certainly he ignored the needy and sick man sitting at the gate of his house. I’m told that the dogs licking his sores, the only assistance Lazarus ever got, may have helped keep him alive for a time, since canine saliva has some antibiotic properties. He desired the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table, but he probably never got any. The next thing he knew, he was dead and carried to be tended by father Abraham, maybe hearing “rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham” sung by the celestial choir.
Well, the rich man died, too, as all humans must, and one of the translations I grew up with said “he was buried in hell.” But as a further torment, he was able to see Lazarus and Abraham in eternal joy. Then Abraham pronounces the sentence–a kind of divine reversal of fortune. The rich man had enjoyed his heaven on earth while Lazarus suffered in a terrestrial purgatory. On death the each received their reversed fortune. Lazarus is in heaven; Dives is in hell. And the chasm between those two destinations is unbridgeable for mere humans. So the rich man, in the only other-centered part of the story, begs Abraham to send Lazarus to his rich daddy’s house to warn his family, five brothers, about their older brother’s selfish lifestyle and the result thereof. Abraham brushes him off, reminding him that all of the boys had access to Moses and the prophets–including, you know, this Amos fellow–so if that wasn’t enough, then even a man risen from death wouldn’t turn them to lives of sharing and righteousness.
I agree with commentators who point out the kind of black humor in this parable of Jesus. But historically, we know that even the Resurrection of Jesus and the miracles of the apostles were not enough to bring more than a minority of the Israelites to faith in Christ. And, more broadly, is there anyone here who is not tempted from time to time to turn our backs on the poor so that we can afford a first-rank car, palatial estate, luxurious vacation, or other material goods? The challenge of our Christian calling is to recognize the goodness of creation without building wealth, power and honor into a false god that lures us into worship. No, we must worship God alone through Jesus Christ, in the power and words of the Holy Spirit. To God be all honor and praise forever and ever. Amen.
