Placing the Story: condemnation of: wealth equals righteous and poverty equals sin.
As we look at this passage by itself it becomes very difficult to figure out what exactly Jesus is talking about. Is Jesus giving us a picture of Heaven and Hell? Is He warning us about being rich? Are we being called to be homeless in order to go to Heaven? As we look at the passage and what surrounds it in the scripture we begin to find that these things are only decoys to the real truth that is found in this often times disturbing parable.
If we look 4 verses before our passage begins we find the key to unlock this parable.
14”The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this, and they ridiculed him. 15 So he said to them.” Luke sets up this following speech in reference to the Pharisees and so we must look at this parable as being pointed to those who love money, and their attitudes.
In the time of Jesus the prevailing thought for the Jewish people was that if you were rich and had all sorts of material possession and wealth then you were indeed blessed by God, and you therefore must not have any sin in your life. They believed the opposite to be true as well. In other words if you were poor, starving and diseased then God must be punishing you because of your sin. What developed then was three classes of people, the very rich, the middle class, and the very poor. These became caste systems and the very rich believed that the very poor deserved to be where they were because they had obviously sinned against God. And so to help them would almost be seen as interfering with God’s judgment.
As we begin to look at this passage, I want you to notice the differences between the rich man and Lazarus, as well as their attitudes.
Retelling of the Story in modern language
This is a very graphic depiction of the man’s situation, but if we read a couple stories back we will find that Jesus had just told the story of the Prodigal Son, which had a young man sitting in pig filth and to a Jewish mind this story would have been much more appealing. But, here we have two men one who is very well off and who is clothed in royal clothing and who eats every day, the other is Lazarus (not the same one) and he sits at the rich man’s gate. Lazarus is starving and longs to eat the table scraps from the rich man’s house, unlike the rich man Lazarus is clothed in rags and sores. And, it would seem that the only ministry the man receives is when stray dogs come and lick his sores.
He has been tossed aside, and ignored by the rich man
Not surprisingly Lazarus dies, and without a funeral the angels carry him to be with Abraham. The rich man also dies most likely very unexpectedly, and is buried by those he loves most likely with a funeral with all the bells and whistles.
But here is where the parable takes a twist. Lazarus went to Heaven and the rich man went to Hell. It is from Hell that the rich man looks up and far away sees Lazarus beside Abraham. This is completely contrary to what the Jews would have believed was to happen.
24 He called out, ’Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.’
Look at the rich man’s attitude, he is in torment and agony in the flames of Hell and when he calls out, he wants Lazarus to come and help him, but he doesn’t even address Lazarus even though he knows his name. The rich man is literally trying to pull rank on Lazarus, even in Hell he cannot see that Lazarus is a person and an equal. Even in Hell he wants Lazarus to serve him when he refused to serve Lazarus.
25 But Abraham said, ’Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony.
This is not to say that people who are blessed here will go to Hell in the afterlife, it is the rich man’s sin that sent him there, in that while he enjoyed God’s blessings he did not share them with the needy man who literally sat at his front gate.
27 He said, ’Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house-- 28 for I have five brothers-- that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.’
Even still the rich man thinks he can manipulate the situation so that Lazarus will serve his needs and his wants, when in life he did not serve Lazarus. He is even so selfish as to ask that Lazarus be sent not to his neighbors or his town, but only to his father’s house so that his brothers will be saved.
29 Abraham replied, ’They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’
What is interesting about this sentence is that in this Jesus refers to the many parts of scripture that talk about how the Jews were to minister to the poor that the Pharisees and others were obviously ignoring.
Jews were not to mistreat aliens, widows, or orphans
They were to leave gleanings to the poor
They were to bring tithes to support Levites, aliens, the fatherless, and widows
They were to cancel all debts every seventh year and to be openhanded to the needy
They were to include aliens, the fatherless and widows in their celebrations
They were to observe justice
They were not to exploit workers
They were to plead the case of the fatherless and to defend the rights of the poor
They were warned about taking advantage of the vulnerable
The rich man had heard all of these things before in his life and he did not follow them and so he begins to argue with Abraham that if someone from the dead goes to his brothers they will surely change their actions and follow what God has told them.
31 He said to him, ’If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.
The reference to Jesus’ own resurrection here should not be missed, because it is here that the most stinging condemnation of the Pharisees is leveled. It is that even after Moses and the prophets they have not listen, they did not listen while Jesus was alive, and after he dies and is risen again they still will not believe and still will not change their ways.
The story does not place us in a good light, in fact we far to often must place ourselves in the role of the Rich Man instead of being in the place of Lazarus. All too often we find that we are very much like the Pharisees; we have Moses and the prophets, we have Jesus’ teachings, and we know that he is risen from the dead and yet even still we ignore our poor and outcast neighbors.
Even still we choose to walk past them and rationalize in our minds that they deserve what they get, because they didn’t work hard enough or they didn’t do the right things or they made too many mistakes.
Many times the Jews would say as a matter of pride that they were Abraham’s children, and therefore they were supposedly entitled to the blessings that came to them. Jesus took this notion and tore it to shreds. He told them that God can bring forth children from the rocks. In other words God didn’t need them, instead it was they who needed God. Today, we as Christians cannot sit back and claim our title and say to ourselves, “I am a Christian I deserve what God gives me, and those who aren’t deserve what they get, and those who are poor deserve what they get”
How arrogant we are to think that we are any better than any of our neighbors, God can bring forth believers from the rocks. We are called to be God’s light in a dark world, we cannot rest on the fact that we are Christians, in fact that in itself is a contradiction. There are poor and needy among us, not just in this house but outside it, lets begin to look into the eyes of the people we see, and lets begin to minister to their needs.
We cannot afford to let the stray dogs do the ministry that we are called to do.
Let me close with a passage that bookends the parable of The Rich Man and Lazarus.
Matthew 25:41-45
41 Then he will say to those at his left hand, ’You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; 42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ 44 Then they also will answer, ’Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ 45 Then he will answer them, ’Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’
As we leave here and go through our week, lets begin to understand how our lives must change if we are to live as Jesus is calling us to live.
