"don't Miss It"

This sermon is based in large part on a sermon by Rev. Tom Long given in 2016 called "The Open Window"

“Don’t Miss It”

Luke 16:19-31

What are we to make of this parable?

What do you think Jesus wants us to get out of it?

The word “parable” is kind of hard to define.

It means a lot of different things.

But one of the best definitions of “parable” is “riddle.”

A parable is a riddle.

Think about it.

There is some puzzle to be solved and the thing about Jesus’ parables is that just when you think that you’ve got it a trap door opens…

…and you fall down to a deeper level of mystery.

Jesus spoke in parables a lot.

The great theologian C.H. Dodd once said, “A parable is a metaphor or simile drawn from everyday life…

…the meaning of which is sufficiently in doubt to tease the imagination into thought.”

Did you get that?

“The meaning of which is sufficiently in doubt to tease the imagination into thought.”

Well, even in the strange world of parables the one we are looking at today is particularly odd, wouldn’t you say?

What I mean is, most of Jesus’ parables are about things that we know about…

…a farmer sows seed in a field…

…a woman mixes yeast with flour to make bread…

…a young man says to his father, “I’m sick of this farm.

Give me my share of the inheritance. I want to go to the city and make a life for myself.”

We can understand that, right?

That’s life.

That’s human life.

In fact, one of the definitions of a parable is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning.

Well, not the parable we are looking at this morning.

In fact, most of what takes place in this parable takes place not in THIS WORLD but the next world.

You might even say the instead of being an earthly story with a heavenly meaning…

…it’s a heavenly story…

…no…

…it’s actually a hellish story.

The action in this parable comes from the bowels of Hades!

(pause)

What happens in this story is that there is a rich man…

We don’t know his name but we know how he lives.

He wears designer clothes and he eats whatever he wants to eat every day.

And right at his door—right at his gate is a desperately homeless man.

He is so desperately hungry that he would love to have pawed through the Hefty Garbage Bags that go out the back door of the rich guy’s mansion every day.

But, no.

There is no indication that the rich man ever noticed this guy, ever saw him, ever paid any attention to him.

They live only a few feet apart, but they are in different worlds.

But then, as is so often the way it goes in Jesus’ parables—there is a sudden reversal.

Lazarus dies and is taken by the angels into—what a number of translations call—"the bosom of Father Abraham.”

That’s an old Jewish phrase meaning “right into the family of God—right next to the heart of God.”

The rich man also dies but he heads in the other direction.

He goes to hades, the Jewish land of the dead…

…and in torment there he looks up and what does he see?

He sees that beggar Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom!

And so he cries out: “Father Abraham, please.

I’m in agony here.

Send Lazarus with some water to cool my tongue.”

And Abraham says, “Oh, my child. Oh, my child.

No.

You’ve had your good things in life and what is more a great chasm has been fixed between us.

You can’t come to us now and those of us who would love to come to you…we can’t.

It’s too late. It’s too late. It’s too late.”

(pause)

What do you think Jesus wants us to get out of this riddle…this parable?

Well, a good many New Testament Scholars agree that this story fits beautifully into a major them in Luke’s Gospel.

And that theme is the age-old battle between “the haves” and “the have nots”—the rich and the poor.

God stands on the side of the poor.

They have no none else to stand with them and God stands with them.

And this is true.

If we read through the Gospel of Luke with open eyes there is more stuff in this Gospel on economic justice than almost anywhere else in the Bible.

This theme is so strong that you get the feeling that every time Luke uses the word “rich” he snorts “psssh”!

Right at the beginning of the Gospel when the Angel Gabriel come to the little peasant girl Mary to tell her she’s going to be the mother of the Christ Child she breaks into song.