Sermon: The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus

Date Preached: Sunday September 30th 2007

Bible Reference: Luke Chapter 16, Verses 19-31

We’ve all seen him. He’s usually lying on a pile of newspapers in a shop doorway, covered with a moth-eaten blanket. Perhaps he has a dog with him for safety – and company. People are used to walking past him, or even stepping over him. He occasionally rattles a few coins in a tin or cup, asking for a more. I can’t remember him being there when I was a kid, but he’s been in every country I’ve ever lived or visited; he’s in all our cities and wherever we go.

Picture him for a moment – and as you do you can probably hear voices.

‘It’s his own fault’;

‘There are agencies to help him if he really wanted’;

‘He should go and get a job like the rest of us’;

‘If I give him money he’ll only blow it on drink’;

‘steer clear, he might be violent and abusive’

Sometimes the police move him on, but he’ll be back. And even it’s not him, there’ll be others; there are whole societies like that. They camp in cardboard boxes or corrugated tin shacks, or survive on rubbish tips on the edges of large rich cities. If they’re very lucky, one member of the family might work as a cleaner. They’ve been born into debt, and they’re likely to stay in it – maybe through the fault of someone rich who signed away their rights and their lives a generation or two ago, in return for weapons, a new presidential palace, a fat Swiss bank account. Or maybe they’re just part of what the experts term a cycle of poverty and deprivation – so there’s no hope for him.

So we all know Lazarus. He’s our neighbour. Some of us walk past him and don’t really notice. We’re might not be so rich – finely clothed and fed, but compared to Lazarus we’re well off. He’d be so glad to trade places with us, but we would be absolutely horrified to share his pathetic existence, even for a day.

Jesus’ story works at several different levels. It’s about Lazarus and an unnamed rich man, often called Dives, because that’s Latin for rich, but he’s not named in this story. It’s like a well-known folk-tale in the ancient world – Jesus wouldn’t have been the first to tell how wealth and poverty in this life might be reversed in any future existence. But Jesus changes the pattern around. In the usual story, when someone asks permission to send a message back to the people who are still alive on earth, the permission in granted. But here it isn’t – and the sharp ending points beyond itself to all sorts of different questions for its hearers – and ourselves today as Luke’s readers.

Again it’s a parable, not a moral tale about riches and poverty – although in this chapter it should be heard that way. But if that’s all it is, then logically some might argue that we should let the poor stay poor, since they’ll have a good time in some future life. No there’s something more going on here: picture language that tells us a little more about Jesus’ teaching about God’s Kingdom.

The point is that the Pharisees – themselves lovers of money – were behaving towards the people Jesus was welcoming exactly like the rich man was towards Lazarus. Last week’s sacked manager was commended for taking action in the nick of time to prevent total disaster; so the Pharisees – and anyone else tempted to take a similar line, are urged to change their ways while there’s still time.

Actually there’s nothing new in the message – all Jesus is asking them to do is what Moses and all the prophets had been rattling on about for centuries. It was just that with all their religiosity they’d missed it – and couldn’t see now that it was Jesus bringing the law to completion.

And if they didn’t react while there was a chance, then not even someone rising from the dead would be able to bring them to their senses. The last sentence of the parable – like a huge great crashing chord on the Albert Hall organ, contains all sorts of different notes.

It speaks of the whole hope of Israel for restoration and renewal;

And like the story of the prodigal, the recklessly wasteful son, it speaks of the poor and outcast being welcomed by Jesus

And it speaks to people right from Luke’s time through to us today, about Jesus himself. One day soon. The reader knows, the law and the prophets – everything that God had always intended – will all come true in a new and living way as Jesus himself rises again – comes back from the dead – opening the door of God’s unmerited favour, his grace to a new age in which all wrongs will be put right. 

So how are we to connect this with what we’ve been learning; how do we understand and apply this to our lives as a Christian community here? 

Putting all the readings together, we find the underlying challenge to build our lives on a totally different set of considerations than we’re used to.

To be socially responsible in the way we use our time and our money; to be loyal and faithful to God rather than other things like money and making it; faithful and humble in our hearts, not just in outward appearances; committed to the gentle and strong rule of the kingdom which has begun in Jesus.

With the coming of Jesus, something fresh, radical and subversive is happening. Something that makes a nonsense of conventional wisdom about making it in life; like getting them before they get you; clawing your way to the top, regardless of who it hurts – all that stuff that screams at us from our soap operas and our self-improvement guides.

As the new Israel or rather the true Israel, faithful apprentices of Jesus Christ are supposed to be the salt of the earth; supposed to be the people through whom God’s world is kept wholesome and tasty – but if we’ve lost our calling to be salt and light – is we lose the flavour, what’s going to be left? This gospel is an all or nothing challenge that Jesus is bringing to his contemporaries – and to you and me today – and it’s urgent – things, not least our lives without his purpose and direction, are in crisis. Now that all seems a bit heavy – scriptural and unavoidable – but seriously challenging, so I’m going to conclude on a more playful note.

Yesterday I was looking at a collection of stories by an American pastor, author and Professor of Sociology called to Tony Campolo. His contention is that true Christianity  exists in all denominations and that we need to see beyond the superficial differences of culture and tradition to the oneness we have in Christ. And it’s within that context that he pokes fun at Christian denominations with reference to some light bulb jokes:

Question: How many Episcopalians – that’s Anglicans – does it take to change a light bulb?

Answer: CHANGE? Did you say CHANGE? Who said anything about change?

(Okay) How many Presbyterians does it take to change a light bulb?

Answer: Four. One to change the light bulb and the other three to talk about how much better the old light bulb was.

(And just one more). How many Methodists does it take to change a light bulb?

We really don’t know. But we want to affirm your decision to change the light bulb and we want to celebrate your new light.

Let’s remember that Jesus is trying to say that when faced with a crisis – like the established church is today – the answer is actually: to throw caution to the winds to forget the extra bits and pieces of the law which the Pharisees tended to heap up on people – to chill (as they’d say these days) and to make friends when and wherever we can.

Thank the Lord he hasn’t finished with us yet. But we are not just ‘work in progress’ – we’re “under new management”.