LESSONS FOR THE RICH MAN’S SIBLINGS
Amos 6:1; 4-7; Luke 16:19-31
Season of Creation 4 — Sunday, September 25, 2022
The Rev. Dr. Ritva H. Williams
This morning we are treated to two portraits of a life of faith gone horribly wrong. The first is from the prophet Amos, who speaks to people at ease in Zion and who feel secure on Mount Samaria. These are the rulers of the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel respectively. They claim to belong to the Lord, trust God to protect and care for them, yet they behave in ungodly ways.
These rulers lie on beds of ivory, eat expensive cuts of lamb and veal, spend their time composing and singing idle songs as they drink bowls of wine and anoint themselves with the finest oils. Their self-indulgent lifestyles are a stark contrast to the lives of their people, sleep on floor mats, rarely eat meat, labor from sunup to sundown, and don’t even have safe water for drinking and washing. These wealth rulers just don’t care about the desperate conditions in which the people live and work. As Amos says, they do not grieve over the ruin of Joseph.
Amos insists that God invests leaders with power and authority for the sake of God’s mission in the world — specifically to organize, manage and sustain communities where all people thrive and flourish in peace and security. These rulers abandoned their mission to pursue their own selfish interests. To them, Amos speaks a word of judgment: they will be the first to go into exile stripped of their positions of power, privilege, and wealth unless they change their ways.
In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus draws a portrait of a rich man dressed in fine purple linen, dining on the finest foods every day. Just outside his gate, lay Lazarus, a beggar man covered with sores who would have been happy to receive the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table. But Lazarus was invisible to the rich man, and apparently to everyone else but the dogs who roamed the streets. When Lazarus died angels carried him to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man died, was buried, and descended to Hades. In his torment he saw Lazarus resting in the bosom of Abraham.
Last week I mentioned that early church leaders were convinced the rich and powerful were doomed to spend eternity in hell unless they followed the example of the shrewd steward in providing financial relief to their master’s debtors. Jesus’ story of the rich man and Lazarus is one of the sources for that belief.
If we try to interpret this parable as teaching about the afterlife, we quickly see that Jesus’ ideas about who goes to heaven or hell don’t mesh very well with conventional thinking. Many people, both ancient and modern, would admire the rich man: his wealth is evidence of his hard work, smarts, and success. God must be smiling on him. These same folk would dismiss Lazarus as a lazy, good-for-nothing, sick and sorry bum looking for a handout. Obviously, God does not smile on him. But that is not how Jesus judges them. As he explains: Lazarus suffered on earth, died, and went to heaven. The rich man enjoyed his luxurious life on earth, died, and went to hell. Jesus says nothing about their virtues, beliefs, or spirituality. That should make us pause and wonder what Jesus is trying to teach us.
It might help to think of this parable, which provides a glimpse of the afterlife, as a wake up call to open our eyes to something we urgently need to see before it’s too late. Think of Ebenezer Scrooge’s nighttime encounters with the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future. (Barbara Rossing, workingpreacher.org 2016).
In Jesus’ parable it is too late for the rich man. Even in Hades, the rich man can’t or won’t see Lazarus as a human being, as a child of God. Lazarus remains a slave who exists only to serve the rich man, as we see when he calls out: Hey, Father Abraham, send Lazarus to bring me a drop of water to cool my tongue.” Abraham says that’s impossible. The rich man begs Abraham to send Lazarus to his father’s house with a warning for his five siblings. Abraham refuses: the siblings have Moses and the prophets to teach them. The rich man insists his siblings will repent if someone rising from the dead warns them. Abraham dismisses this request too. If Moses and the prophets are not good enough them, the Resurrected One won’t be either.
The conversation between the rich man and Abraham gets us to the point of Jesus’ parable — the five living siblings. But Jesus doesn’t tell us what happens next. We have to write the ending to this story.
What message would the rich man send his siblings? Maybe something like:
social status and wealth do not accompany us beyond the grave,
social status and wealth do not proof that we are more blessed or righteous than others.
What will the siblings hear when they listen to Moses, the prophets, and the Resurrected One? Things like:
“I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing … and in you all the families of earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:2-3)
“you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18)
“The Lord your God … executes justice for the orphan and the widow … loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger” (Deuteronomy 10:18-19).
“Is not this the fast I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice … to let the oppressed go free … to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house … to cover the naked (Isaiah 58:6-7).
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor … to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free” (Luke 4:18).
“I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you have me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” (Matthew 25:35-36).
When the siblings hear these teaching, what will they do? As a living human, what will you do?
This story is a parable, but Lazarus is real (Karoline Lewis, workingpreacher.org 2016). Some of us may even have first hand experience of being Lazarus, of being humans overlooked because of ageism and ableism, deemed unworthy because of racism and sexism, scorned because of homophobia or transphobia, put down because of someone else’s prejudices, ignorance and fear.
In summing up today’s gospel message, I turn to Professor Karoline Lewis, who invites us to think about what the bosom of Abraham meant to Lazarus: comfort that they never, ever received during their life. A sense of belonging for a human everyone overlooked and no one was willing to receive as their own. That feeling of knowing their needs will be tended — all of them.
Professor Lewis reminds us that our God is about the business of raising the dead. When we see the un-seeable, care for the disenfranchised, feed the hungry, cloth the naked, set the oppressed free we are doing God’s work with our eyes, ears, voices, hands and feet. We are making the Kingdom of God real, here and now by bringing new life to humans who are dying spiritually, emotionally, physically. These are moments of resurrection.
Lord God, Christ, Holy Spirit keep us steadfast in our commitment to love one another as you love us, and to welcome every human as we would welcome you. Help us be the bosom of Abraham for each other and for every Lazarus sitting at our doorstep. Amen.
