CEC News
… Father Riley will lead us in Holy Eucharist October 6, 13; 20. Mrs. Jane Barnett will lead us in Morning Prayer October 27.
… The Rev. Canon Dr. Stephanie Spellers presented “Episcopal Evangelism 101” at
16 PENTECOST, PROPER XXI - C - 19 LUKE 16. 19-31
Today’s gospel is a continuation of Jesus’ teaching his disciples about the coming kingdom when it will be on earth as it already is in heaven. It is a parable about two men and two worlds. In the second their fortunes are totally reversed.
The point of the parable is not to reveal to us the moral grounds on which the two men described were treated as they were, but to terrify those who lived as the rich man lived without regard to those who lived around him, especially those in need.
Again the parable is aimed at the Pharisees. They were the keepers and interpreters of the Law. Yet they were behaving towards the people Jesus was welcoming exactly like the rich man was behaving towards Lazarus.
And just as the steward in last week’s gospel was to be put out of his position, and 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 now urged to change their ways while there is still time.
With that said, let us take a closer look at the parable. “There was a rich man…” Jesus said. Although he is not named, history has given him one. The Latin word for rich is “Dives.” So we have the story of Dives and Lazarus. In the world above both of these men pass their lives daily within sight and sound of each other.
Dives lived his life without regard for anyone else not even the poor man he had to walk past each time he went in and out of his gate. Eventually they both died. The rich man was buried and found himself in Hades, the Old Testament, Sheol. The poor man, Lazarus, had no one to bury him so the angels carried him away to the bosom of Abraham.
They were both in the next world. Jesus appears to acknowledge the belief of the Jews of his day that there were bodes of joy and misery for souls beyond death in the telling of the parable. Some would say the scene is one after the final judgment.
Others would say both men were in the intermediate state prior to the final judgment. Either way Dives and Lazarus are still within sight and sound of each other. In addition a great chasm separates the two.
In life Dives would not cross over to help Lazarus. Now Lazarus cannot cross over to him. In his torment the rich man realizing the permanence of his state of being intercedes on behalf of his brothers still living, presumably living a similar lifestyle to the one he had lived.
He desires that Abraham send Lazarus to warn his brothers to change their ways before it is too late. Abraham‘s response to the rich man’s plea is a poignant one. “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.” The Old Testament speaks to an urgent and sufficient call to repentance.
But the rich man insists that someone from the dead should go and tell them, then they will repent; a hint of the consequences of the resurrection of Jesus himself.
Here is a state of affairs the commonness of which blinds us to its absurdity; two men living close together, but with a great gulf between them, and never a human word passing from one side to the other. Small barriers easily surmounted at first, strengthens as time goes on. Vague dislikes become antipathies, antipathies harden into hatred.
We see this happening everyday. A bully beats up on a smaller kid at school while other students stand around and do nothing save video it on their cell phones so that they can post it on social media. In larger cities hundreds of homeless sleep over grates on the sidewalks of main streets to keep warm during the winter months while hundreds of passer bys walk around them totally ignoring their plight as they go about their daily lives.
And there are many other contemporary examples we could use that correspond with Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus in the world above. In telling the story Jesus has no quarrels with the accidents of a person’s birth. Today’s parable does not ask ‘how much do you have? But how much do you care?’
Rather the sayings of Jesus and the parables St. Luke recounts in his gospel act as battering rams against the “fortresses of complacency.”
Jesus cast his lot with those society and the religious leaders of his day deemed as outcasts, the powerless and the oppressed, the ones who lived Good Friday everyday because for them Easter had not yet come. Dives should have known better and lived his life differently.
Moses and the prophets bide him care for ‘the stranger within his gates‘; not to turn away from him. Likewise they demand food and hospitality for the poor. God would not continuously throw us together unless he meant for us to make overtures to one another. It would appear that the story ends on a negative note.
But Jesus never leaves us with a warning without opening a window of hope somewhere in the story. The name Lazarus (Eleazar) means the same thing as Jesus; it may be translated ‘God has delivered.’ Dives and his brothers stand for the Jewish nation who has Moses and the prophets. Jesus is the one who stands in the gate, in their very midst without being recognized.
He knows that he will soon die; the holy angels are waiting to take him home, but what of the people he has come to save? All that Jesus is asking them to do, all Jesus is asking us to do is what Moses and the prophets would have said. Anyone who understands the scriptures must see that Jesus is bringing them to completion.
If they do not, not even someone rising from the dead will bring them to their senses. The gospels bear this out. Jesus died on the cross, an instrument of cruel death, yet the cross has become the hope for the future for all who put their trust in Him.
When Christ comes again opening the door to God’s new age all wrongs will be put right, fortunes will be reversed. The last will be first and the first last.
The cross has meaning for all, for there is no part of the universe cut off from the Saving grace of Him who died and rose again, who, as St. John writes in his revelation, has the keys ‘of death and Hades.’ AMEN+
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