Sermon, 9/25/22: From Riches to Rags?

16 Pentecost

Psalm 91:1–6, 14–16; Jeremiah 32:1–3a, 6–15; I Timothy 6:6–10 ; Luke 16:19-31

They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them. Lk 16.29

Many decades have passed, when I would spend Saturday mornings with my daughters, doing within reason whatever they desired to do. Occasionally, the three of us would prepare together homemade breakfast specials, repair with plates in hand to our family-TV room, and lie on the floor to watch cartoons. I did not object, because the music that accompanied the cartoons were usually excerpts from classical music, for example the Barber of Seville, as Bugs Bunny wreaked havoc on Elmer Fudd’s hairline. But then, there were also lessons to be learned in the cartoons. School was in session, without the visual formal setting of the classroom.

One cartoon, which even today comes as vividly to mind as then, as I read today’s gospel, shows a character seated in an automobile, saying “you drive me up a wall.” And, because it is a cartoon, the producer shows the character driving literally up the wall. Yes, we laughed, my daughters and I! However, they and I understood, without being told, that we employ figures of speech, in order to bring emphasis to a situation or condition.

The story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, rehearsed in today’s gospel, has always intrigued me. Nevertheless, I wonder sometimes whether the image of the Rich Man, dressed in purple and fine linen, and Lazarus, covered with sores has become stale and outdated. First, we remember it from our years of Church School and attendance at Eucharist. Second, we know very few rich men or women who go around wearing purple robes, a traditional color of royalty. If at all, we see such displays in period films or when one of the world’s remaining monarchs dies or is enthroned. Third, scientific investigation has long since disproved the flat earth theory that, in ages past, allowed us to assign the Rich Man to the netherworld of torment and Lazarus to a celestial one of comfort.

Still the fascination for me is there. As a flashing neon sign, this story sets forth a fundamental truth which we humans cannot deny. That truth is undeniable: We did not ourselves make and, further, we are bound to each other, both near and far, in a community that exceeds individual desires and national boundaries. If, then, we do not allow a literal fundamentalism to creep into our thinking, that indeed the Rich Man finds himself in the overheated bowels of the earth and that Lazarus is feasting on milk and honey in a celestial kingdom, if we look objectively at the re-working by Jesus of an allegory that can be found in Egyptian and Hebrew literature predating Jesus, we discover a freshness which speaks to our daily living.

The parable, as told by Jesus, ceases to be a simple lecture about life after death, or about the furniture of heaven or the temperature of hell or the menu served in heaven. Near the conclusion of the story is a one-liner that flashes as the marquee of a movie theater: “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.” This is the pivotal, explosive line of the story. This simple response elevates the story to one that focuses on human condition in the present tense. It becomes, thereby, a challenge to us, as people of God. This is a story that informs us that what we do in the here and now spills over into time that continues after our existence on this planet has ended. This seemly throwaway line informs us that our behavior influences the behavior of those under our care or who observe what we do.

If we look objectively at the story, it becomes clear, that Jesus’ intention is not to focus on a superficial interpretation that in the hereafter the poor go to glory and the wealthy get awfully thirsty in hell. This allegory is, likewise, not about role reversal, but about how we are called to a life of service and compassion to, for, and with another, and not in some celestial realm, but here and now. This parable, if taken seriously, has potential revolutionary application for those of us who live in nations like the United States. This story has explosive, revolutionary potential in terms of our use of resources, to acknowledge our common humanity, which reaches beyond national borders.

This could not have been made clearer, than [by] the new President of Kenya, Dr. William Ruto who, this week past, addressed the UN General Assembly in New York City. Dr. Ruto did not reference the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus. I know nothing of President Ruto’s religious life. Yet, his assertion was a simple, straightforward, provocative one, as if taken from today’s gospel lesson: The United Nations, as an international body, must change. The UN must recognize that the until-now accepted way of viewing the world, that the old dichotomy drawn between the Global North and the Global South, is as useless and as harmful as the Flat Earth Theory. To occupy a seat at the table, the hidden, subtext of today’s allegory, should not be postponed to some future day. Alluding to an American political slogan, Dr. Ruto, a man who rose from chicken seller to president, spoke with an urgency, not about two, but about the three B’s: “building up better from the bottom up and, thus, liberating ourselves from the shame of past failures.”

Thus, it becomes apparent that the Rich Man’s shortcoming (or, to use traditional Biblical language), the Rich Man’s sin, was not that he was rich, but that he did not really understand his obligation to utilize his riches for the good of all. There is no indication that the Rich Man was especially cruel or even that he acquired his wealth dishonestly. By accident of birth is more likely to have been his situation. His wealth and position were possibly inherited. He knew Lazarus, and his house must have been a good place to come or Lazarus would not have been there, wasting his time in hope of a handout. Word gets around real fast about where food and help are to be given to the poor.

I suggest that the story of the Rich Man and the beggar Lazarus is not really about them. Likewise, the story is not simply to titillate our need for revenge in an engrossing, graphic, R-rated tale, in which an underdog beggar comes out on top while a villainous rich man gets his due. It is an unveiling of the way of life as lived here, and how it affects the world, not only in one’s own time, but in the world left behind. The Rich Man may well have given instructions to his servants to provide leftovers for the man. The rich man’s problem lay in what he did not do. The Rich man saw but did not see Lazarus. Class differences saw to it that the two would not get to know each other in a way that would cause the one to know truly the hopes and aspirations of the other.

A close textual reading of Paul’s letter to Timothy sheds further light on the very premise made by Jesus in the allegory of the Rich Man and Lazarus. It is far too easy and simplistic to limit our thinking, as we have for centuries, that wealth is the accumulation of money only. We pronounce ourselves as not guilty of transgressing Jesus’ caution against wealth, when we read the explanation of Paul to Timothy “…the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil…” (I Timothy 6:10) and stop there. We need but only further read Paul’s letter in order to discover that wealth takes many forms. [When we so do, we come to understand that this allegory is as much about the five brothers as about the Rich Man.] But moreover, this allegory begs us, as Paul explains to Timothy, to reconsider how we define wealth.

Indeed, some of us are rich in financial resources. All of us are rich compared to many in our world in which, it is estimated, some 40,000 die from hunger every day, and millions suffer from malnutrition. Some of us are rich educationally. God has blessed us with good minds, and we have had the opportunity to learn. The question is whether we have shared our intellectual riches, the zeal for learning, with others of lesser means.

Some of us are rich in love. We experience acceptance in our families and with our friends, and so we never realize how tragic it is to be poor in love, to feel totally abandoned. A person who feels unloved may conclude, in observing the world around him/her that others are loved because they amount to something, and that s/he lacks those benefits of love, because s/he is worth nothing. We accept and preach the Good News in Christ that God loves us all. The poor in love become rich only when those who have love share with those who have none.

We are all rich spiritually. We have been baptized into a fellowship where love is central. It is through the Sacrament of Baptism that we form and extend our family, which we call the Church. This spiritual family supersedes that of blood. Over the year of my ordained ministry, I have rejoiced with families when children have been baptized. Yet on more than one occasion, during that ceremony, cold sweat has appeared on my brow, and that is not because I fear, I may drop the holy water or the infant child. And you may well ask, what causes my anxiety? I explain.

Once, after a day-long clergy meeting at our Cathedral on Tremont Street in downtown Boston, on my way home on the Red Line, I observed a father holding his young son. That young boy, surely no older than two, secured on his father’s lap and in his father’s arms, faced outwardly. He had his eyes open as widely as possible, and he was observing us, the adult. And that is what so prompts my anxiety. Children learn not only in schools, but through observing the world around them. The newly baptized will watch us, as we watch over them, to see whether we have understood the clear message of the gospel: we do not need someone from the dead to remind us of what is good and right and holy. We need the living, to remind us of our calling as people of God, struggling with each other, however imperfect and often cantankerous that struggle may be.

The name “Lazarus” means “one whom God helps.” But how? Jesus’ response is through us. Through our spiritual baptism, we have become the five brothers. God is certainly not limited by what we are able to do or not do. But who can deny that the Letter to Timothy and the Gospel according to Luke bear down on the importance of our serving as instruments of God’s ministry to the human community. Our compassion, of which I see much in our parish community, must give us always eyes to see, minds to make clear decisions for the good of the whole community, and the power to take actions that will bring about positive change.

My question to you this week is this. Are we not, as members in Christ’s body the church, collectively and individually, in our unique form, those five brothers of the Rich Man? Do we not have Moses, the prophets, and Jesus of Nazareth, the Word made flesh, who came into the world on behalf of the rich and poor alike? To assure the Lazaruses and the Nicodemuses, those of lower rank and those of the upper class of God’s love for all humankind, is that not our charge? One cannot ignore the many pronouncements of the behavior of those of means. How can we, when we recall the tale of the young rich man who goes away disheartened by Jesus’ response, or the rich man who built bigger and better barns, only not to reap the cumulation of his wealth.?

Jesus’ issue, to use a modern colloquial phrase, is not with money/wealth per se. Rather, he says again and again, anything and everything that causes us to forget “from whom all blessings flow” is injurious, indeed eternally detrimental to that relationship that our Creator God seeks continuously to reaffirm with us, the created order. We are rich! Life offers us untold abundance, which as servants and recipients of God’s grace, we are bound to share. What lies ahead is nothing other than to live life to the fullest and to recall simultaneously our obligation to share that abundance. May we be so ready. Amen