"Needing Lazarus"

First Presbyterian Church
Peter S. Buehler
September 30, 2007
Luke 16:19-31

He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'

The first surprise in the story is that the beggar has a name. In all of Jesus' parables in the Gospels, only he is identified. He is Lazarus, "one whom God helps," though for a person who had nothing, who lived at the edge of survival, his name must have seemed a taunt. We know the story, we hear the hope -- one whom God helps -- but those who knew Lazarus must have laughed. Because he was nothing, he mattered to no one. People assumed he didn't matter to God. That Jesus refers to Lazarus, of all people, by name is astounding.

Maybe it's just as surprising that the rich man is not named. There's a tradition, dating from the 4th century and the first translation of the Bible into Latin, that the man's name is Dives, which is Latin for "rich," as in There was a rich man. After all, in biblical times, as today, the names of the wealthy and prosperous were well-known to everyone -- the man must have had a name!

Perhaps people thought Luke had made a mistake in omitting it. He didn't, of course. Because in this story things are reversed. The kingdom of God is not some glowing version of life as usual. The kingdom is the opposite of usual: here in the Gospel the one who has all the comforts during his life, all the luxuries, winds up suffering, while the one who suffers during his life, lacking even the basic necessities, is comforted "at the bosom of Abraham."

Not exactly a comforting message! It's a disturbing story. The rich man disturbs us. How could he be so heartless, so blind to this poor beggar who lay by his front gate day after day after day? Couldn't he spare something, even the change from his pocket? With his resources he could start a charity -- a mission to the poor, a shelter of some kind. Would it have been too much to ask for him to cut his feasting down from every day of the week to maybe five days a week, or even six, and give the money he saved to the poor? Less feasting would have been better for his health -- he'd have lost weight, lowered his cholesterol, probably lived a lot longer, maybe even avoid Hades.

We just want to fix this man so that everything turns out OK! We hate the way the story turns out; it is very disturbing. But we are offended by him, by the way he lives his life so insulated from the rest of the world, so protected from the hardship of other human beings. It is upsetting that he has the opportunity every day to change his outlook, change his life; all he has to do is notice and care.

Though he does notice. The Gospel gives us a peek into Jewish belief in the 1st century of the Christian era, that at the time of death there is a place people go prior to a final judgment, a place where the righteous and wicked are separated by a great chasm yet still within view of one another. No bridge between the two was possible, a further torment to the wicked.

It is a minor detail, though a telling one: the rich man does know Lazarus' name.
Looking across the chasm, he sees Father Abraham with the poor beggar by his side, and calls out, "Have mercy on me, Father Abraham, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water to cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames." He knew his name after all! All those years he knew this beggar at his gate! All those years he turned away, withholding compassion. We wonder why.
Why was he so totally cold-hearted?

We wonder if there was an inverse ratio between his luxury and his humanity: the more persistently he ignored human suffering, the more committed he became to his material pleasures.

Or was it the reverse: that the more he indulged himself, the more he anesthetized himself; the more he focused on his own pleasure, the more unfeeling he became to other people's pain. We wonder if that doesn't happen today, as luxuries become more affordable, or at least more desirable.

Yet somehow the rich man could not forget Lazarus's name. We wonder if seeing the beggar day after day while he was alive was as much of a torment to the rich man as seeing him across the chasm from Hades. During his life did he not think to himself, Why doesn't Lazarus just go away? Why doesn't he go next door and lie at my neighbor's gate? Why does he always have to be there where I have to notice him?

It's interesting that both stories Jesus tells in chapter 16 of Luke begin with the words There was a rich man. It's interesting because in the story we explored last week the rich man is viewed in a positive light. He's the landlord with the dishonest property manager -- we expected him to throw the man into prison -- this fellow he'd trusted yet who had for years skimmed his profits and cooked his books. The surprise of this story is the landlord's smile: he commends the man for his shrewdness. We smile too. We like this rich man.

So it's not as though Jesus condemns all wealth and all people who have it.
Just here in one chapter of the Gospel we see two entirely different individuals -- their assets don't define them as people. Jesus presents us with real people, not caricatures, not cartoon characters. The same goes for property managers and beggars, they too are real people.

This is important, because we can be double-minded about wealth -- wanting it and feeling guilty about it at the same time. As someone once put it:
Sure, money's all wrong, and the Devil decreed it! It doesn't belong to the people who need it.

Excuse me, we need it! We think of what we could do with more of it: fix up the house, get a new car, go on a cruise, help out our grandchildren -- we could but together a list with no trouble at all. Even in the church we say, We need it! Think of all we could do if we had more of it!

But there is a human side to the issue Jesus would have us notice. He spent time with rich and poor alike; he didn't turn people away, God's grace is blind to the differences we care about, the categories we put people in. Jesus challenges our understanding of what is important. He reverses our assumptions. Here he gives us the name of Lazarus as a name to remember, a name not to forget.

He keeps Lazarus in our field of vision. Don't look the other way, he says. You need this man. Care about this man.

One of the most difficult sayings of Jesus has to do with keeping the poor in our field of vision. In the final days of his life, in the hours before his betrayal, Jesus is with his disciples in a house in Bethany, outside Jerusalem, when a woman comes to him with a jar of expensive ointment, an item of luxury in the ancient world if ever there was one, and she pours it out on his head, anointing him.
Extravagant love! The disciples' reaction was hardly one of gratitude, or even wonder, but only anger. What a waste, they said. Do you realize, Jesus, how many poor people could have been helped if we'd just sold it and donated the money?

Jesus' reply has been quoted and twisted ever since. Why do you trouble the woman? She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.

She was preparing him for burial. She was not turning her back on the poor, and neither was Jesus. Both of them -- this unnamed woman and the Lord she loved -- both identified heart, mind, and soul with the poor.

Jesus was not saying Nothing you can do will end poverty on earth so don't bother trying. To entertain that thought is to turn a blind eye to the message of the scriptures, the heart of God, and the calling of Christ himself, who was poor.
The One who did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave -- the One who gave up everything, even his life, is the hope of all who are poor. He is our hope.

The fact is, we meet Jesus when we care about those who are in poverty, when we open our hearts to the Lazaruses of our world, our community. We need them as much as they need us. The relationship is not one-way: donors and recipients, generous people and needy people. The relationship is two-way: those who have enough and therefore enough to give, and those who by their need offer an opportunity to others to come close to Jesus, who is Lord of all.

The church of Jesus Christ is a community of people, people of all sorts, all descriptions. To enter into the life of the church the only requirement is an answer. Who is your Lord and Savior? Do you trust in him? Do you intend to be his disciple, to obey his word and show his love? Will you be a faithful member of this congregation, giving of yourself in every way, and will you seek the fellowship of the church wherever you may be?

Nothing about dues, nothing about income levels. But implicit in the question Who is your Lord and Savior? is this huge giving over of ourselves, this opening of our hearts, this transforming of our lives, this willingness to do things differently and think about things differently. Implicit in the question is the call to love all people in a way that distinguishes us as followers of the One who empties himself for all people.

So the church advocates for the poor. We care! We give of our time, talents, and treasures because we know that Jesus has found us and forgiven us -- we who thought that living for ourselves meant fulfillment, that being well-paid meant being rich, yet in finding our authentic selves and discovering our poverty we were surprised and blessed by love poured out beyond our wildest dreams. Now we seek only to imitate that generosity with our lives. Now we seek to imitate that generosity as a church.

I love the fact that we commit ourselves to mission trips. We send our youth, we send adults; if we can't go ourselves we support financially and pray fervently for those who do.

I'm an adult convert to mission trips; it wasn't a part of my church experience growing up. One of the reasons I love mission trips -- in addition to the quality time we get to spend together we also are built up by having our barriers pulled down. We discover common humanity with those we go to serve. Distances and differences become irrelevant; privilege is what you experience, it is what you feel, because it is a privilege to be a friend in Christ with one who is poor.

I'd never been serenaded before, but I'll never forget one church mission trip where, during a break from framing a house for an immigrant Latino family, the homeowner sang to our work crew. It was a prayer to Jesus; it went on for at least ten minutes, all of us listening to something we'd never come close to experiencing before. It could have been speaking in tongues, for all we knew.
All I remember was the sense of privilege I felt to be in this woman's world, welcomed into her heart, this joyous recital of how the Lord Jesus had been so kind to her as to give her this new home. Her joy was contagious; in that moment it seemed the universe was gentle and small, and smiling.

We miss the point of the parable of Lazarus and the rich man if we come away sad and gloomy, worried about wealth and wrath and flames. All Jesus wants is for us to open our eyes and our hearts to Lazarus, to all the Lazaruses we encounter. All he wants is for us to be in relationship with them, to give to them and receive from them. To not ignore them, to be generous with our humanity, our compassion, our love, and our wealth.

As we listen to our Lord and to his hard teachings, we hear him redefining our words, our speech, for he changes, sometimes even reverses the way we think.
In the story of the rich man and Lazarus he redefines luxury. What is it for us?
What is luxury? Is it expensive clothes and sumptuous dining? Or is it relationships and the joy they bring, even those we don't expect to have -- relationships with neighbors in need, even dire need?

We grow in the faith and love of Christ and learn all we need to know about riches.