Luke
16:19-31
Last week at the second service, when
Rich Gibson passed out, he came to and asked for a drink of water, and a couple
of people brought some. I kind of
blocked that, so let me explain. When
somebody faints, it may very well be because of dehydration, and a drink of
water will help that. But when they
collapse as a result of the fainting, it’s possible that they might have broken
something or done some other kind of damage that somebody without medical
training cannot assess. If there were a
broken bone, though, and it had to be set, or if any other injury were found
that might require anaesthesia, one of the first questions that’s going to be
asked is if the person has had anything to eat or drink recently. They need to know that to avoid the
possibility of it coming back up and creating a dangerous situation. That’s why nobody’s allowed to eat or drink
before surgery.
But it isn’t easy to see someone who
is thirsty and say, “No.” Water is kind
of basic. There are times when all
somebody needs is just a little sip or an ice chip on their tongue to feel
better. That fact lies at the heart of
the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.
“In Hades, where he was
being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his
side. He called out, ‘Father Abraham,
have mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and
cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.’” [Luke
16:23-24]
Interesting,
isn’t it, that the rich man still seemed to think of Lazarus as subservient,
someone to be ordered about for his convenience and comfort, even in the
afterlife?
Abraham tried to explain to the rich
man that the roles they held on earth no longer applied. In fact, in their cases, they were reversed.
“Child,
remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus
in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony.”
[Luke
16:25]
Moreover,
Abraham tells him, there’s not a thing he can do about that now. This man does not seem to have been totally heartless,
though. At least he cared about his own
brothers. But again, he wants Lazarus to
be his servant, his messenger boy, to give them one of those spooky warnings
like Dickens pictured for Ebenezer Scrooge: “In life I was Jacob Marley…” Of course, Dickens pictures Marley’s ghost
itself appearing, not sending a message second-hand. This man, the one burning with torment and
thirst, still does not get it. He cares
about himself first, then he cares about his brothers, but he still does not really
care about Lazarus.
Abraham’s answer to him recognizes
that. He knows full well that this man
and his brothers are cut from the same cloth.
If he had ignored Lazarus in his comings and goings, his brothers had
also done the same thing. They had all
seen the man’s need and had ignored it.
They had all gone on feeding themselves and spending money on fancy
clothes while he starved.
(By the way, this is not going to be
a feel-good sermon. It’s not a feel-good
parable. Not unless you’re on the
Lazarus end of things, and to be honest, very few people in the U.S. or Canada
or Western Europe fall into that category.)
It’s one of the big annoyances of the
scriptures that you have to ignore them in order to ignore poverty, even if you
live (as we do) inside an insulated capsule where we can avoid its most
troublesome forms. Sure, people go
through rough times. But there are often
resources to help, if only they can find them – and there are people who care
and who do try to help. But there is
also a profound kind of poverty that we manage to hold at arm’s length because,
once seen it cannot be unseen. The scriptures
make us look, even to the degree where we have to make a conscious choice not
to see, and to become the person holding his ears and saying, “La-la-la!” not
to hear. Abraham (and, by telling this
story, Jesus himself) says of those who are feasting while others starve,
“They
have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.” [Luke
16:29]
The
rich man says that the scriptures are not enough. He’s told – and this is harsh, but it’s exactly
on point –
“If
they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced
even if someone rises from the dead?” [Luke
16:31]
Some
people don’t get it, and some people work at not getting it, because they really
do.
This parable hurts. It hurts because it needs no real
interpretation or explanation. It hurts
because trying to soften it shows which side of the gate we – okay, I – live on. Just go back to the availability of
water. There has been a multi-year
drought in Central America. That is part
of what has driven some people to leave their lands and look for a way to survive. Some have joined criminal gangs and driven
yet other people to run from violence. So
people leave their homes out of desperation and multiple fears, and then find
themselves, exactly like Lazarus, sitting for months or longer outside closed
gates, being told they cannot come in.
There are those in lands where the Sahara and other deserts are
expanding, and they get pushed out in the same way. Some of them fall into the hands of modern
slave-traders. Some of them get stuck in
refugee camps. Some of them try to cross
the Mediterranean in leaky boats and, if they reach safety, also get stuck in
horrible conditions waiting for their paperwork to clear or to be sent back to
the starting line.
This parable hurts because it gives
a name to the man at the gates. We can
talk about the nameless poor, but they are not nameless. The rich man and his brothers go nameless. The poor man lying at the gate, with the dogs
taking pity on him the way that the people inside the gate do not – that man is
the only person in all of Jesus’ parables who has a name. “Lazarus” is the Greek form of the Hebrew “Eliezer”,
which means “God is my help.”
I would say this: that Jesus calls
us to really and truly see that man. He
is not just someone to order around, a bit character in our stories. He is not someone who can be used, either as
a messenger or as a cautionary tale. He
is a person, someone that we know is out there and who calls upon God for
help. It may be someone whose situation
is so heartbreaking that we cannot bear to see him or to hear his voice, but
the only thing that will keep us from losing our own souls is to look and to
listen, and not for our own sake, but for his.
That is the word, I fear, not just
of Moses and the prophets, but of someone who called out, when he was dying,
“I
thirst!” [John 19:28]
someone
who himself rose from the dead.
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