I think of this as the last of the five parables begun in
Luke 15. The frame of these stories is the grumbling Pharisees and Jesus eating
with the tax collectors and sinners. Between the fourth and fifth parables the
Pharisees, who loved money, ridicule Jesus. In turn, Jesus rebukes them with
some serious charges and then tells this story of shattered community. We must
remember, however, that by the time Luke is writing, the temple already has
been destroyed and the Pharisees no longer exist as a faction of Judaism.
In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, we witness the breakdown
of relationship between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots, the
powerful and the powerless of the world. The relationship between these two
groups has become so contentious that communication between them is no longer
possible.
The rich man celebrates life and his good fortune in a public
way drawing attention to himself without regard for others. There is an empty
decadence in the purple finery he wears; the linen is like a shroud casting a
pall over his lifestyle. The poor named Lazarus (God has helped) also wears
purple advertising death. Lazarus’ purple is from the ulcers that cover his
skin. And rather than eating regularly as the rich man does, Lazarus is being
regularly eaten: the dogs come to lick his open sores sampling the meal that is
to come.
When we hear that the rich man dies and goes to Hades where
he is tormented (tested), we may have a self-satisfied joy concerning the rich
man’s demise. If we end our time with this parable, however, rejoicing for
Lazarus and are satisfied with the treatment of the rich man and his brothers,
then we miss the great tragedy and challenge within the parable.
Unlike the previous parables of lost and found, this parable
leaves us with only loss. As such it is the most challenging of the five
parables. Within the telling of the story, opportunity is offered for community
whenever the rich man comes out to eat, but he does not cross the chasm that
divides them. In this life, the rich man cannot go beyond the safety of his
wall. Nor is Lazarus able to break through the wall to receive the crumbs that
fall from the rich man’s table. Not even the dogs receive the crumbs as they do
in Mark 7. Instead, they get Lazarus.
In death, the rich man is still unable to recognize Lazarus
as a person. He sees Lazarus only as a means to bring him water for easing his
torment (testing). The allusion is that he wishes the covenant of baptism, that
he longs for the baptismal (dipped) sacramental water in death as a convenience
rather than as an expression of faith. Even his plea to send someone to warn
his brothers is more about sending a poltergeist to scare them into right
behavior and less about faith. He continues to desire avoiding the torment of
Hades for the pleasures of the life he left. This is not an act of repentance
or a statement for grace-filled resurrection-living.
On the other side of this parable lies Lazarus who suffered
in life without community, and, although he is now in the arms of Abraham, he
continues to have no community. He was not able to break through the wall that
separated him from community in life, and he is unable to bridge the chasm that
separates him in death.
The telling of this parable leaves both the rich man and
Lazarus without community. The parable depends on the hearers of the story
finding and living into the new community that is lost. Luke includes this
story for the gathered worshipping community of his time. As such, it is the
final statement, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will
they be convinced, even if someone rises from the dead,” that makes Luke’s
audience smile.
With those first hearers of Luke’s Gospel, we smile and
chuckle to ourselves as well. Yes, we know that as Jesus is looking to and
traveling toward the cross in the Gospel, that Jesus has already risen; that
our lives in Christ’s resurrection world means that we know the value of
forgiveness and resurrection justification. We know of Moses and the writings
of the prophets, and we know that these writings point to Christ. We are so
much better than those silly Pharisees, and we know that we are saved because
of this radical new community, after all most of us are the unclean gentiles of
the world who are included in Christ’s new covenant: Baptismal water and Eucharistic
body and blood, bread and wine table fellowship. Because of this, we know the
value of the community Christ is calling us to.
Paradoxically, we also know the great chasm that separates us
from many of our brothers and sisters. Racism continues to plague our world to
the extent that we cannot admit to our lives of privilege. We cannot see or
understand the suffering of those outside the walls of our own experience. Our
children do not all have equal opportunities for education and employment. We
are not always treated equally by law enforcement officials. We are not given
equal opportunities of housing We are not given equal treatment in the courts
of our land.
We are so oblivious to the lives of those suffering outside
our walls that we think that just because a Black man has been elected to the
highest office in our land that racism is over. Of course, there are some who
think that racism didn’t exist until we elected a Black man to the presidency.
We are separated from one another by our politics, our sexual
orientation, social position, our educations, whether or not we have work. By
those who are temporarily able bodied and those with disabilities, we even hide
behind the walls of our democracy as a way to condemn those who do not live
with the freedoms we know.
We chase after higher profits building pipelines that
potentially threaten our watersheds and the sacred lands of Indigenous People
thereby widening the chasm between our own culture and that of others while
reassuring ourselves of its safety even as the Colonial and Exxon Mobil
pipelines rupture and threaten the water table in Alabama and others rupture
and the Yellowstone river valley.
Yes, we smile at Jesus’ last comment about believing in the
one who is raised up from the dead, but we have yet to embrace the radical
community living that Christ models and embodies. We have a long way to go to
be the ones who lift up the social dead of our world, the poor, the lame, the
maimed, the deaf, the blind, the widows, the orphans and the strangers into the
promise of the community of wholeness of the resurrected body of Christ.
Yes, we see that there is retributive justice for the rich
man in this story, and we smugly gloat over his demise, but, if we can recognize
ourselves mirrored in the rich man, we thank God that we are saved by grace,
through faith, in Christ alone. And then, seeing ourselves in the rich man, we
see, in Lazarus, the reflection of Christ at his crucifixion in his robe,
described as elegant by Luke and purple by Matthew and Mark, with open ulcers
from the crown of thorns, the whipping stripes, the nail holes, and the wound
from the spear. Now we can begin to understand that we, the privileged, with
the rich man, need to reach out in faith recognizing those whom God gives us
where we live, those whom God has helped, that is Lazarus, in order to find
that radical community of life.
Finding it, we also come to know the ways of using
unrighteous wealth as a way to be welcomed into the eternal house communities
of faith (parable 4), to be open to those who have gone astray and returned to
gracious welcomes (parable 3), to know the value of the one who with radical
love, searches for us (parable 2). We will celebrate the finding of the lost in
ways that may have greater value than those things that are lost for the sake
of the one whose radical love has searched us out when we were wandering off by
ourselves (parable 1). We will see God’s image in all whom we meet and lift
them up into the community God has invited us to be part of since that first Sabbath
time of creation. We will find the community of peace that surpasses all
understanding, in the community we lost and rediscovered, reveling in the
wholeness of Christ.
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