Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The text is the Gospel lesson from Luke 16.
In Luke’s version of the
Beatitudes, Luke chapter 6, Jesus said, “Blessed are you who are poor, for
yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall
be satisfied.” (Luke 6:20-21)
If you were to search for an
example of who those Beatitudes are describing, you would do well to stop and
sit for a while with Lazarus. This isn’t the same Lazarus of John 11, the
brother of Mary and Martha, the one who died and over whom Jesus wept. Same
name; different man. In all likelihood, this was a parable, though if one were
to wander around Judah, you probably wouldn’t have too difficult of a time
finding another example of this poor man named Lazarus.
In Jesus’ day and age, wealth was an indicator of God’s blessing and poverty was a measure of punishment for a moral or ethical failure on someone’s part, if not an outright curse. I suspect that our modern American view hasn’t changed much since then. One’s wealth, or lack thereof, stands as a measure, a barometer, of what is perceived as blessedness. After all: where would you rather live - 101 Lazarus Lane or 1600 Rich Man Way? So, whether it was in the eyes of those sitting and listening to Jesus 2000 years ago or any of us today, the rich man was blessed: plenty of money in the bank account, a fully funded investment portfolio, a festival meal for no apparent reason, exquisite clothes from the finest clothiers, and a palatial home in a gated neighborhood to keep the riffraff – like Lazarus – out: out of sight, out of smell, out of hearing, and out of mind.
By those same standards, temporally
speaking, Lazarus was running way short in the blessing column. If you are
politically correct, you might describe Lazarus as “indigent” or “transient,”
but in your mind, out of the public hearing, you might use words like
“unfortunate,” “pathetic,” or even “miserable.” Talk about a man who had
nothing. Lazarus’s home was the stoop at the rich man’s gate where he was laid
down. When I say, “laid down,” don’t think lovingly, gently, tenderly placed
there, like a child tucked into bed. The language is more like “thrown down,”
as one would do with garbage, refuse, detritus. To literally use the language
of today’s teens, he was trash. Adding insult to injury, his eyes could see,
his nose could smell, his ears could hear the feasting that was happening
inside, but his mouth couldn’t even taste the crumbs that fell to the floor. I
said he had nothing, but that’s not quite true. Lazarus had one thing: sores,
some kind of weeping wounds, but even those weren’t his alone. He shared them
with the dogs who licked at them because he was too weak, too tired to push
them away. A dog among dogs, street garbage to be overlooked, ignored, and
kicked away.
Then, both men died. Jesus used a
bit of word play here: Lazarus died and was carried; the rich man died and was
buried. Lazarus, alone in this life, was escorted by angels to Abraham’s side
where there is resting, perhaps even feasting in the eternal banquet that knows
no end. The rich man, once surrounded by fellow revelers, was met by solitude
without even a dog to keep him company as he sweltered in his misery. His
riches, his home, his friends, his food – all of those fine comforts of life
had disappeared, stripped away by the grave.
Understand: it wasn’t the riches
themselves that condemned the man. It was his setting himself up as a god with
his wealth as a demonstration of his goodness, illustrated by his failure to be
a loving neighbor. It was failure to see Lazarus as a brother in need, as someone
with whom he could share what had been given him by God, as the least in the
kingdom who, in that moment, needed to be the greatest and most tended to. In
life, Lazarus had yearned for the rich man’s crumbs; the rich man yearned for
just a drop of water off Lazarus’ finger. His cry to Father Abraham wasn’t one
of repentance, acknowledging and lamenting his sin of failing to love. Rather,
he maintained his arrogance, as if Lazarus should resume his position of
humility now as a servant to fetch water for the wretched.
No, Abraham says, it doesn’t work
that way. He told the rich man to remember, to recall how his pleasures
extended through his lifetime on earth while Lazarus had nothing. Remember the
suffering that Lazarus endured while the rich man refused to even share a crumb
in life. Now, with the roles and positions reversed, the rich man would have to
remember in death that Lazarus will be enjoying all of the blessings of God
into eternity. Lazarus will no longer suffers at the hands of others. He will
no longer be the butt of jokes, the object of sneers, the lost one of society. Lazarus,
who once had nothing, is now the one who has everything. Once overlooked in his
miserable and pitiable life on earth, Lazarus is now given a place of honor and
comfort next to Abraham. The one who had it all in this lifetime, living in the
lap of luxury, lost it all. His misery now infinitely more miserable than
anything Lazarus had to suffer.
Remember, Jesus is speaking to
the Pharisees, using this parable as yet another attempt to call them to
repentance, desiring that they trust in Him as the Messiah and setting aside
their arrogant idea that they can earn God’s pleasure and favor through their
self-justifying lives of keeping the Law. The parable was a verbal wake-up call
of what awaited them, unless they repent: the sheer torture of hell. There is no
returning from hell once there. There are no second chances; no do-overs. It’s
not as if they could plead ignorance: they had God’s very Word, they knew the
Scriptures, foretelling the Messiah. Unfortunately, the Pharisees refused to
see Jesus was He to whom the Scriptures point. They refused to believe this Man
from Nazareth could be the One sent from Heaven, that the Son of Mary could
also be the Son of God, that the one who calmed the winds and waves once
ordered creation into existence, that the One who could heal the sick could
also forgive sins. The Scriptures foretold it, but the Pharisees would neither
see nor believe them fulfilled in Jesus. The parallel warning between the
Pharisees and the rich man should have been clear: as the rich man and his
brothers refused to heed the Scriptures written by either Moses or the Prophets,
so also the Pharisees. Thus, Abraham’s words about the rich man becomes Jesus’
hard words against Pharisees “If they do not hear either Moses and the
Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.”
There’s an interesting note with
this parable. It’s not just a story. It’s a prophetic foretelling of what is to
come. Jesus tells this parable shortly before Holy Week. He will soon make His
triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Jesus tells the parable in the days immediately
before that miraculous event recorded by St. John, when Mary and Martha’s
brother, Lazarus, dies in Bethany and Jesus restores him to life. In other
words, the parable is not only a word of warning against the pharisees, it’s
also a word of prophesy of what will happen to the real man named Lazarus. He
will experience death – physical death, where his heart will stop beating and
he will be a corpse. But, by God’s grace, like the Lazarus of the parable, the
real Lazarus will also begin to experience the beginning of eternity at the
side of Abraham, that is, in the presence of the eternal God of Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob. Lazarus, three-days dead in the belly of the grave, will hear the
voice of the One who is the resurrection and the life. The Word of Jesus
enlivens ears that stopped hearing, a heart that stopped beating, a brain that
ceased functioning. At the sound of Jesus’ command, Lazarus comes forth: he who
was dead is alive!
And, sadly, the Pharisees will
seek to kill Lazarus, because he is living proof that Jesus is who he says he
is.
And, then, just a few days after
that, the Pharisees will put to death the Lord of Life Himself, rejecting the
One who is the resurrection and the life.
There’s this interesting phrase
in the parable that Jesus told – I don’t know if you caught it or not – where
Abraham says to the rich man, “Besides all this, between us and you a great
chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may
not be able, and none may cross from there to us.” Did you catch that? Did you
wonder what this is about? First, don’t go nuts here and think this is
something about reincarnation or ghosts or some such drivel. Jesus is pointing
to the hard reality that there isn’t any way to salvation, that is Abraham’s
side, other than thru Christ. Once judgement has been rendered, it is
irreversible. I don’t think we can establish a doctrine of the end times and
judgement day from this parable, but this is clear: heaven is heaven; hell is
hell and, to borrow from Rudyard Kipling, “ne’er the ‘twain shall meet.”
With a singular exception. In the
person and work of Christ, for His work of salvation, He crosses all
boundaries. First, He crossed from divinity to humanity, setting aside His full
divine power to take upon Himself human flesh to be born of the Virgin Mary.
Then, somewhere between Good Friday’s death and Easter’s resurrection, the
Creeds confess that Jesus did, in fact, descend into Hell. He crossed that
chasm Abraham spoke of, in His flesh. Peter reports this in his first Epistle:
“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the
unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the
flesh but made alive in the spirit, 19 in
which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in
prison, 20 because they formerly did not
obey,” (1 Peter 3: 18-20). People misunderstand the reason for Jesus’ descent
to hell. We – rightly – think of hell as the place of torture where the
unrepentant are banished. So, it is often assumed and misunderstood that Jesus
had to go there to suffer even more deeply than He did on the cross. No. Others
think that His descent was a second chance for those who did not believe
before, a Divine Billy Graham crusade or a hellish tent revival, if you will.
This isn’t true either. Jesus’ descent was to proclaim His victory over satan,
that the damning consequence of sin has been paid in full. It was the other
shoe that fell, the first one dropping in the Garden of Eden that the serpent
will bruise the heel of Eve’s promised seed; the second shoe being the Seed –
who is Jesus – crushing the serpent – satan’s – head in His death and
resurrection. Not even hell’s gates can stop the resurrected Jesus.
The parable prophetically
foretells Lazarus’ death. Lazarus’ death and resurrection foreshadow’ Jesus’
own crucifixion and Easter. Christ’s death and resurrection foreshadow our
death and resurrection, whenever those are according to God’s great mercy and
favor. So our lives now, which sometimes feels more like Lazarus’ than we care
to admit, with our own backs against the wall and the wolves nipping at our
heels, our lives are lived in that hope, that promise, that Baptismal treasure
that is already ours in Christ but waiting to be fully consummated on that
great day of resurrection. Until that
day, satisfy your hunger with the crumbs given you at the Lord’s Table and
refresh your soul, recalling the drops of water showered upon you in your
Baptism.
And on that day, when the
beatitude is complete, the poor will receive the kingdom, and our hunger and
thirst will be satisfied into all eternity. Come quickly, Lord Jesus….come.
Amen.
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