Jesus’ parable in the Gospel reading carries with it some interesting memories for me. My dad was a
minister in a Pentecostal denomination, and he was a little atypical of that branch of our Christian
faith. He was a calm, comforting Bible teacher who wasn’t really given to some of the very emotional
preaching that happened a lot in our denomination.
But every once in a while we’d have a barnstorming evangelist with a little different approach come
to town. That usually spiced things up a bit. We tended to get a bit less emphasis on God’s love and
grace, and a lot more on His holiness and His wrath. The present parable of Lazarus the rich man
was often used to, let’s say, “inspire” us toward changing our ways.
I remember preachers working up to a fever pitch in warning us that, if we didn’t change our ways,
we would be just like that rich man, suffering the torments of hell, desperately craving just a drop of
cool water to moisten our parched tongues, but being buried so far in the pit of damnation that this
was just a hopeless and despairing wish! By this point in the sermon the evangelist would have
peeled off his sport coat. His white shirt and tie would be soaked with sweat as he paced back and
forth, painting this picture that really was more terrifying than any Hieronymous Bosch painting.
We kids, especially the boys, since we seemed to be more prone to the kind of mischief the
evangelist was warning against, would be sitting there with wide eyes, dry throats, and little beads of
sweat forming on our foreheads as we contemplated the consequences of our sinfulness in
Technicolor. Heartfelt penitence would soon follow as we sought God’s undeserved mercy. Many of
us received the Lord as our Savior a good many times over the years.
Despite all this, I really haven’t needed psychotherapy for it, at least so far. But I have had the
motivation to dig a little deeper into this parable to try to understand what exactly it is that Jesus is
trying to get across to us, because any way you look at it, this really is some pretty sobering stuff.
I think it first needs to be said that this is a parable with quite a bit of detail, and all of it’s important.
Jesus wove together a very tight and well thought-out story to make his points.
Let’s look at it together.
Jesus begins by showing that the rich man truly wants for nothing. He gorges himself every single
day with the finest of food, and wears clothes that the less wealthy couldn’t even dream of owning.
But at his gate is this poor beggar named Lazarus. His physical state is miserable. He’s covered with
sores, and he simply longs for some crumbs from the rich man’s table. This is the scene. The way
Jesus presents it, a static situation. Nothing changes, and eventually both men die.
This is where the ‘squirm material’ starts. Because the poor man is carried by the angels to where
Abraham lives. Clearly this is a reference to God’s heavenly kingdom. There Lazarus is comforted
and at peace. But the rich man descends to Hades, where he’s being tormented.
Now, most first Century Jews and Christians clearly believed in the immortality of the soul, and an
afterlife. There was a good afterlife and there was a not good afterlife. Hades falls decidedly into the
latter category. While we should be careful about being overly literal with the images Jesus chooses
to illuminate this place, it should also be clear that this is a place where we definitely don’t want to
be. This isn’t like that Far Side comic strip in which we see a panel with St. Peter welcoming
someone into heaven, with the caption, “Welcome to heaven, here’s your harp.” And with an
adjoining panel in which a figure with horns and forked tail says, “Welcome to hell, here’s your
accordion.” It’s a little more serious than that. But more about this later.
There are at least three different lessons Jesus teaches with this parable. The first is this: What we
do and don’t do in this life really matters. Jesus’ depiction of the rich man is riddled with meaning.
We have to understand that the people of First Century Palestine were generally not wallowing in
wealth. The typical citizen would be fortunate to eat meat once a week. And they worked six days a
week to place whatever food they could attain on the table for their families.
So Jesus’ rich man is feasting opulently and unashamedly while those around him scrape for a
living. Now please recognize once again that this is not about Jesus preaching against wealth, per
se. Remember last week, in the parable of the rich man and his manager, he taught us about using
our wealth for godly purposes, and not letting it control us. So He wasn’t against people having
wealth. Rather, Jesus is once again showing us the consequences of selfishness. In the words of
William Barclay, the rich man in today’s parable is “a figure of indolent self-indulgence.”
And here’s the thing. It’s not that the rich man went out of his way to offend Lazarus, the poor
beggar. He didn’t spit on him or kick him. He didn’t make fun of him or bully him or expel him from his
front gate. So what was it that the rich man did that was so bad that it earned him eternal
punishment? He ignored Lazarus. He didn’t regard him as a fellow human being created in the
image of God. He didn’t so much as notice Lazarus’ basic needs. You see, it wasn’t a matter of the
rich man doing wrong things, but it was a matter of him doing nothing. For this he was guilty. In our
confession we acknowledge that this is a sin. “We confess that we have sinned against you in
thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and what we have left undone.”
Jesus is saying that, if we’re to call ourselves the people of God, we’re obligated to notice the plight
of the suffering, and to do something about it. This is a sign of our belonging to Him. If we neglect
the needy around us, this is a sign that something is very seriously amiss.
But like we mentioned a few moments ago, there’s more to this parable than an admonition to attend
to the needs of the less fortunate. This story also brings us very starkly into the reality of eternity. It
tells us a couple of things: The first is that death is the common lot of every human being. The latest
statistics show that ten out of ten people die. No matter how much we try to hide this reality from
ourselves, we all face the ultimate journey of death.
The related truth is that there’s an afterlife for everyone, and Jesus says that the nature of that
afterlife is determined by the decisions we make, or don’t make, in this life. This kind of gets into the
hard stuff. This isn’t very fun stuff to talk about, but Jesus warns about the reality of hell about a
dozen times in the Gospels. However we’re inclined to think about this place or this state, separation
from God and all good things isn’t a pretty prospect. I mean this really doesn’t fit neatly into the kind
of fluffy and loving picture of Jesus that is presently so popular. But the fact of the matter is that the
One who delights in mercy more than any other warns solemnly of the consequences of rejecting
God. The rich man is Jesus’ living picture of one who’s not devoted to God and his neighbor, but is
instead devoted only to his own selfish, short-term pleasure. It can’t be more plainly stated than to
say that Jesus is warning of the eternal consequences of living this kind of life. The rich man didn’t
see the value of a poor man’s soul, so he ended up losing his own.
Now Jesus doesn’t specifically say why Lazarus ended up in heaven. But He and the writers of the
Bible are plenty clear about that elsewhere. The formula can’t be stated too often. Only the
spiritually clean, or “righteous” will see God. But Paul makes it clear that no one is without sin. So
Jesus has made a way for us by offering himself as our righteousness. At the Cross He took on our
sins and buried them in the grave, and then offered clothed us with Himself.
St. Paul writes to the Galatians: “In Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of
you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.”
So when we believe in Jesus and His work on our behalf, and are baptized into His family, we’re
cloaked with the white robe of His righteousness, and we appear before God as cleansed and
worthy of the eternal reward He has for us. Just like Lazarus, we’re received into that place where
Abraham and all the saints through history live in endless joy. Not because of what we’ve done for
God, but because of what God has done for us.
And just as the rich man in Jesus’ story sealed his fate by a sin of omission—something left
undone—it remains possible for us human beings to seal our own fate in a similar way. If we don’t
decide to accept God’s gift of Jesus, we’re rejecting the very thing that will bring us eternal life. By
not making a decision, we’re making a decision. By not accepting, we’re rejecting. In St. John’s
Gospel Jesus says, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will
not see life, for God's wrath remains on him." So we can believe and receive, or we can reject
disbelieve and reject.
And this is what brings us to our third and final point. God hasn’t left us without a witness to Himself.
The point is, God has given us evidence. He’s revealed Himself and His truth to us in His word. This
really is what Jesus is saying through that last zinger of a line that concludes his parable. He says, “If
they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises
from the dead.”
Jesus is saying this in response to the rich man’s plea that Father Abraham send Lazarus to warn
his brothers about the perils of rejecting God’s ways. And Abraham says, Look, they’ve had Moses
and prophets all along! OK? There’ve been signposts all along the road. If they ignore something
this clear, they won’t even be convinced if someone rises from the dead.
Really what Jesus is talking about here is the attitude of our hearts. If we’re not inclined at all to
listen when God speaks to us, no amount of evidence will be enough to convince us of the truth. It
reminds me of some of the arguments against the existence of God. One of the key pieces of
evidence in favor of an orderly creation is that there are something on the order of two dozen
factors in physics which, if they were tweaked one direction or another in some very, very small way,
the universe as we know it couldn’t exist. OK? Creation is very finely calibrated. Scholars have
calculated that the odds against this arising spontaneously are ridiculously extreme. So the hard-
core atheists have concluded that there must have been millions of possibilities for nature to
construct a universe, and ours is the one that “took.”
What can you say to that kind of logic? If we’re dead set against seeing God’s evidence in the first
place, even a miracle won’t convince us. But convincing others isn’t necessarily what we’re called on
to do. What we’re called to do is to proclaim the truth. We leave the rest to God.
And this brings us right down to Hope Church this morning. It’s not an accident that our logo is a
lighthouse. Whether we’re relieving the suffering of Lazaruses in our community or sharing our faith
in such a way that the Holy Spirit leads people to eternal life, we’re the instruments that God uses to
advance His kingdom. We have an urgent message to share. Jesus’ words this morning couldn’t
make than it any plainer. As we prepare to build a new lighthouse right here in the Northeast
Heights, may God help us to faithfully tend the fire so as to guide people into the safe harbor of His
kingdom for many years to come.
Amen.
minister in a Pentecostal denomination, and he was a little atypical of that branch of our Christian
faith. He was a calm, comforting Bible teacher who wasn’t really given to some of the very emotional
preaching that happened a lot in our denomination.
But every once in a while we’d have a barnstorming evangelist with a little different approach come
to town. That usually spiced things up a bit. We tended to get a bit less emphasis on God’s love and
grace, and a lot more on His holiness and His wrath. The present parable of Lazarus the rich man
was often used to, let’s say, “inspire” us toward changing our ways.
I remember preachers working up to a fever pitch in warning us that, if we didn’t change our ways,
we would be just like that rich man, suffering the torments of hell, desperately craving just a drop of
cool water to moisten our parched tongues, but being buried so far in the pit of damnation that this
was just a hopeless and despairing wish! By this point in the sermon the evangelist would have
peeled off his sport coat. His white shirt and tie would be soaked with sweat as he paced back and
forth, painting this picture that really was more terrifying than any Hieronymous Bosch painting.
We kids, especially the boys, since we seemed to be more prone to the kind of mischief the
evangelist was warning against, would be sitting there with wide eyes, dry throats, and little beads of
sweat forming on our foreheads as we contemplated the consequences of our sinfulness in
Technicolor. Heartfelt penitence would soon follow as we sought God’s undeserved mercy. Many of
us received the Lord as our Savior a good many times over the years.
Despite all this, I really haven’t needed psychotherapy for it, at least so far. But I have had the
motivation to dig a little deeper into this parable to try to understand what exactly it is that Jesus is
trying to get across to us, because any way you look at it, this really is some pretty sobering stuff.
I think it first needs to be said that this is a parable with quite a bit of detail, and all of it’s important.
Jesus wove together a very tight and well thought-out story to make his points.
Let’s look at it together.
Jesus begins by showing that the rich man truly wants for nothing. He gorges himself every single
day with the finest of food, and wears clothes that the less wealthy couldn’t even dream of owning.
But at his gate is this poor beggar named Lazarus. His physical state is miserable. He’s covered with
sores, and he simply longs for some crumbs from the rich man’s table. This is the scene. The way
Jesus presents it, a static situation. Nothing changes, and eventually both men die.
This is where the ‘squirm material’ starts. Because the poor man is carried by the angels to where
Abraham lives. Clearly this is a reference to God’s heavenly kingdom. There Lazarus is comforted
and at peace. But the rich man descends to Hades, where he’s being tormented.
Now, most first Century Jews and Christians clearly believed in the immortality of the soul, and an
afterlife. There was a good afterlife and there was a not good afterlife. Hades falls decidedly into the
latter category. While we should be careful about being overly literal with the images Jesus chooses
to illuminate this place, it should also be clear that this is a place where we definitely don’t want to
be. This isn’t like that Far Side comic strip in which we see a panel with St. Peter welcoming
someone into heaven, with the caption, “Welcome to heaven, here’s your harp.” And with an
adjoining panel in which a figure with horns and forked tail says, “Welcome to hell, here’s your
accordion.” It’s a little more serious than that. But more about this later.
There are at least three different lessons Jesus teaches with this parable. The first is this: What we
do and don’t do in this life really matters. Jesus’ depiction of the rich man is riddled with meaning.
We have to understand that the people of First Century Palestine were generally not wallowing in
wealth. The typical citizen would be fortunate to eat meat once a week. And they worked six days a
week to place whatever food they could attain on the table for their families.
So Jesus’ rich man is feasting opulently and unashamedly while those around him scrape for a
living. Now please recognize once again that this is not about Jesus preaching against wealth, per
se. Remember last week, in the parable of the rich man and his manager, he taught us about using
our wealth for godly purposes, and not letting it control us. So He wasn’t against people having
wealth. Rather, Jesus is once again showing us the consequences of selfishness. In the words of
William Barclay, the rich man in today’s parable is “a figure of indolent self-indulgence.”
And here’s the thing. It’s not that the rich man went out of his way to offend Lazarus, the poor
beggar. He didn’t spit on him or kick him. He didn’t make fun of him or bully him or expel him from his
front gate. So what was it that the rich man did that was so bad that it earned him eternal
punishment? He ignored Lazarus. He didn’t regard him as a fellow human being created in the
image of God. He didn’t so much as notice Lazarus’ basic needs. You see, it wasn’t a matter of the
rich man doing wrong things, but it was a matter of him doing nothing. For this he was guilty. In our
confession we acknowledge that this is a sin. “We confess that we have sinned against you in
thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and what we have left undone.”
Jesus is saying that, if we’re to call ourselves the people of God, we’re obligated to notice the plight
of the suffering, and to do something about it. This is a sign of our belonging to Him. If we neglect
the needy around us, this is a sign that something is very seriously amiss.
But like we mentioned a few moments ago, there’s more to this parable than an admonition to attend
to the needs of the less fortunate. This story also brings us very starkly into the reality of eternity. It
tells us a couple of things: The first is that death is the common lot of every human being. The latest
statistics show that ten out of ten people die. No matter how much we try to hide this reality from
ourselves, we all face the ultimate journey of death.
The related truth is that there’s an afterlife for everyone, and Jesus says that the nature of that
afterlife is determined by the decisions we make, or don’t make, in this life. This kind of gets into the
hard stuff. This isn’t very fun stuff to talk about, but Jesus warns about the reality of hell about a
dozen times in the Gospels. However we’re inclined to think about this place or this state, separation
from God and all good things isn’t a pretty prospect. I mean this really doesn’t fit neatly into the kind
of fluffy and loving picture of Jesus that is presently so popular. But the fact of the matter is that the
One who delights in mercy more than any other warns solemnly of the consequences of rejecting
God. The rich man is Jesus’ living picture of one who’s not devoted to God and his neighbor, but is
instead devoted only to his own selfish, short-term pleasure. It can’t be more plainly stated than to
say that Jesus is warning of the eternal consequences of living this kind of life. The rich man didn’t
see the value of a poor man’s soul, so he ended up losing his own.
Now Jesus doesn’t specifically say why Lazarus ended up in heaven. But He and the writers of the
Bible are plenty clear about that elsewhere. The formula can’t be stated too often. Only the
spiritually clean, or “righteous” will see God. But Paul makes it clear that no one is without sin. So
Jesus has made a way for us by offering himself as our righteousness. At the Cross He took on our
sins and buried them in the grave, and then offered clothed us with Himself.
St. Paul writes to the Galatians: “In Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of
you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.”
So when we believe in Jesus and His work on our behalf, and are baptized into His family, we’re
cloaked with the white robe of His righteousness, and we appear before God as cleansed and
worthy of the eternal reward He has for us. Just like Lazarus, we’re received into that place where
Abraham and all the saints through history live in endless joy. Not because of what we’ve done for
God, but because of what God has done for us.
And just as the rich man in Jesus’ story sealed his fate by a sin of omission—something left
undone—it remains possible for us human beings to seal our own fate in a similar way. If we don’t
decide to accept God’s gift of Jesus, we’re rejecting the very thing that will bring us eternal life. By
not making a decision, we’re making a decision. By not accepting, we’re rejecting. In St. John’s
Gospel Jesus says, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will
not see life, for God's wrath remains on him." So we can believe and receive, or we can reject
disbelieve and reject.
And this is what brings us to our third and final point. God hasn’t left us without a witness to Himself.
The point is, God has given us evidence. He’s revealed Himself and His truth to us in His word. This
really is what Jesus is saying through that last zinger of a line that concludes his parable. He says, “If
they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises
from the dead.”
Jesus is saying this in response to the rich man’s plea that Father Abraham send Lazarus to warn
his brothers about the perils of rejecting God’s ways. And Abraham says, Look, they’ve had Moses
and prophets all along! OK? There’ve been signposts all along the road. If they ignore something
this clear, they won’t even be convinced if someone rises from the dead.
Really what Jesus is talking about here is the attitude of our hearts. If we’re not inclined at all to
listen when God speaks to us, no amount of evidence will be enough to convince us of the truth. It
reminds me of some of the arguments against the existence of God. One of the key pieces of
evidence in favor of an orderly creation is that there are something on the order of two dozen
factors in physics which, if they were tweaked one direction or another in some very, very small way,
the universe as we know it couldn’t exist. OK? Creation is very finely calibrated. Scholars have
calculated that the odds against this arising spontaneously are ridiculously extreme. So the hard-
core atheists have concluded that there must have been millions of possibilities for nature to
construct a universe, and ours is the one that “took.”
What can you say to that kind of logic? If we’re dead set against seeing God’s evidence in the first
place, even a miracle won’t convince us. But convincing others isn’t necessarily what we’re called on
to do. What we’re called to do is to proclaim the truth. We leave the rest to God.
And this brings us right down to Hope Church this morning. It’s not an accident that our logo is a
lighthouse. Whether we’re relieving the suffering of Lazaruses in our community or sharing our faith
in such a way that the Holy Spirit leads people to eternal life, we’re the instruments that God uses to
advance His kingdom. We have an urgent message to share. Jesus’ words this morning couldn’t
make than it any plainer. As we prepare to build a new lighthouse right here in the Northeast
Heights, may God help us to faithfully tend the fire so as to guide people into the safe harbor of His
kingdom for many years to come.
Amen.
Things Don and Left Undone
(Luke 16:19-31)
(Luke 16:19-31)
September 30, 2007
Fr. Dan Tuton
Fr. Dan Tuton