Rich Man in Hell
"The Rich Man in Hell Seeing Lazarus Embraced by Abraham" from an engraving in the series "The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus" in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Public Domain Photo from Wikimedia Commons)
September 29, 2019 - 16th Sunday after Pentecost
Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15; Psalms 91:1-6, 14-16 (UMH 810); 1 Timothy 6:6-19; Luke 16:19-31
“Even if someone goes to them from the dead they will not repent…" Luke 16:19
The Gospel of Luke includes stories not found in Mark or Matthew. Perhaps it is because Luke is a later Gospel. This text, 16:19 ff., is one of those stories. The rich man and Lazarus story offers abundant possibilities. It implies that there is a way to live that offers no way out in death. The rich man, who has ignored the poor man Lazarus at his gate, dies and is now suffering in Hades. He pleads for help. Too late! Can he then warn his brothers? Even to warn his brothers is too late. Tough stuff!
In John’s Gospel, much later, someone named Lazarus does rise from the dead, but who repented? Who came to faith? On the contrary, from that day on they took counsel on how to put Jesus to death, as if to say, “We can’t have this resurrection story going around.”
In every generation the poor man lies at the feet of the rich, only to be ignored and rationalized away, “the poor you have with you always” baloney talk.
Dr. Albert Schweitzer figured this out. He saw the poor man lying at the rich man’s gate as Africa, the people used, abused, their needs ignored by the British Empire. The story drove Schweitzer, a physician, a Doctor of Theology, as well as a classical musician, away from several careers, to go there to use his talent as a healer of the ignored.
Some would say that this parable is offered to warn us of some eternal punishment for our failure to respond to the needs of Lazarus. I think that it is told to reveal to us a different way to live, to love, to be the good neighbor right now.
The other theme that we often use is the blindness of the rich man to the needs of the poor. In our culture, if you are poor it is somehow your fault. One is reminded of a news story following the recent terrible destruction of Puerto Rico. The leader of the richest nation on earth responds by tossing rolls of paper towels to those who have lost everything. His response, clean yourselves up, implying, who needs you?
My teacher Fred Gealy* responded to the Lazarus story to say that the resurrection of Jesus is not to compel faith; it is to offer to us a new possibility of life. We do not need more evidence; we need a new and right spirit. We do not need to be visited by someone from the dead; we need ourselves to be raised from a selfish living death to the newness of life. In his great novel The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky offers the story of The Onion as an interpretation of the parable:
It’s only a story, but it’s a nice story. I used to hear it when I was a child from Matryona, my cook, who is still with me. It’s like this. Once upon a time there was a peasant woman and a very wicked woman she was. And she died and did not leave a single good deed behind. The devils caught her and plunged her into the lake of fire. So her guardian angel stood and wondered what good deed of hers he could remember to tell God. She once pulled up an onion in her garden, said he, and gave it to a beggar woman. And God answered: You take that onion then, hold it out to her in the lake, and let her take hold and be pulled out. And if you can pull her out of the lake, let her come to Paradise, but if the onion breaks, then the woman must stay where she is. The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her. Come, said he. Catch hold and I’ll pull you out. He began cautiously pulling her out. He had just pulled her right out, when the other sinners in the lake, seeing how she was being drawn out, began catching hold of her so as to be pulled out with her. But she was a very wicked woman and she began kicking them. “I’m to be pulled out, not you. It’s my onion, not yours.” As soon as she said that, the onion broke. And the woman fell into the lake and she is burning there to this day. So the angel wept and went away.**
Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, our shield and our hope for life, burn within us the desire to share our lives with each other. Give to us the new future that is beckoning, and help us to know that sharing opens up the future for many. We give you the glory! Amen.
*Gealy, Fred, Let us Break Bread Together, Abingdon Cokesbury, Nashville, p. 90.
**Dostoevsky, Fyodor, The Brothers Karamazov, Chapter 40.
The Rev. Bill Cotton of Des Moines is a retired clergy member of the Iowa Annual Conference. This post is republished with permission from his weekly newsletter, MEMO for Those Who Preach.