Sermon for 15th Sunday after Trinity: Dives & Lazarus

Introduction to the service: our reading from Luke employs two binaries, the rich and the poor, heaven and hell. These binaries are not separate axes, in the Kingdom of Heaven they come together, because in the Kingdom of Heaven the first shall be last, and the last shall be first. So what should those who have material wealth do? We heard in our reading from Luke last Sunday, “I tell you, use worldly wealth to make friends for yourselves so that when it is gone, they will welcome you into eternal dwellings.” Store up treasure in heaven.

Deuteronomy 15: 7 – 11

7If anyone is poor among your fellow Israelites in any of the towns of the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward them. 8Rather, be open-handed and freely lend them whatever they need. 9Be careful not to harbour this wicked thought: “The seventh year, the year for cancelling debts, is near,” so that you do not show ill will toward the needy among your fellow Israelites and give them nothing. They may then appeal to the Lord against you, and you will be found guilty of sin. 10Give generously to them and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. 11There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be open-handed toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.

Luke 16: 19 – end

19“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. 20At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores 21and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

22“The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. 23In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. 24So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’

25“But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. 26And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’

27“He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, 28for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’

29“Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’

30“ ‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’

31“He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’ ”

The story of Dives and Lazarus loomed large in the medieval imagination, inspiring many colourful depictions of Dives tormented by daemons and Lazarus tended by the angels. It was also a favourite topic for preachers, the story is a gift for anyone standing in a pulpit, after-all, the bad guy gets his comeuppance - so what’s not to like? You can imagine the poor of the middle ages identifying with Lazarus, sorrowing with him, and then be delighted at the punishment of the rich man Dives.

You may have noticed the rich character in the bible story isn’t actually called Dives. However, the Latin word ‘dives’ means ‘rich’ and so in time the description of the character’s wealth became mistaken for his name. The medieval mind rarely let biblical scholarship get in the way of a good story.

If you are ‘dives’, that is rich, then the story is certainly challenging. The message is have compassion on the poor, or else go to hell. There is no get out clause, the rich are not to only have compassion on the worthy poor, or the respectable poor, or the poor who are willing to help themselves, the rich must help the poor in when they turn up at their gate. We are not told if Lazarus is a wastrel, or a dissolute drunk, or if he is a good man fallen on hard times, he is just someone in need of help.

By the way, you cannot surmise from the fact he ends up in heaven that he is a good man; he may have repented at the last.

People are usually very reluctant to self identify as being ‘rich’, after all no matter how rich you are there is always someone richer, and being rich brings responsibilities, but the truth is most of us are actually richer than we think, in terms of material wealth more of us are Dives than Lazarus.

For example, do you think you could live on $10 dollars a day? That's about £7. Close to 80% of the world’s population face the challenge of living on only $10 dollars a day, so if you make over $10 a day you are in the top 20% of wealthiest people in the world. So in global terms we are Dives, not Lazarus, and remember the story is uncompromising, have compassion or go to hell.

Perhaps this is a part of the reason why the story of Dives and Lazarus is not as popular as it once was. We are quite fond of our reasons to withhold both our compassion and our money, but the bible doesn’t give us that option.

However, the bible also requires that we act wisely. A good steward balances the books and makes wise plans for the future, and good stewardship is as much a biblical principle as compassion, but then I think that makes things even harder because not only do we have to be compassionate, we have to be so in ways that actually help and are sustainable.

I think this Parable has also fallen out of favour because hell has fallen out of favour. The contemporary imagination is not as hellishly lurid as the medieval mind, and not so willing to be brow beaten into compassion by threats of hell.

What’s wrong with being good for its own sake?

And anyway, who believes in hell these days?

Even many prominent clerics don’t believe in hell.

I am not a prominent cleric, I am an obscure country parson, but I do believe in hell.

As your Parish Priest, let me be quite clear, if you do not have compassion then your eternal soul is at risk of perdition. If you do not have compassion you alienate yourself from God and from each other, and that's the route to hell.

I also ought to be clear that I do not believe in the vision of hell painted onto the walls of our medieval churches, or the pictures of hell that appears to exist in the popular imagination. I sometimes call it the ‘Disneyfication’ of hell, all those cartoonish little red devils romping about roasting people. Fantasy and tradition have gleefully taken the stories of the bible on a two thousand year odyssey in directions almost wholly inconsistent with the stories’ original meanings.

Dives, the rich man, is in ‘Hades’, a Greek word meaning ‘the place of the dead.’ Here he is in ‘basanois’ -‘torment’, because of the flames.

I understand this to be metaphorical language; this does not make it any easier for Dives, he is real distress, but he may not be in real flames.

I have met people who are in hell, people for whom the fires of hell seem very real. I recall a young man who came running into Leicester Cathedral one day when I was on duty; he slumped down on to a chair, sweating feverishly, and with wild staring eyes. It was very clear that he was under the influence of illegal drugs, indeed he told me he was. He also told me his friend had just died from an overdose, and the only way he could cope with this was to take drugs, and that he was absolutely desperate with fear because he felt one day it would kill him too. He was in hell, trapped in a cycle of addictive self destructive behaviour. He was in absolute torment and terror, but if I used the language of flames to describe his plight you would understand that he was not on fire, in fact his situation was far worse than that – there are no words I can use to convey his horror.

You may be able to think of times in your own life, times of deep burning distress, that could be described in terms of torment. If we allow evil to become trivialised by our culture’s Disneyfication of hell then we are in danger of proclaiming a faith that is irrelevant and naive. Heaven and hell are both apparent in this world, and the fight to save souls from torment is very real. In this world heaven and hell contend, in the next they are separated out, as in the parable of the wheat and the tares.

The story of Dives and Lazarus is written in allegorical language but it is about very real and pressing difficulties, the hunger of the poor is real and hellish, and Dives’ hardness of heart is evil. There would have been people in the crowd listening to Jesus, tenant farmers thrown off the land due to Roman taxation, who would have had the gnawing pain of hunger in their stomachs.

In our modern Western society dominated by the idea of science we have became very literal and find it hard to understand symbolic language, whereas the ancients conversed in symbol and allegory. For instance, notice it is Abraham the great Patriarch of Israel who Dives calls out to for mercy, and into whose care the poor man Lazarus is placed. Abraham is Israel’s founding father, the touch stone of monotheistic authenticity. So we can see by this symbolism the rich man of the story by not caring for the poor has betrayed the heritage of his forefather’s. Whereas Lazarus, ignored by the wealthy, has been accepted by Abraham. In this story Jesus is directing a powerful criticism against the Jewish authorities, he is telling them that they are unworthy of their heritage because they have neglected the poor. In this story Abraham functions as a symbol of Israel’s heritage, and the rich man functions as a symbol of Israel’s ruling elite. The poor and dispossessed peasant farmers who gathered to hear Jesus speak would have understood this and cheered, whilst the Scribes and the Pharisees in the crowd would have heard this and scowled.

We read the rich man implores Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his brothers so that the same fate does not befall them. Abraham replies that they have been told, ‘they have Moses and the Prophets.’ The rich man persists, ‘if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ But Abraham replies, ‘If they did not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

What will it take to convince us to repent, we too have Moses and the Prophets, and we also have the ultimate divine testimony, Jesus Christ risen from the dead. In Jesus lies our salvation, our route to heaven in this world and the next, but we cannot claim to be followers of his way, the way to eternal life, if we do not have compassion. 1 John 3 verse 17 says this,

‘...whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?’

We must seek and follow the way that leads to life for ourselves, and for those around us, and ask the forgiveness of God when we fall short.

Amen

Introduction to Communion

William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army

"Brought it all on themselves do you say? Perhaps so, but that does not excuse our assisting them. You don't demand a certificate of virtue before you drag some drowning creature out of the water, nor the assurance that a man has paid his rent before you deliver him from the burning building."

When we come to the table of the Lord, we do not have a certificate of virtue, and our rent has by do means been paid in full, yet God delivers us.