Chasm
Luke 16:19-31
September 26, 2010
For some reason the name Lazarus has always attracted me. I like that name, probably because of the character of its holders in the Gospel. The name Lazarus is the Greek rendering of the Hebrew name Eliezer, “My God is my help,” and there are by one count 11 Eliezers in the Bible, including one who was an ancestor of Jesus. Our association with Lazarus is more specific to his Gospel incarnations. Death and resurrection, abject poverty and sweet repose in the bosom of Abraham are the markers of this name.
Perhaps that’s what makes this a rare name. Have any of you known a real person with the name of Lazarus? My great-great-great-grandfather was named Uriah, a name seldom reused I imagine because of its Biblical connotations (Charles Dickens did not help with one of the great villains of English literature, Uriah Heep). Nevertheless, I do not believe I have ever met a Lazarus. Too bad, for that name has power and grace unlike most others.
A significant part of this name’s power is simply that it was named. Jesus teaches dozens of parables and throughout these uncanny stories there is no name attached to a character. The prodigal son is just the younger son, and the older son and the father are all identified by their roles and traits. The Good Samaritan has no name, nor does the robbery victim he aids. Except for this just one instance: the poor beggar sitting and starving at the gate of the rich man is Lazarus, and everybody knows his name - Jesus, Abraham, even the rich man burning in Hades knows his name.
Names in ancient society gave a sense of personality and power to an individual and many cultures continue that practice today. Anonymity is sometimes employed to protect the names of the innocent, but more often it is a way of reducing a human being to a thing or number or a caricature of who they really are. Of course, when we call someone by a number or role, it often is condescending and demeaning. What kind of status do you have when you are known around the neighbourhood as ‘the trash man’?
So it is peculiar when Jesus begins this parable almost like one of those jokes, “There was a rich man....” Was the rich man supposed to be here a condescending generalization, you know, one of those rich men? You know what they’re like. Slime balls. That’s probably not the first emotion that strikes you on hearing those words, nor was it when Jesus first told his parable. His immediately preceding parable had also begun, “there was a rich man,” and that fellow became the stand-in for God. God, this rich man is not. He ate and dressed divinely well, however. The colour purple was a badge of power and wealth in ancient days, a public statement; and his grand meals and banquets were not eaten without spectators.
Jesus seldom talks about just one person and the second now is as unlike the rich man as you can get - a poor man, desperately poor, sitting at the majestic entrance gate to the rich guy’s mansion, in full view of the rich guy. Being poor, everyone knew he had to have some serious faults. Yet, he had a name, Lazarus.
Could there be a crueler fate than starving watching someone stuffing himself watching you? Lazarus was not well, covered with sores that the not-so-domestic dogs would lick. It’s no surprise, Lazarus died, the way of the world. There is a surprise, for Lazarus was carried by the angels to the bosom of Abraham. An honoured seat at the heavenly banquet, how well he is eating now.
Then the rich man died and was buried. A subtle, but big difference, the rich guy was buried by people, probably by his servants - who wanted to make sure he was dead! - and Lazarus was carried by the angels. The rich man kept going down and ended up in Hades, and now he was in pain with more than a few sores, the hounds of hell licking him. Who’s looking at who eating now? Somehow the rich man is able to look up way off into heaven, something people have always wished to be able to do, but you have to watch what you wish for if you can only see heaven from hell.
The rich man may be hurting, but he hasn’t changed. He calls out to Father Abraham and asks Abraham to send down Lazarus to cool his tongue. He knows exactly who Lazarus is, no anonymous beggar he, and sees him still as his slave. Would you want to touch the tongue of a rich man tormented in hell?
Abraham was nice, but would have none of it because this is the reality, not what the rich man would like to still arrogantly assume. “Remember you had it good during your life and Lazarus had it really bad, and this is the way it really is - he’s comforted and you’re really uncomfortable. I don’t know if you can see it, but a great chasm is between us and you, and it’s made so that there’s no crossing allowed from either side. You’ve made your bed.”
The no longer rich man knows his goose is cooked, but for once he thinks of someone else, his five brothers. Incredibly, he just doesn’t get it and wants Abraham to send Lazarus to warn them of the torment to come. Hey, they have their Bible, says Abraham, they should read it. “No, Father Abraham, I don’t think they are going to read it or believe it, but if someone from the dead talks to them, then they’ll believe.” But Abraham knows that isn’t the way it works. “If they won’t be convinced by the wisdom of the Bible, somebody rising from the dead won’t convince them either.” That is the Christian story, the Gospel, because the resurrection of Jesus on the third day hasn’t convinced a lot of people who don’t first the buy the Bible and its way of life and way of thinking.
This parable is not the mind-boggler of last week’s Dishonest Manager, yet it says something just as significant and can be read and heard on a number of planes. The plain reading of the story is enough as our treatment of the poor from our wealth is exposed in all its grossness and how we usually refuse to give a name, a human identity, to the poor, while thinking we have made a name for ourselves is stripped bare for its shallowness. There are more Lazaruses out there than there are rich men, anonymous or famous, so this is really humanity. We can connect the dots from here.
You know that expression, “can’t see the forest for the trees”? The forest stretched out before us in this parable is that what we pretend is the hard cruel reality of life in this world, where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, is not only not the Gospel, the Good News, but it is not the way it works in God’s world. We are hardened by the ruthlessness of society and people, and so are taken back by the reversals of fortune in these parables as if they are marvelous exceptions to the rule. I know that most people in this world do not buy this and are convinced that the rich men are the ones who set the table for this world, and that all this God stuff doesn’t matter and does not have any effect on reality.
Alright, many like to say it may be a matter of faith, and faith is just your personal opinion and therefore airy-fairy. Like Father Abraham, like Jesus, I insist on saying No - this is not a miracle, but a portrait of reality. We live in God’s world. We are not alone.
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan