The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
September 26, 2010
Vol. 13 no. 38
Some of you have visited and traveled through the Grand Canyon in Arizona, which unfortunately I have not. It is in a manner of speaking a very big long hole. The Canyon stretches for 446 kilometers in length, its width ranges from 15-29 km, and in the old nomenclature it is more than a mile deep.
While the Grand Canyon may provide a beautiful and spectacular image in your mind for the Gospel parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, it is not a chasm, at least in the Biblical sense. A chasm typically describes something of a canyon-like divide, but which is uncrossable from one side or both. Lots of people cross the Grand Canyon. Definitely what Jesus had in mind when Father Abraham replied to the pleading requests of the Rich Man suffering in Hades was, “You can’t get here from there!”
This is not a pleasant story if you think that you are rich in any way. Jesus’ usual parable was an exaggerated tale that would wake up and shock his audience. No allowances and no second chances for the Rich Man, unlike what nice religion is supposed to be about? A pretty wishy-washy story we would all forget if it weren’t so stark a picture.
Jesus was not unintentional in not naming the Rich Man. He’s just one of those kind of people, a dollar a dozen (inflation even in metaphors), yet Lazarus has a name. Jesus sees the world upside down: there are infinitely many more Lazaruses than there are rich men, but in this world we only know the name of the wealthy Rockefellers and Carnegies and Gates. In the real world, God’s world, these powerful people are nobodies. Everybody knows the poor people by name since that’s the way it’s supposed to be.
Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan