Having A Name
Luke 16:19-31

September 26, 2004

There is a rare condition of brain damage which can cause a person to become blind, not because they cannot see anything, but that they see everything. The brain has lost its ability to sort all the images thrown at. The result is overload and one sees nothing in particular.

The parable of the rich man and Lazarus vividly causes you to see in your mind’s eye a depiction of God’s real world in which a different sorting out occurs. But is seeing necessarily believing?

You can see it: the rich man dressed in finely tailored clothes, comfortable yet luxurious to the touch. He has no name, no identity, except his wealth, so we envy him nevertheless.

You can see a poor man, a beggar, on the wrong side of the rich man’s gate. Clothes usually cover the naked body, but this man was covered with sores and festering wounds. Yet he had a name, Lazarus, and we can see him more readily than we can see the rich men and women of our day. Rich men live inside where we are inhibited from seeing their wealth, while poor men are always outside where we can easily see their poverty.

However, the rich man did not see Lazarus because he had a gate blocking his vision. Lazarus was starving for the table scraps which fell from the rich man’s table, but that bread does not land outside the gate. And so, among other causes, Lazarus died.

Dying was easier than living for Lazarus, especially since he was carried away by angels to glory land. There he was the honoured bosom buddy of Abraham, the original patriarch of all God’s people.

The rich man also died, but he didn’t go away, he went down, straight down to Hades, to Sheol, to hell. And there he could see. There he noticed.

There was no gate, no inside or outside. Just a gap, a chasm, stretching an immeasurable distance, and yet far off he could see Lazarus having fun with Abraham. He knew who he was. He had seen him before, but just never had bothered to take notice. So from a Saskatchewan sense of distance, there is really not much distance between heaven and hell. You just can’t get from here to there.

Now some of you are probably already feverishly working out the salvation mathematics in your mind: does this mean that if you are rich, wealthy you are going to hell? And does this also mean that if you are poor and destitute you are going to heaven, no questions asked? What about spending your money wisely and compassionately, helping others? Isn’t the criterium how you use your money? Since this parable is probably a story Jesus has borrowed, one should not think it is a precise blueprint of the layout of heaven and hell. However, the evangelist Luke in particular does keep insisting that “blessed are the poor” and “woe to the rich.” I guess you have to keep that in the front of your mind when you are thinking about wealth.

The rich man didn’t have a name, but he knew Lazarus’ name. Perhaps he didn’t believe that this hell in which he was suffering was real, just like so many of us who watched on TV the tragedy of the World Trade Center and did not believe it was real, that it wasn’t a movie. So he doesn’t speak to Lazarus - never did talk to him before on the other side of the gate - he talks to Father Abraham and wants him to order Lazarus to come over and give him relief. Even in hell, the rich man believed he was better than Lazarus.

Boy, it no longer works that way, says Abraham. Clarence Jordan translates impishly the Gospel term of address “child” as “boy” - the nameless way by which Southern whites would address even 60 year old black men. The rich man is now “the boy.” After all, there’s an infinite gap between us, Abraham explains, one which you helped to construct through your walls and gates.

An odd, ironic kind of altruistic bargaining ensued. The rich man knew there was no hope for himself, but he wanted to save someone other than himself, perhaps for the first time. He had five brothers he wanted to order Lazarus to visit and deliver the message. They’ve got the Bible, it’s already written down there, replies Abraham.

They are not going to listen to the Bible and all that religion stuff, the rich man knows all too well. Send Lazarus back from the dead - the five brothers must have all known who Lazarus was and all five had ignored him too - and then they will believe.

If the Bible is not good enough to be paid attention to, then they won’t even notice someone coming back from the dead, concludes Abraham.

Yes, we fail to notice the poor, whether it be because of compassion fatigue, survival instinct, or just plain greed and self-centredness. I believe it is healthy to raise objections to the Bible when we have to do so. But we are a people whose very reason for presence in this place on this Sunday morning is because someone has risen from the dead and appeared to us.

Still, Abraham is right even today, for many people dismiss any talk of the cross and the resurrection and religion as naive nonsense, primitive thinking. It is not unusual to see signs of God and the Resurrection, but you do have to notice.

Seeing him has made a difference; it has altered our vision and made us notice a whole new world. Seeing Jesus on the third day has made us read Moses and the prophets differently. I was blind, but now I see. Not intellectually, but in the depths of our souls, since we have known a resurrected Lord from the decay of three days’ death, we are able to notice a poor person by our door.

This is a parable - a story thrown down at your feet to notice. In the real world, which is God’s world, one notices that it is Lazarus who has a name.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan