Luke 16:19-31 is a parable, unique to Luke, concerning the great chasm between the rich man and Lazarus. Some scholars think it sounds like it might have been in Q, even though the story is unique to Luke. We could go down some interesting paths that would divert us from the point. We could discuss the immortality of the soul, as did Irenaeus in Against Heresies 2.34. We could discuss paradise, hades, heaven, and hell. Yet, I think the parable is directing us to some far more personal matters, related to how you and I live today.
Luke 16:19-26 tell the most familiar part of the story. Jesus goes into some detail to show how sumptuously and elegantly the rich man lived. Then, Jesus paints in sharp contrast a picture of how the poor man lived in complete, disgusting, utter misery. It depicts a scandalous scene of complete indifference of a rich man to the plight of a poor man. Jesus says the poor man lay at the gate of the rich man. He would gladly have feasted upon the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table. Because of the gate, securely locked, there was no way for the poor man to intrude upon the rich man's sumptuous table. 19 There was this rich man, who wore clothing fit for a king and who dined lavishly every day. The story begins with a description of a rich man, drawn both in terms of his clothing and in terms of his consumption of food. 20This poor man, named Lazarus, languished at his gate, all covered with sores. 21 He longed to eat what fell from the rich man's table. Dogs even used to come and lick his sores. Jesus creates a parallel between his description of the rich man with his description of Lazarus, both in terms of his location at the rich man's gate, with the dogs, and his pressing hunger, wishing to eat merely the crumbs from the rich man's table. In this terse contrast of the rich man and Lazarus, Jesus masterfully demonstrates the chasm of difference between their socio-economic conditions. More importantly, however, he also suggests the proximity of their relationship. Lazarus lies at the gate of the rich man and yearns for the crumbs that fall from his table. In other words, though their lifestyles may be far apart, the style of the rich man has a deep connection with that of the poor. His consumption and wealth are in Lazarus's face. They are not, as he might imagine, discrete, or a matter of his personal business. The rich, as Jesus tells this tale, are integrally bound to the poor. Their use and abuse of resources, their greed, their lack of compassion and concern are sinful deeds in and of themselves, to be sure. However, they are also sinful because they seek comfort and pleasure while they deny the full humanity and the life of the poor. They are sinful because they deny God's creative sovereignty in relationship to all of God's children. 22 It so happened that the poor man died and was carried by the heavenly messengers to be with Abraham. The story takes a turn. Both men die. As Jesus tells the tale, we hear of the poor man's death first. At death, he is immediately spirited away by angels to the bosom of Abraham. Within an early Jewish context, this event would reflect a piety based within a fervent care for the Torah, and the traditions of the faith. In death, Lazarus's fate is secure. He resides in the care of the original bearer of God's promise, Abraham. The rich man died too, and was buried. We also hear of the rich man's fate after death. Death takes many forms. It kills life, of course. It kills those things that make life sacred and meaningful, valuable, and beautiful. Some fathers die because they are waiting until other obligations are less demanding before they become acquainted with their children. Some mothers die because they cannot find the time to be more attentive to their children. Spouses die as they refuse to show increased understanding toward each other. Loneliness, friendless, grieving, can all become another form of death. Death tears apart relationships that have meaning land value. We could even say that death is a tearing apart. In the face of such deaths, all we can do is affirm the value of life. We are living. Such living is sacred, even with grief, struggle, and suffering.[1] 23 From Hades, where he was being tortured, he looked up and saw Abraham a long way off and Lazarus with him. As the tale is a narrative portrayal of Luke's theological claims, his fate is directly opposite to that of Lazarus. He is in Hades. The term Hades reflects the ancient Greek notion (seen in Homer) of an underworld, and its god, known as Hades. The term appears in the Greek New Testament as corresponding to the Hebrew concept of Sheol, a place of torment, utterly bereft of God. C. S. Lewis portrayed hell, not as a flaming inferno, but as a dark, shady, chilly, and above all boring place. Its proud citizens may depart whenever they so choose. But just as they did on earth, people choose separation from God, misery over joy, hollowness over reality. One ghost insists, “I don’t want help. I want to be left alone.” Why do they not leave hell for heaven? “There is always something they insist on keeping, even at the price of misery. There is always something they prefer to joy.” Indeed, “There are only two kinds of people in the end; those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in hell, chose it.” [2] Perhaps this is hell, being forever stuck, curved in on ourselves. We are the victims of our own way of life. When we succeed in cutting ourselves off from each other, when we learn how to live with the misery of other people by convincing ourselves that they deserve it, when we defend our own good fortune as God’s blessing and decline to see how our lives are quilted together with all other lives, then we are the losers. Not because of what God will do to us, but because of what we have done to ourselves. Who do you think fixed that chasm in the story? Was it God or the rich man? Sometimes I think the worst things we ever must fear is that God will give us exactly what we want.[3] In this sense, the reversal is complete. Lazarus, while bereft in life, is satisfied now. The rich man, while full of good things in life, is now bereft. It is from this point of reversal that the story begins to offer its lesson. From his new location in Hades, the man looks up and sees Lazarus. Only in Hades does the rich man notice Lazarus. He sees the distance between them, but there has always been a distance between them. He does not understand that there has been a reversal. The story condemns the rich man for his indifference, not because he is rich. Jesus stresses the importance of decision from the perspective of eternal destiny. In this case, the rich man represents the lost in the same way as the lost coin, sheep, and son (see Luke 15) by making the wrong decision of how to live now. At least the younger son had a moment when he came to himself. The rich man never had that experience. Every moment and every situation challenge us to action and to obedience. Jesus taught that we are to love our neighbors. We have no time to sit around ask ourselves whether a person is our neighbor. This moment is a call to action and obedience. We must behave like a neighbor to the other.[4] 24 He called out, `Father Abraham, have pity on me! Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in torment in these flames.' From his tortured position, the rich man looks up to Lazarus and Abraham in the distance. For the first time, this rich man makes the connection between himself and Lazarus - in death, as they were in life, they are brothers, common children of Abraham. He cries out to Abraham, offering pious supplication. While his address to Abraham demonstrates a superficial respect for the tradition, his call for Lazarus to act as his servant demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of it. Now he sees the bond that unites them. This seems ironic. After all, the poor man lay at the rich man's gate. He had to see him as he went in and out of his house. He must have seen him. Each human being as time that begins and ends. Death means the possibility of eternal corruption. Hell is a positive form of punishment. This passage speaks vividly of torment.[5] 25 But Abraham said, `My child, remember that you had good fortune in your lifetime, while Lazarus had it bad. Now he is being comforted here, and you are in torment. 26 And besides all this, a great chasm has been set between us and you, so that even those who want to cross over from here to you cannot, and no one can cross over from that side to ours.> Abraham offers him a lesson in the tradition.
On the one hand, Luke's story of Lazarus and the rich man might seem like a kind of fatalism, (i.e., if you are poor in life, you will receive good things in heaven and vice versa). On the other hand, it teaches an important lesson of how to live faithfully to God's call today. The poor and the rich have a profound connection to one another, and righteous living acknowledges our relationships and works for justice and peace among all of God's children.
Those who doubt that v. 19-26 go back to Jesus point to the folk tales about a rich man and a poor man whose fates reverse in the next world as being known in Egyptian sources. A well-known Egyptian version is that of Is-Osiris, the son of Setme Chamois. Several Jewish folk tales also tell comparable stories in which unethical behavior by the rich leads to judgment and punishment in the next life. Likewise, the poor but righteous receive blessings and comfort in the heavenly kingdom they now inhabit. They also point to the fact that in no other parable of Jesus are the characters given proper names, and the attention to the poor is an especially characteristic emphasis in Luke. Some scholars have taken this focus on finances to an extreme. For them, this parable differs markedly from its other Jewish and Egyptian counterparts in that it is not interested in the ethical status of its two central characters.[6] However, the parable has marks of being authentic. It depicts a scandalous scene of complete indifference of a rich man to the plight of a poor man. The rich man receives condemnation for his indifference, not because he is rich, which Luke would have preferred. The story includes no explicit judgment scene, in contrast to the common tales of the afterlife. The parable reports only the reversal of their fates.
Most scholars, however, consider v. 27-31 as an addition. It reflects the characteristic early church theme of Judean lack of belief in the resurrection of Jesus. v. 31 seems clearly to refer to Jesus, with v. 29, 31 appealing the Law and Prophets as Luke does in later resurrection stories. The full story has a double message, one about the reversal of values, and the other about returning from the dead will not bring reform of others. For Luke, an allusion to Jesus' resurrection is clear, with the main point is the warning to the brothers. Paul also offers a warning in Romans 16:5-17.
As to whether the parable reflects Q or Luke, its themes of justice for the poor and judgment for the rich connect with other aspects of Luke's special material for the gospel tradition. Mary's song at the beginning of the Gospel (Luke 1:46-55), presents the theological and eschatological vision upon which the Lazarus story is based. Mary sings that God has "scattered the proud in the imaginations of their hearts, put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree." In addition, Luke's presentation of the Beatitudes of Jesus dwells upon the material nature of poverty and oppression - for example, "Blessed are you who are hungry, for you will be filled" (Luke 6:21). These claims of blessing are later matched by claims of woe, for example: "woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry" (Luke 6:24-25). In many ways, the story of Lazarus in Luke 16 provides a brief narrative summary of these important theological and eschatological themes. We can also relate the theme of this story to the concern of another New Testament author.
I Timothy 6: 17 As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. 18 They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, 19 thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.
In Luke 16:27-31, the rich man now apparently accepts his fate but still clings to one other hope. 27 He said, relenting on his own situation, the man now asks Abraham to commission Lazarus as his servant in one more way: ‘Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house— 28 for I have five brothers— which may refer to Herod Antipas. His royal appearance in purpose and fine linens, coupled with the fact that at this time, Herod did indeed have five brothers, at least lends some support to this interesting speculation, if not tangible evidence. That he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.’ This request sets up the penultimate lesson of the story. 29 Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’ In other words, the Torah and Prophetic traditions contain all the information one might need for righteous living with the poor. Here the man makes his final plea, preparing for the final lesson: 30 He said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ Return from the dead, in this sense, is a magic trick, or a pure demonstration of God's power. The rich man seeing how wrong he has been in his judgment of the world, realizing now that God's world is not meant to be structured the way our economic systems have structured the world, pleads with Father Abraham to send someone back from the dead to warn his rich brothers of their peril. He wants them to see, before it is too late, what he now sees. There, in Hades, we begin to get a sense of the rich man's regrets.
Regret Number 1. I wish that I had cared for the people around me. The poor man Lazarus was lying at his gate, covered with sores and the rich man stepped over or around him each time he left his home. Every single day, the rich man missed a chance to help Lazarus by simply giving him the leftovers from his table. In his many writings, Charles Dickens did not so much promote a program for the poor as to offer a way of looking at the poor. He gave the poor a human face. Granted, his writings participate in all the foibles of nineteenth century sentimentality, even when extended with kind purpose toward the poor. Yet, he pushed the hard-nosed, insistently practical movers and shakers. Revolutionaries imagine that one can put everything right by altering the shape of society. Once the communist or socialist change occurs, they see no need for other changes. Dickens was not against this or that institution but sought an expression on the human face. Such a moral criticism of society recognizes that regardless of social structures, we are still dealing with the same human beings who will need moral and spiritual change.[7]
Regret Number 2. I wish that I had listened to Moses and the prophets. The rich man realizes in death that he had not paid attention to the word of God as it came through Moses, "you shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18). He had not heeded the prophet Isaiah, who commanded, "share your bread with the hungry ... bring the homeless poor into your house" (Isaiah 58:7).
Regret Number 3. I wish I had had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. Every day, the rich man ignored poor Lazarus, fully aware of the teachings of Moses and the prophets. However, he did not have the courage to live a life of integrity, one in which his actions were in line with what he observed and what he believed.
Father Abraham is not buying. Abraham corrects the man. 31 He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’” The promise of resurrection is a wonderful way of saying that nothing belongs to God will go to waste. God does not even want to lose our mortal bodies.[8]
True piety does not come through such demonstrations, but through faithful attention to hearing God's call and claim on our lives. The traditions of Moses and the prophets contain what one needs on this score. Despite a dramatic parable that captures our imagination, it is possible to miss -- or worse, disregard -- the central tenet of any lesson. In this tale of extremes, Jesus reminds the Pharisees, and all of us, to listen to Moses and the prophets, that is, "to do justice, and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God" (Micah 6:8), which is the enduring challenge. It cannot be an accident for Luke that Jesus' story ends with a reference to rising from the dead, and the power of such an event to transform faith and living. Such a teaching challenges Christian pieties that focus simply on the saving function of Christ's resurrection, without considering the saving aspects of Jesus' words and deeds and saving aspects of God's revelation in the Old Testament writings. The parable teaches an important lesson of how to live faithfully to God's call today. The poor and the rich have a deep connection to one another, and righteous living acknowledges our relationships and works for justice and peace among all of God's children.
In theological circles in the early church, Irenaeus appealed to this parable and its description of the fates of Dives and Lazarus presuppose the immortality of the soul.
1. The Lord has taught with very great fullness, that souls not only continue to exist, not by passing from body to body, but that they preserve the same form3287 [in their separate state] as the body had to which they were adapted, and that they remember the deeds which they did in this state of existence, and from which they have now ceased,—in that narrative which is recorded respecting the rich man and that Lazarus who found repose in the bosom of Abraham. In this account He states that Dives knew Lazarus after death, and Abraham in like manner, and that each one of these persons continued in his own proper position, and that [Dives] requested Lazarus to be sent to relieve him—[Lazarus], on whom he did not [formerly] bestow even the crumbs [which fell] from his table. [He tells us] also of the answer given by Abraham, who was acquainted not only with what respected himself, but Dives also, and who enjoined those who did not wish to come into that place of torment to believe Moses and the prophets, and to receive the preaching of Him who was to rise again from the dead. By these things, then, it is plainly declared that souls continue to exist, that they do not pass from body to body, that they possess the form of a man, so that they may be recognized, and retain the memory of things in this world; moreover, that the gift of prophecy was possessed by Abraham, and that each class [of souls] receives a habitation such as it has deserved, even before the judgment.[9]
Authors in this period accepted the notion of the immortality of the soul, although they opposed Hellenistic and Indian notions of the transmigration and reincorporation of the soul. It opposed the notion that the soul is divine. It opposed the notion of the soul held in the prison of the body. In other words, the biblical notion of the psychosomatic unity of body and soul influenced early Christian thinkers enough to modify the dominant Platonic teaching of the era. Only a turn toward Aristotle could have led the early church down a better and biblically accurate path.[10]
When my sons wanted to treat me to a Father’s Day I would not forget, they took advantage of my love for the Beatles. They took me to the concert of Paul McCartney that was in Indianapolis in the summer of 2013. We discussed much about the band. They knew every song. They reminded me of Pete Best, the drummer for the group until, before the first recording, the producer said they needed to record with a different drummer. I read a little about him. He went into depression for a while. Something about his style was not quite loud enough. He did not socialize with John, Paul, or George very much. I wonder if he had regrets, given the way things played out. We know he did. He went into a period of depression after Ringo replaced him.
Ron Wayne was one of the founders of Apple, along with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. He helped to steer the computer company in its early days and had a hand in designing the famous Apple logo. Wayne owned 10 percent of the company, while Jobs and Wozniak each owned 45 percent. However, Wayne decided to hand back his stake, fearing that he would be liable for a portion of a $15,000 loan if the company went under. Apple succeeded, of course, and if Wayne had held on to his stake, it would now be worth more than $37 billion. Does he have any regrets? Surprisingly, no. "I made my decision on the information I had at the time," he tells James Thomson of SmartCompany. "I've got my health, my family and integrity -- and that is the best fortune you could ask for." Do you believe him? Thirty-seven BILLION dollars -- and NO regrets? Hmmm.
The following lyrics appear in the song, "My Way," popularized by Frank Sinatra:
"Regrets, I've had a few/
But then again, too few to mention/
I did what I had to do and saw it through without exemption/
I planned each charted course, each careful step along the byway/
And more, much more than this, I did it my way."
Paul Anka wrote the lyrics, and many singers recorded the song, including Elvis, Tom Jones, Andy Williams and Anka himself. If that is your way of handling regret, wonderful. I suspect, however, that many of us struggle.
Regret. It occurs when something wrong happens which you cannot fix. Webster's Dictionary defines it as grief caused by the want or loss of something formerly possessed. Leigh Harris put it this way:
I believe regret goes even deeper than that. It is grief from the loss of something because you made a mistake. If you lose something, yet did everything right, you might feel anger, sadness or frustration, but you won't feel regret.[11]
Do you feel this way about any part of your life?
Note that not seeing is so easy. I can sympathize with the rich man's argument. It is so easy not to see. It is so difficult to see. I know that we ought to be able to read the Scriptures. The Law and the Prophets of the Old Testament are clear, Jesus is clear hear, and the rest of the New Testament are clear. Those who have are to care for those who do not. Yet, we selectively read Scripture, hearing what we want to hear, seeing what we want to see. We put a microscope over those verses that we like, and we snip out those verses that we do not like. So, I am saying that I see the rich man's point, when it says, for people as determined to be blind as we, it would take someone rising from the dead to get our attention.
In his short story "Gooseberries" Anton Chekhov writes:
We neither hear nor see those who suffer and the terrible things in life are played out behind the scenes. All is calm and quiet, only statistics, which are dumb, protest: many have gone mad, many barrels of drink have been consumed, so many children died of malnutrition...
And apparently this is as it should be. Apparently those who are happy can only enjoy themselves in silence. In a real world this silent happiness would be impossible. It is a kind of universal hypnosis.
There ought to be a man with a hammer behind the door of every happy man, to remind him by his constant knocks that there are unhappy people, and that happy as he himself may be, life will sooner or later show him its cause, catastrophe will overtake him - sickness, poverty, loss - and nobody will see it, just as he now neither sees nor hears the misfortunes of others. But the happy man goes on living in the petty vicissitudes of life touch him lightly, like the wind in an aspen tree, and all is well.
What an accurate, tragic description this is of the way most of us live. As Chekhov says, "We neither hear nor see those who suffer." We try to structure a society in which the sad things of life are "played out behind the scenes." As the writer says, we need some hammer to hammer upon our brains, we need some way to see that which we are determined not to see. It is almost as if it would take somebody rising from the dead to come back and get us to put things in focus.
We may well need some help to see. Maybe that is why regret can be so powerful.
Now, let us be clear: None of us is perfect, and we will all come to the end of life feeling that we have made mistakes along the way. There are choices we feel badly about, alongside opportunities we wish we had seized. However, what would it mean for us to die with no big regrets?
I have been impressed with how often Jesus, in his journey from Galilee toward Jerusalem, has stressed the importance of deciding now. The biggest regret may well be around shrinking back from doing what God is calling you to do.
A nurse specializing in care of the terminally ill has recorded the most common regrets of the dying, and there is no mention of missed business deals. No regrets about skipped bungee jumping opportunities or even about marriage -- despite the many jokes that link regret to the choice of a mate. (According to one, a woman inserts an ad in the classifieds: "Husband wanted." Next day, she receives a hundred letters. They all say the same thing: "You can have mine.")
No, the top five regrets discovered by the nurse include:
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier. People admit that they feared change in their lives, so they pretended that they were content. In fact, they wish they had laughed more and allowed themselves to be sillier.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. People feel badly that they focused so much upon their own lives that they let important friendships slip away.
3. I wish I had had the courage to express my feelings. Many people suppress their feelings to keep peace with others.
2. I wish I had not worked so hard. Every male patient expressed this regret. Every single one of them.
The number one big regret, discovered by nurse Bronnie Ware and reported in The Guardian (February 1, 2012): 1. I wish I had had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. This is the most common regret of all. "Most people had not honored even a half of their dreams," says Ware, "and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made."
Do these big regrets ring true? What would you regret if this were your last day on earth? You might have a regret about which you can do nothing to correct. With that regret, I invite you to turn it over to God, entrust it to God, and live your life free of that burden. Remember the promise in Romans 8:28, that all things work together for good to those who love God and respond to that calling positively and live out the purpose of God in their lives. You might have a regret about which you can do something. We are not yet in the afterlife, calling out to Father Abraham. We are not stuck in a place of regretting that we did not do enough, that we did not do more, that we did not choose wisely, that we did not have enough time. If we are breathing, we can choose to care for the people around us, listen to the teachings of the Bible, and live a life that is true to our deepest convictions. If we do, we will have no big regrets.
Choices do not have to be large to be life changing. Slight changes can have a large impact. One obvious example from our story today, the rich man could have simply shared some of his food with Lazarus to care for the people around him. He could have even had his servants get the food and drink. Another obvious example from our story is to share in word and deed with others, and in your unique way, your basic life commitment to be with Jesus and to follow him. Another obvious example is to be sure you live today in a way that leads to eternal fellowship with Jesus. To do that, you simply need to develop that friendship here, because you see, as powerful as death is, it cannot break that friendship.
[1] Mark Allstrom, “Talking with Malachi,” March 24, 2002, Australia and New Zealand Unitarian Association Web Site, Anzua.org.
[2] C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce.
[3] Barbara Brown Taylor, Bread of Angels, Cambridge: Cowley, 1997, p. 112
[4] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship.
[5] Barth, Church Dogmatics III.2 [47.5] 603.
[6] Richard Bauckman, "The Rich Man and Lazarus: The Parable and the Parallels," New Testament Studies (1991), 225-46.
[7] (George Orwell, quoted in Robert Coles, Harvard Diary - Reflections on the Sacred and the Secular [New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1988].)
[8] “The resurrection is God’s way of revealing to us that nothing that belongs to God will ever go to waste,” wrote Henri J.M. Nouwen in Our Greatest Gift. “What belongs to God will never get lost — not even our mortal bodies.”
[9] Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 2.34.
[10] Systematic Theology Volume 2, 182-4.
[11] --Leigh Harris, "How to deal with regret," Think Simple Now Website, thinksimplenow.com. Retrieved April 19, 2013.
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