Luke 16:19-31 is a narrative parable without introduction or application concerning the great chasm between the rich man and Lazarus. The theme is that considering the challenge of the hour, evasion is impossible. It is a double-edged parable, thereby placing the emphasis upon the second half. For that reason, a better title is the parable of the six brothers.[1] It has two points. In verses 19-26, it is the balancing of earthly destinies in the world to come. It does so by consoling the poor and warning the rich by pointing to the equalization in the world to come. It concerns the reversal of fortune in the afterlife. Since this part derives from a well-known folktale, the emphasis is upon the second part, even though many read it as an epilogue. Only the marginal, the poor, will enjoy heavenly blessing. The parable stresses this point by contrasting the torment of the rich man with the bliss of the poor man. The poor man receives and extraordinary visitation of divine grace. The point is the inescapable alienation of the life of the rich man in relation to the sphere of God, and that the hope of the poor in the world to come.[2] In verses 27-31, it is the uselessness of the return of a dead person to produce belief in the will of God among the obdurate rich. It involves the petition of the rich man that Abraham send Lazarus to his five brothers. It makes it point by saying that Moses and the prophets have made the will of God plain, so that there is no need to ask for a miracle of the resurrection of a dead person to induce belief. Thus, the point is that it is not right to ask God for a miracle as a confirmation of the will of God, for we have all that is necessary in Moses and the prophets. The point is that the surviving brothers, living a careless life, are people of this world, like their dead brother. Like him they live in selfish luxury, deaf to the word of God, in the belief that death ends all. In this case, it is a diversion to focus upon the poverty of Lazarus, the rich man not seeing Lazarus, who is a secondary figure here, or issues regarding an intermediate state after death. It is a warning to all who hear the critical nature of this moment.[3] In this sense, the parable illustrates the truth of Deuteronomy 30:1-14:
11 “For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. 12 It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ 13 Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ 14 But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.
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. 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. Yet, 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.[4] Here is the only parable in which one of the characters has a name. 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 verses 19-26, 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. this part of the parable derives from well-known folk material. The Egyptian folktale (prior to 331 BC) of the journey of Si-Osiris, the son of Steme Chamois to the underworld, which concludes with saying that one who has been good on earth, will be blessed in the kingdom of the dead, and one who has been evil on earth, will suffer in the kingdom of the dead. Alexandrian Jews brought this story Israel, where it became popular as the story of the poor scholar and the rich publican Bar Majan (j. Sanh. 6.23c, j. Hagh. 2.27d). One of the colleagues of the poor scholar was allowed to see in a dram the fate of the two people in the next world. It concluded that a few days later that scholar saw his colleague in gardens of the beauty of paradise, watered by flowing streams. He also saw Bar Majan the publican standing on the bank of a stream and trying to reach the water, but unable to do so.[5]
The story begins with a terse description of the socio-economic conditions of a rich man and Lazarus, focusing on their proximity. 19 There was this rich man, who wore clothing fit for a king, suggesting the finest Egyptian linen, and who dined lavishly every day. He had no need to work. He feasted every day.[6] 20 This 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. This refers to pieces of bread that the guests dipped in the dish, wiped their hands with, and then threw under the table.[7] Dogs even used to come and lick his sores. This would indicate a skin disease, his miserable condition indicating that he was a sinner whom God is punishing.[8] The style of the rich man has a deep connection with that of Lazarus. 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. The story takes a turn. Both men die. Death takes many forms. It kills life, of course. It kills those things that make life sacred and meaningful, valuable, and beautiful. All we can do is affirm the value of life. We are living. Such living is sacred, even with grief, struggle, and suffering.[9] 22 It so happened that the poor man died and was carried by the heavenly messengers to be with Abraham at his side. This indicates a place of honor at the heavenly banquet, the highest for which one could hope, indicates that Lazarus occupies the highest place in the assembly of the righteous. He has discovered God is the God of the poor and destitute.[10]However, it could denote loving fellowship of Abraham and Lazarus quite apart from the feast of the blessed. It belongs to a widercircle of legends about the work of Abraham in the hereafter. It includes the theme of the meal, of rest, and of judgment.[11] 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. 23 From Hades, where he was being tortured, he looked up and saw Abraham a long way off and Lazarus with him. They idea that the damned and the blessed can see each other is a common late Jewish one. It envisions an intermediate state immediately after death.[12] The fate of the rich man is directly opposite to that of Lazarus. In ancient Greek myth, Hades was the god of the underworld. The term appears in the Greek New Testament as corresponding to the Hebrew concept of Sheol, a place of torment, utterly bereft of God. 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.' 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. 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.[13] 25 But Abraham said, `My child, acknowledging kinship with Abraham, but not entitling him to salvation,[14] 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. Impiety and lovelessness are punished, while piety and humility are rewarded.[15] 26 And besides all this, a great chasm has been set between us and you, expressing the irrevocability of the judgment of God,[16] 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.
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.” [17] 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.[18] 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.[19]
However, if we are not careful, we will focus on the contrast in eternity and miss the provocative insight of how the faithful are to live today. Regardless of socio-economic conditions, people have a profound connection to each other, and followers of Jesus recognize that connection to each other. 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. It becomes a warning and exhortation to the wealthy.
17 As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. 18 They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, 19 thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life. (I Tim 6:17-19)
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.
In his short story "Gooseberries" Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) 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.
Verses 27-31 deal with the theme of Jewish lack of belief in the resurrection of Jesus, since verse 31 is clear in its reference to Jesus, and with verses 29, 31 appealing to the Law and the Prophets as Luke will do in his appearance stories.
27 And he said, 'Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father's house, suggesting an appearance of Lazarus in a dream or vision,[20] 28 for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.' 29 But Abraham said, 'They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.' 30 And he said, 'No, father Abraham; but if some one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' Jesus then reaches the climax 31 He said to him, 'If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise (ἀναστῇ) from the dead.'" The climax emerges in the idea of his bodily resurrection. Even so great a marvel, transcending all the daily evidence of the power of God, leaves people unimpressed who will not live in accord with Moses and the prophets. One who will not submit to the word of God will not be converted by a miracle. The demand for a sign is an evasion and a sign of impenitence.[21] This generation entrenches itself in unbelief in its demand for a sign.[22]
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. Thus, the rich man accepts his fate while clinging to one other hope. He begs father Abraham to send Lazarus to the home of his father and address his five brothers, which may refer to Herod Antipas, who lived in opulence as the rich man of this parable and who had five brothers, warning them so that they would not experience this place of torment in eternity. To his credit, he cares enough for his brothers to desire that they receive warning of their peril. Before it is too late, he wants them to see what he now sees. We see the power of regret for how the rich man has lived. However, Abraham says that the Law and the prophets contain all the witness they need: "you shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Lev 19:18). He had not heeded the prophets: "share your bread with the hungry ... bring the homeless poor into your house" (Isa 58:7); "to do justice, and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God" (Micah 6:8). The rich man then says that if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent. Abraham corrects the rich man, who did not listen to the witness of the Law and the prophets and did not recognize the profound bond he had with Lazarus in life, and now, does not recognize the depth of self-deception that veils his brothers, who will not be convinced of their bond with the poor 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.
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.
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 form [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.[23]
[1]
[2] Bammel, TDNT, VI, 906.
[3]
[4] Richard Bauckman, "The Rich Man and Lazarus: The Parable and the Parallels," New Testament Studies (1991), 225-46.
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9] Mark Allstrom, “Talking with Malachi,” March 24, 2002, Australia and New Zealand Unitarian Association Web Site, Anzua.org.
[10]
[11] Rudolf Meyer, TDNT, III, 825-6.
[12]
[13]
[14]
[15]
[16]
[17] C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce.
[18] Barbara Brown Taylor, Bread of Angels, Cambridge: Cowley, 1997, p. 112
[19]
[20]
[21]
[22]
[23] Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 2.34.
[24]
nice
ReplyDelete