Rich or poor…..

Asked whether we would want to be rich or poor most of us would probably choose to be rich but today’s gospel reading (Luke 16:19-31) offers us another biblical warning about the dangers of being rich in material terms but poor in terms of our concern for others…

We’re told “There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores.”

It’s a hugely unpleasant contrast - and I think we’d all probably  agree that we’d rather be the rich man in this story. This man had the best clothes, he ate the best food and he lived in a place of luxury. He lived in a “gated community” and the gate served its purpose of keeping out the less desirable elements of society.

And there are one of those less desirables, named Lazarus, lying there right at this gate. 

That’s the poor man in the story, and the rich man doesn’t want to be bothered with him. Lazarus is lying there, reduced to begging. His body is covered, not with purple and fine linen, but “covered with sores.” He’s not feasting sumptuously every day, but every day he would be content with just a few scraps from the rich man’s table. But those scraps are not coming…

The poor man in the story is lacking the basic necessities of life. He doesn’t have food. He doesn’t have nice clothing. He doesn’t have decent shelter. He doesn’t have anybody to help him out. But there is one thing the poor man does have. He has a name and in the context of the stories Jesus told, this is unusual. 

In fact, this is the only time in all of Jesus’ parables that he gives one of the characters a name. His name is Lazarus.

“Lazarus” would not have been that uncommon a name. Jesus even had a friend named Lazarus. And “Lazarus” means, literally, “The one whom God helps.”

Looking at this at first sight, it doesn’t seem as if God is helping Lazarus much, but God hasn’t abandoned him. When Lazarus dies the roles are reversed. Now the poor man is listed first, and the rich man after him. And there are very different descriptions. The poor man dies and is we read, “carried by the angels to Abraham’s side.” In contrast, for the rich man, it says he “also died and was buried.” No angels. No Abraham’s side. Just “died and was buried.”

The rich man now finds himself in a different place. After he dies he is no longer called “the rich man.” Not only does he not have a name, like Lazarus does, he doesn’t even have the description, “the rich man,” anymore.

Filled with anguish he knows it is too late for him, and he begs for a warning to be sent to his 5 brothers… But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’”

Moses and the Prophets warn against relying on ourselves. They warn against a desire simply for riches and material wealth. They warn against forgetting God as the source for all blessings - or even worse, thinking that God is blessing you with all these good things because you have been so good and he likes you more than someone else !

And the Bible regularly warns us against neglecting others, such as the poor man at our gate, and we’re challenged to look around us and see who those people might be…  those who offer us an opportunity to be God’s channel of blessing and help for that person in need.

The Bible warns us over and over again of the dangers of being so focused on ourselves that we forget the needs of others…

And this story that Jesus told also acts as good news, because it reminds us that there is a rich man who will help every one of us. And that man is Jesus. He wasn’t rich in earthly terms when he lived here, but he offers the greatest riches we can ever have… He is the one who we can absolutely trust in all circumstances, the one who is there with us in even the darkest of times, and the one who shares our joys…

Someone has said, "One of the prime dangers of wealth is that it causes 'blindness'"(John R. Donahur, The Gospel in Parable). In this story the rich man's wealth has so distorted his vision that he is unable to even recognise the suffering of the beggar at his gate, let alone do anything to try and make it better… 

Mother Teresa, one of the greatest examples of a person who lived their life totally committed to God and to the needs of others, framed her whole life around the notion that we see Christ in the poor. She taught those who worked with her to believe that they touch the body of Christ every time they help someone in need.

And the poor are all around us – some we notice, some we don’t, because poverty comes in all kinds of different ways – in material terms and in spiritual terms…

Rich man, poor man - which would we rather be? Hopefully we want to be, and we truly are, the poor man made rich, not necessarily by material possessions but, much more importantly, by the grace of God! 

Now, in Christ, we can put ourselves into this story, and our name is Lazarus, “The one whom God helps”! And we can take on that message to remind people everywhere that we live in a world of Lazarus’ !

The American author Philip Yancey wrote (in The Jesus I Never knew) ‘For the first few centuries, at least, Christians literally took Christ's command to receive strangers, clothe the naked, feed the hungry, visit the imprisoned, until the triumph of the Emperor Constantine, who legalised the faith and established an official church, an imperial church. From then on, the church tended to spiritualise poverty and leave welfare to the emperor. Over time, the church itself became part of the establishment, more concerned about wealth than faith.’

It is a painful judgement about the Church, and perhaps not completely fair, but it is a challenge that reminds us that whilst our faith is personal, we are called to share that faith through our words and our actions for the good of everyone…. As we receive and recognise the blessings we have from God, so we are called to be a blessing to others…

God, through Jesus, stretched out his hand to us. He invites us to take his hand, to journey with him and he asks us to take steps out for others as well – Jesus came to be not just a Saviour, or the Saviour, but our Saviour and everyone’s Saviour. 

As we celebrate that good news, so we’re invited to walk with him day by day into new adventures, discovering new blessings and both sensing and sharing his life changing love wherever we are. AMEN