The Beatitudes with a Plot [Proper 21C - Luke 16:19-31]

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Luke 16:19-31

 

The Beatitudes with a Plot

 

There is one question we must answer today at the very outset of our exploration of this unsettling Gospel passage.  If we hope to make sense of this Gospel, there is something we absolutely must determine about the finely dressed, sumptuously fed man in Jesus’ story: is he a bad man or is he a rich man?  Is he a bad man or is he a rich man? 

 

Or perhaps we might ask ourselves: does Jesus want us to think of the man in the story as a bad man or a rich man?  At first glance, the man doesn’t look good.  Certainly, he is not presented favorably.  A poor man died, hungry and suffering, at his gate and it appears the rich man did nothing to ease his pain.  By the end of the story he is being tormented in a land of fiery agony.  He’s definitely not the hero of this story.  

 

And yet, neither is this man presented as heartless or morally bankrupt.  When he is denied comfort in the afterlife, rather than continue to plead his own case, he immediately sets aside his personal plight and thinks of his five brothers.  Five brothers are a lot of brothers; the odds of liking all five seems low.  And yet, he obviously loves them; he spends more time and effort advocating for them than he does even for himself.  That’s not nothing.  Also, Jesus does give us a pretty big clue in our search for an answer to our question: it is probably significant that, unlike the poor man, Jesus never gives the rich man a name; instead he repeatedly calls him “the rich man.”     

 

Now in real life, in the messy world in which we inhabit, this, bad or poor, is hardly an either/or question.  The Venn diagram of rich and bad would probably feature a healthy intersection.  But for our purposes, I think this is a very important question.  Because if this man is simply a bad man, a terrible person, it is easy for us to dismiss Jesus’ parable as: not applicable to us, to decent people.  That would give us permission to create some distance between us and this wealthy scoundrel, this Bond villain.  But if he is just a rich man, a man not hostile, but apathetic to the needs of the poor; someone who during his lifetime, as Abraham says in the parable, received good things; who possessed the means to eat meat every single day; or was wealthy enough to build a fence around his property; or was even affluent enough to wear colorful shirts.  Well, then, it is a bit harder to ignore this difficult parable.

 

You see, Jesus told this parable to neither a room of opulent robber barons nor to a gathering of impoverished beggars.  The Gospel of Luke tells us that the original audience for Jesus’ parable is his own disciples.  We also discover, in this chapter, in the verses that precede today’s passage, that some Pharisees, some religious professionals, whom Luke identifies as “lovers of money,” though perhaps not possessors of much money, are eavesdropping on the conversation – a fact of which Jesus seems well aware.  Neither audience, the disciples nor the Pharisees, were as poor as Lazarus nor as rich as the rich man in the story.  Both of the featured characters, as is typical in Jesus’ parables, are extreme examples, in this case, of economic disparity, because Jesus liked to use hyperbole to draw his audience in.  Jesus’ hearers, like most of us, lived somewhere in the vast middle, in between the characters of this particular parable.  But also like most, both audiences would have, I suspect, preferred the lifestyle of the rich man to the earthly plight of the man covered with sores and starving to death.  However, they would have undoubtedly much desired the eternal fate of the poor man.  Where this parable gets really uncomfortable is that, unfortunately, Jesus doesn’t seem to present the “best of both worlds” as an option.

 

And that does not feel good – at least not to those of us who are living comfortably in this world.  Because as Abraham says, a bit too matter-of-factly (and I am paraphrasing here), “You received good things during your lifetime, this guy received evil things, so now we’re just gonna do the opposite; he’ll be comfortable; you will live for all eternity in agony.”  That reversal only seems fair if you don’t really think about how long eternity is.  And while this parable does fulfill Jesus’ mission to bring good news to the poor, this parable does not really feel all that much like good news to anyone else.

 

And in that way is very much like Luke’s version of the Beatitudes.  Most of us are more familiar, and happier, with Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes.  Matthew doesn’t mess with our stuff or comment on our money.  Matthew keeps it airy and spiritual.  Luke doesn’t.  Unlike Matthew’s Jesus, Luke’s Jesus refuses to spiritualize the sayings.  And so instead of the more adaptable maxims “Blessed are the poor in spirit” or “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” Luke’s Gospel simply says, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” and “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.”  And then Luke’s Jesus, like one of the prophets of old, issues a series of disturbing woes, woes that are absolutely absent from Matthew’s telling: “woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation” and “woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.”  Why this is important is that today’s parable is basically just Luke’s version of the beatitudes but with a plot.  

 

So what do we do with this parable – beside squirm while it is read in church once every three years?  And what is the answer, the take away?  Should the rich man have given all of this wealth to Lazarus?  Should Lazarus have refused that wealth for the sake of his soul?  Is poverty our only hope?  Are possessions our condemnation?

 

I have preached on this Gospel a number of times.  What caught my attention this time, this year, is that the rich man demonstrates no desire to join Lazarus on the Abraham side – even though the side on which he finds himself is objectively terrible.  He does famously, or infamously, try to enlist the poor man as his afterlife servant, asks Abraham to send Lazarus over to wet his tongue.  But never does he ask to move in with Lazarus.  And that should be surprising because it seems like the most obvious petition the rich man could make given the circumstances.  Why would one not long to leave a place of torment and agony? 

 

The only reason I can come up with is that this rich man doesn’t want to live with a poor person, that maybe death could not dislodge the prejudices he harbored on earth.  On earth he invested in separation from the poor.  He built fences and gates to keep the poor and their poverty away – from him and from his family.  In this vision of the afterlife, he remains safely separated – this time by a great chasm.  But are we sure that the rich man is not the one that fixed that chasm?  So that he could continue to keep his preferred distance?

 

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”  And maybe the rich man couldn’t, or wouldn’t, live with that reversal: a kingdom that belonged to the poor, a kingdom in which he served the man who once begged, unheeded, at his gate.  Maybe, all things considered, he was comfortable with the flames.  Maybe the rich man wasn’t a bad man; maybe he was just a rich man who was blinded to the plight of the impoverished by the glare off of his gold.  Maybe he was just a rich man whose wealth allowed him to avoid the poor and ignore the injustices that cursed their lives.  Maybe he was just a rich man whose wealth allowed him to build fences and institutions that insulated him and his children from the unfortunate and the undesirable.  Maybe he was just rich enough to fix a chasm between him and those toiling in the margins – a chasm that he carried, in his heart, into eternity. 

 

In his very first sermon, in the fourth chapter of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus declared that his mission was to bring good news to the poor.  That good news is that the kingdom of God is theirs; the kingdom belongs to the poor.  The question then that Jesus poses to his disciples, and to the Pharisees, and to all those within earshot is: are you willing to live in their neighborhood?  Are you willing to live in a kingdom that belongs to the poor, that is packed with the oppressed, that is filled with those who have been abused and excluded, with those whom in this life have received evil things?   Because that is the way in.  And if we say we are willing, willing to share their Heaven, is it too much for Jesus to expect us to honor and respect our poor neighbors now, while we are still alive and living here on earth?