Friday, September 12, 2008

The Rich Man and Lazarus, Part 20 of 28

TEXT: Luke 16:19-31

IDEA: The rich man was lost because he was wealthy, and that's all he was.

PURPOSE: To have listeners evaluate their spiritual state by the way they regard money.

The Bible doesn’t tell us a great deal about life after death. You might think that it would. But it does not. Perhaps that’s because we have little ability to understand what lies ahead for us. For instance, imagine twins in a mother’s womb wondering about life after birth. They would have many questions. Imagine that you were assigned the task of telling those pre-borns about their world to come. How would you do it? You might talk about a world full of light, but how would infants in a mother’s stomach understand “light”? You might tell them that they would live completely free of the fluid that surrounds them and in the future they would breathe air. That would sound more like a threat than a happy prospect. They would question how anyone could possibly exist without fluid? And what do you mean by air? Or try telling those pre-born twins about growing up to thirty times their weight or developing to maturity—whatever that means—or living separated from their mother and father. What is a father? And it is utterly ridiculous to chatter about existence away from a mother. The twins would tell you to stop talking nonsense. You would not find it easy—or even possible—to describe to pre-born infants the realm they were about to enter . . .

So the Bible tells us relatively little about life on the other side of the grave. God is limited by our limitations. We simply don’t have the ability to understand the wonder and the horrors of what lies ahead. But there is one parable that apparently draws back the curtain a bit to give us a peek into what is on the other side. That’s why this particular story fascinates us. It satisfies our curiosity about spheres unknown. It is the story of two men who couldn’t have been more different. They had two different lifestyles, two different deaths, and two different destinies.

Listen to what Jesus says about the way they lived. “Now there was a certain rich man, and he habitually dressed in purple and fine linen, happily living in splendor every day of his life. And there was a certain poor man named Lazarus who was laid at the rich man’s gateway full of sores, and longing to be fed with the bread that fell from the rich man’s table; besides even the dogs were coming and licking his sores” (Luke 16:19-22).

The two men existed side-by-side, but they were as different as both ends of society. One was wealthy, supremely wealthy. He had an expensive wardrobe in the latest, most lavish styles, and he was a gourmet who ate banquet food every day. Jesus doesn’t tell us his name, but you can be sure that it appeared regularly in the gossip columns and in People magazine.

The other man was a beggar who sat at the entrance to the rich man’s house. This poor fellow existed off the scraps from the wealthy man’s table. We know his name. More important, God knew his name. It is “Lazarus” which means “God is my helper.” Looking at him sitting in his rags, his name seemed to mock him. God didn’t seem to be doing very much for Lazarus. Most folks would have regarded the rich man as the one whom God’s helped. But God looks beyond expensive clothes and expansive lifestyles and sees the heart. The poor man was the one whom God helped. Jesus knew his name. God knew his heart.

Having told us how the two men lived, Jesus then tells us how the two men died. “Now it came to pass that the poor man died . . .” Of course, we would have expected that. The man suffered from malnutrition. People with poor diets usually die from lack of food. Most passersby would have felt that he was probably better off dead. Death put him out of his misery. Therefore, nobody was startled or upset by it. Men and women die like that everyday in our cities and nobody cares much. The rich man may have noticed that the beggar was gone. He and his guests would no longer have to be offended by the beggar’s presence at the gate to the mansion. But no one was surprised or cared that Lazarus had died.

But, Jesus tells us, “the rich man also died and was buried.” Now that made the newspapers. Citizens of the town could easily spare the beggar, but a leading citizen who used his money to throw lavish parties--well, that’s something else. “The rich man also died.” He died in spite of his bank accounts. He died in spite of his big house. He died in spite of his expensive suits. One day into that rich man’s home without so much as an appointment strolled Death. With his boots covered with the clay of new-made graves, death entered and moved this wealthy, cultured man out of his mansion into a tomb. He changed the man’s address to a cemetery. Death is the great egalitarian. He treats all of us equally. Money or influence or power cannot buy him off. Thomas Gray’s Elegy makes that point with disturbing force:

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Awaits alike th’inevitable hour,
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

The rich man died and evidently had a funeral. Jesus makes the point that the rich man was buried. Nothing is said about a funeral for the beggar. I suppose he had none. Funerals cost money. His old sick body full of sores was probably found in the Street and carted away with the day’s garbage. “Rattle his bones over the stones, he’s only a beggar whom nobody owns.” But the rich man had a proper burial. Everyone attended the event and a large crowd accompanied him out to the burial ground. They probably placed an impressive headstone over his grave. So you see in the way these two men lived and in the way they died, these characters in Jesus’ parable could not have been more different.

Then Christ drops the curtain. When he lifts it again it rises upon the world unseen. The destinies of these two men, like their lives and deaths, couldn’t have been more different. Jesus goes on, "Now it came about that the poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom; and the rich man also died and was buried. And in Hades he lifted up his eyes being in torment, and saw Abraham far away and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried out and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue; for I am in agony in this flame’" (Luke 16:22-24).

People talk about death as the great equalizer. That’s true in that all of us die. But in this story Jesus portrays a great reversal of fortune. The poor man is rich and the rich man is destitute.

We need to be careful at this point. Any thoughtful person asks, “What is it that brought that rich man to such a horrible state? Why is he in torment?” One easy explanation is that given enough time everything evens out. The poor are rewarded, and the rich are punished. It’s rather satisfying to think that this bloated rich man gets what’s coming to him in the next life. “That’s the way it should be,” we feel. In heaven and hell the accounts are squared for what we go through down here. Of course a good Marxist would tell you that this story is a sedative for the people. It keeps the poor quiet in their misery if they believe that in some far off day, the poor will eat and the rich will starve.

That’s an attractive explanation, but it won’t hold. Jesus isn’t teaching in this story--or any place else for that matter—that wealth in itself is immoral and that all wealthy people are sinful. This rich man didn’t land in hell because he was wealthy. Notice Jesus describes Lazarus as resting in “Abraham’s bosom.” Abraham is there along with Lazarus. This is a banquet scene in which guests reclined around a table. Lazarus sits next to Abraham in a seat of honor. He could lean back on Abraham. You couldn’t use Abraham as a representative of the down-trodden masses. Go back to Genesis and read the story of Abraham you’ll see that he was an extremely wealthy man; he was also a very powerful man who had servants to do his bidding. Measured by the standards of his day Abraham was extremely wealthy. That Abraham sits at the banquet table with Lazarus cancels out any idea that all rich people are bad and go to hell and that all poor people are good and end up in paradise. Jesus didn’t teach that here or any place else.

Nor is Jesus hinting that this rich man gained his wealth through unscrupulous practices. Jesus doesn’t give this rich man low marks for exploiting or defrauding other people. For all we know, he may have inherited his wealth from his parents. Jesus doesn’t put this man down for being part of a privileged class in his society. So it’s clear Jesus isn’t saying that the rich man was in hell merely because he was wealthy. If that were the case, then Abraham would be in hell as well. A bank account doesn’t put you into hell.

Well, why is this rich man in hell? What put him there? When you have questions about a passage of Scripture it’s a good practice to look at the context in which it is found. If you do that, you’ll find that in the section of Luke 16 before the parable, Jesus discusses the subject of money. He stresses that wealth is a trust. We are to use it wisely for eternal benefits.

To illustrate that, Jesus told another parable about a shrewd vice-president who ran an office for a firm. The owner of the company heard rumors that this manager wasn’t running a tight ship and he fired the man giving him a couple of weeks to get his accounts in order. Having been given his pink slip, the vice-president decided that he could do with a few friends. So he called in all of the debtors who owed money to his firm and offered to settle their accounts for a percentage of what they owed. When the owner of the business realized he had been outsmarted, he took it with good humor. He actually commended the vice-president—not for his dishonesty, but for his shrewdness. Then Jesus drew the lesson: “Use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed (or they will welcome you) into eternal dwellings” (Luke 16:9).

Jesus’ point was simply this: The manager had used the possessions entrusted to his care to benefit others and to make friends who would later speak for him and look after him. So Jesus says, “Make friends for yourself by the way you use your money, so that when it is gone (or you are gone), these friends will welcome you into heaven.”

Jesus isn’t saying that you can buy your way into heaven. But he is arguing for a way at looking at money which is often ignored today. You and I are stewards. Our wealth is loaned to us by God. We are put in trust with it. We are to use it not to accumulate more and more of what we have enough of already.

We are to use it in the service of God and for the benefit of others. If you want to invest for eternity, then invest in people. People last; money does not.

Luke tells us there were some religious leaders listening to that parable of the shrewd vice-president. They scoffed at what Jesus was saying because they loved money. Even though they were religious, they had a passion for wealth. Jesus tells this story of the rich man and Lazarus with those religious leaders in mind. He’s warning them, and he is warning us. You can’t serve God and money. Show me someone dedicated to accumulating money and lavishing it on himself, Jesus says, and I will show you someone headed for hell.

No matter how “blessed” you appear, no matter how often you show up for church, or how well marked your Bible, you can’t serve God and money. You will have an allegiance to one or the other. If you are devoted to money, then by definition you despise God. The love of money by those religious leaders proved that their hearts did not belong to God, and therefore, their destiny could not be with God.

When a man or woman looks to Jesus Christ for help and salvation then that affects the basic allegiance of their lives. That rich man could have invested in Lazarus sitting at his gate and made him his friend. He did not. That not only tells you something about how he treated a poor man. It tells you about his lack of a relation to God. He was materially rich and spiritually a pauper. That was his undoing. You do not buy God’s favor with your money, but if you really know God then you will put your money at his disposal.