Proper 21 Year C 2025: Luke 16:19-31

An Egyptian in Amente, the realm of the dead, was allowed to return to earth in order to deal with an Ethiopian magician who was proving too powerful for the magicians of Egypt. He was reincarnated as the miraculous child of a childless couple, Setme and his wife, and called Si-Osiris. When he reached the age of twelve he vanquished the Ethiopian magician and returned to Amente. But before this there was an occasion when father and son observed two funerals, one of a rich man buried in sumptuous clothing and with much mourning, the other of a poor man buried without ceremony or mourning. The father declared he would rather have the lot of the rich man than the pauper, but his son expressed the wish that his father’s fate in Amente would be that of the pauper rather than that of the rich man. In order to justify his wish and demonstrate the reversal of fortunes in the afterlife, he took his father on a tour of the seven halls of Amente. The account of the first three halls is lost. In the fourth and fifth halls the dead were being punished. In the fifth hall was the rich man, with the pivot of the door of the hall fixed in his eye. In the sixth hall were gods and attendants, in the seventh a scene of judgment before Osiris. The pauper was to be seen, elevated to high rank, near Osiris. Si-Osiris explains to his father what they saw, and the fate of the three classes of the dead: those whose good deeds outnumber their bad deeds (like the pauper), those whose bad deeds outnumber their good deeds (like the rich man), and those whose good and bad deeds are equal. (https://www.ldsscriptureteachings.org/2018/03/5629-2/)

It’s easy for us to get caught up in Jesus’ vivid language and turn this story of the rich man and Lazarus into one about the afterlife. After all, there’s torment. There’s flames. There’s the imagery of being so thirsty that the rich man begs for water from just Lazarus’s finger. But this isn’t a new story that Jesus is telling. In this section, Jesus has just been speaking to the disciples, and the Pharisees, who Luke tells us in verse 14 were “lovers of money”, heard Jesus’ teaching and ridiculed him. Today’s text picks up five verses into Jesus’ response to those Pharisees. So it’s important to note that the Pharisees are Jesus’ audience here, not the disciples.

The first part of this story of the rich man and Lazarus, verses 19-26, is a much-traveled story, forms of it being found in several cultures. Some scholars trace its origin to Egypt, where stories of the dead and of messages being brought from the dead are in abundance. At least seven versions are to be found in rabbinic texts. In one version the characters are a rich merchant and a poor teacher; in another a rich and haughty woman and her servile husband. The story in Luke, of course, is Jewish in its orientation, with the call to Father Abraham. If we were to adapt it to our time, it would perhaps be the story of the billionaire and the fruit picker. Insert your favorite combination of the comfortable and the vulnerable and you have your applicable story.

Whatever this story meant in other contexts, it is used here by Luke to address Pharisees who loved wealth and scoffed at Jesus’ position on the subject. As Pharisees who would have been experts on the Scriptures, their love of wealth found its confirmation in the Law and the Prophets, as pointed out in verse 15 where Jesus said to the Pharisees, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others; but God knows your hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God.” The Pharisees believe that whoever is careful to obey the commands of God shall be highly favored. By their logic, that’s how you can tell they obey God’s commands. Deuteronomy 28 says, “Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of your body, and the fruit of your ground, and the fruit of your beasts, the increase of your cattle, and the young of your flock.” (Deut 28:3-4) The equations are quite clear if you’re using Deuteronomy as a literal measuring stick. Wealth equals blessed of God which must equal obedience to God’s commandments.

The problem with accepting that equation as truth is that it assumes that all that happens is God’s will. That the sin of greed, of making money an idol, is being made right by God right now in every second so that the suffering and the poor are still somehow always at fault for their own suffering and poverty. It doesn’t take a degree in sociology or economics to know that that is certainly not the case. Societal ills are much more complicated. And theologically, I cannot worship a God who wills that some people deserve to have more than they could use in a hundred lifetimes while others don’t deserve dinner tonight. That is not the God revealed to us in Jesus Christ.

We can’t dismiss this story as hyperbole because it isn’t. The rich man is not an exaggeration of godless materialism but is a realistic portrait of a man whose wealth was interpreted as evidence of God’s favor. He must be a man with whom the Pharisees can identify. Otherwise the story has interest, but no power. Which is why we ought to substitute people we can recognize into the story - just like Jesus did. Jesus was a good storyteller - that’s why people listened! He was engaging, a good teacher, and a good rhetorician.

While it is true that the story tells us nothing aside from the economic situations of the men - who knows, maybe the rich man didn’t share with Lazarus because Lazarus was a jerk - that feels like grasping for reasons to sympathize with the rich man. Because regardless of who Lazarus is, when the Law specifically requires that the harvest be shared with the poor and the transient (Leviticus 19:9-10), it doesn’t say “only if they’re nice” or “only if they’re as grateful for your largesse as you would like them to be.” It is reaffirmed by the prophets, like in Isaiah 58: “Is this not the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?”

We are given guidance from the epistle to Timothy for an application of Luke. Our text from first Timothy comes from the very end of the letter, where the writer is leaving Timothy with his takeaway. And applying this text from Timothy to the story of the rich man and Lazarus can leave us with a richer understanding of what it is we ought to do. The letterwriter has been giving Timothy all kinds of advice, but reminds Timothy that, first and foremost, he is to place his trust in God. Although very few scholars continue to accept the writer of this letter as Paul, despite its claims of Pauline authorship, today’s text contains a warning that is certainly Pauline in its thought: the warning against idolatry.

Whoever is claiming to be Paul writes, “We brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.” I don’t know about you, but the way I usually hear the proverb spoken is that money is the root of all evil, not love of money. But we can’t let that fool us into claiming if we don’t love money then we’re good to go and can keep hold of all the wealth we’d like as long as we don’t love it. If we’re doing that much work to keep something, maybe, just maybe, we love it more than we’d care to admit. The word for love used in Timothy is philios. That is, brotherly love. Not the word used to describe love between us and God, which is agape. Perhaps the writer of the letter to Timothy knows that money cannot inspire the love which only that of ultimate worth - God - can. And we show our love of God in how we treat those close to God’s heart, for God’s measure of worth is not the same as humanity’s measure of worth.

Luke’s message today is perhaps best summarized by my current favorite Lucan commentary which reads, “Wherever some eat and others do not eat, there the kingdom does not exist, quote whatever Scripture you will.” (197) Amen.