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| "Lazarus at the Rich Man's Gate" by Fyodor Bronnikov (1827-1902) |
“…between us and you a great chasm has
been fixed…” (Luke 16:26a)
“That’s my dad,” Brian said. He pointed to
the face in the Confirmation class photo taken in 1979 when John, his father,
was fourteen years old. I showed him the picture in our church’s Confirmation Book,
the photographic record of all the youth who had affirmed their baptisms at
Faith Lutheran of Philadelphia from 1961 to the present. Brian and I had met to
go over the details of his father’s funeral. The 1979 Confirmand had died of a heart
attack at age fifty-one, the result of decades of drug and alcohol abuse.
Brian had gone out-of-pocket to pay for
his father’s cremation and for the catered luncheon to be served after the
funeral. He asked me if I wouldn’t mind taking up a collection to defray some
of the expense he’d incurred as John had died with no money and no insurance
coverage. I told him I would.
After Brian left, I kept thinking about
John. The day his Confirmation picture was taken might’ve been the last time he
ever set foot in a church. I knew some of the other faces in that Confirmation picture.
One was of a boy who is today a loving father and husband with a home in North Carolina
and a successful career. Another classmate just retired from the Pentagon, a US
Navy captain who now runs military affairs at a major East Coast university.
One girl is the proud adoptive mother of an honor student. Another girl runs
the Parkinson’s unit at the local VA. Why, I wondered, did their lives turn out
so well, and why did John’s life turn out so badly?
In the world of the text for this Sunday’s
Gospel lesson in the Revised Common Lectionary (Luke 16:19-31), Jesus’ hearers
might’ve believed that those who received good fortune in this life were
favored by God, while those who were on the outside of society were there because
God had willed them to misfortune. Maybe they believed, as many do, that the
poverty of someone like Lazarus was due to his own fault, or that God was
punishing him with sickness and penury as recompense for some unknown sin. I’m
certain that many looked at John, who died broke after stints in rehab and
multiple incarcerations, as one who had all the crap in life coming to him as a
result of all of his poor choices.
But yet I wonder: has John been carried
away by the angels to the bosom of Father Abraham?
Here the NRSV Bible fails us a bit in
translation. My Bible says that Lazarus was carried “to be with Abraham” (v.
22), yet the Greek actually reads “into the bosom of Abraham” (or eis ton kolpon tou Abraham for you Greek
speaking folks). Just think about that image. To be “in the bosom” evokes a lot
of images. Most likely, it referred to the tradition of the ancient world of having
formal dinners where you ate while reclining on your left elbow. If Abraham is
the host, than the guy on his right hand—the side that he’s facing where his
chest would be—is the guest of honor.
Lazarus, the poor, sick slob locked on the outside of the gate, is now the
recipient of all of the hospitality and honor of heaven.
To be “into the bosom” also conjures up
the image of a mother nursing her child. Can there be a more tender or nurturing
image than that? The one who has gone hungry is now lovingly fed and embraced with
an unconditional, maternal love. Or, perhaps, it just means that the Father
figure is giving the poor man a great big hug. God is embracing, loving,
welcoming, and claiming as his own the one who was despised and overlooked in
his earthly life.
So what’s Jesus saying here? I really hope
he’s not telling us to enjoy our wealth now because we’re going to roast in
hell when we die. He’s certainly turning the expectations of his audience on
their heads—but Jesus always does that. Is he saying that God loves poor folks
more than the well-off?
Maybe we should figure out who we are in
this parable. It’s just possible that some of us might be Lazarus—a guy locked
outside the gate, hungry, rejected, and blamed for being a victim of our own
misfortune. If so, than we need to know God wants to hug us and call us his
child. The world’s estimation of our worth is not God’s estimation.
More likely, however, I think Jesus wants
us middle-class, church-going Americans to see ourselves as the rich man. We’re
living in unimaginable luxury compared to about 75% of the earth’s population.
Even in our own land, the chasm between the wealthy and the poor is growing
greater all the time. Without compassion, all of our good fortune is
meaningless. Without compassion, we actually miss seeing God and fall in love instead with our own achievements.
The sin of the rich man in the parable—about which he had been warned by Moses
and the prophets—was not that he was rich, but that he could not find love for
the poor.
I am thinking of John, a junkie jailbird,
and trying to imagine him being hugged by Jesus. Can you imagine that? If you
can, what does it mean to you?
God’s peace be with you. Thanks for
visiting my blog.
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