I wonder if you have seen Lazarus. And more than just seeing Lazarus, because many of us might be tempted to say that we have seen Lazarus. . . but have you cared for him?
Our text is not just about the rich man being aware of the needs around him, but of the scriptural mandate of caring for others.
“There’s an old story about heaven and hell [that you are perhaps familiar with in some variation]. An individual was sent by God to visit both places. As she approached hell, she could hear the sound of great wailing coming from inside, so she was surprised to see beautiful gates and beyond them a banquet table laden with food—wonderful food spread out as far as she could see.
The people were clean and well dressed — there was no sign of a furnace [or any tortuous expected behavior]. But the people were strangely shaped. Each had long arms with no joint at their elbow. They could pick up food from the table, but they couldn’t get the food to their mouths. So, they cried in anguish.
Suddenly this same person was transported to heaven.
They were alarmed to see a very similar scene. Banquet tables laden with food, everyone dressed finely as well — people with long arms that also they couldn’t bend. But there were only songs and laughter here. No cries of anguish. For here the people of heaven reached across the table and they fed each other.”
This text asks the reader to consider a simple question: “As we have encountered the gospel, and learn the gospel, what is required of us when we meet Lazarus?”
For the disciples, and future followers of Jesus like us, these words cause us to wonder about how we might define caring for someone else as we hear and respond to the message of Jesus.
Have you seen Lazarus?
Move 1- setting up the text
Our text begins with Jesus offering the audience a parable. In our story we have a rich man who is un-named. This allows us to not focus directly on this individual and chastise him for how he came to his wealth for he is a representation of something that lives all around us.
We do not know how he gained his riches, and it would also be a mistake to assume that he achieved his financial freedom through ill-gotten gains. Do not make the mistake of thinking that he exploited or harmed his community to get rich. He isn’t a Roman tax collector, like Zacheaus, who we know might be on the take based on his employment.
No, this man, who is likely young, is a Hebrew. And it appears he is, at least on the surface, a faithful individual.
He knows of the laws Moses, and he has some familiarity with the covenant of God with Father Abraham. He speaks to Father Abraham as if they are acquaintances (distant but acquainted) . . . almost like he’s heard these stories in worship, or Sunday school, or at Vacation Bible School. And by hearing the stories, he also knew what God asked of him. This is the unnamed rich man.
Then there is the other person in our story. We cannot neglect him. Lazarus. His Hebrew name means “God will help.” What a contrast. While the rich and influential man is not named by the Lord, the suffering individual is named. This is a societal role reversal at work.
This is also not the same ‘Lazarus’ that Jesus will raise from the dead in John 11 that I mentioned last week.
By granting the suffering individual a name in this parable, Jesus tells us that poor Lazarus is aware that God helps His people historically. “So why has help not been given to Lazarus” is the question that we start with?
We do not know for certain what afflicts Lazarus besides that he has sores covering his body and that he is poor. His humiliation is only magnified by the fact that the dogs come and lick the sores adding further degradation to his status. No one wants to be near him. He is broken away from the Body of Christ.
And again, this too is striking, a man whose very name means, “God will help,” struggles each day to believe that God helps His people or hears their prayers or comes to them in times of need.
Yet Lazarus, a Hebrew who came to the gate of the rich man’s home, as the Law of Moses tells him to do—the same law that tells the rich man to support and to care. And Lazarus is not cared for. Rather than live out the mandate of the Word to care for the sick and dying—especially the sick and dying who sit outside of his door—the rich man, in his opulence, feasts every day with friends and family. He doesn’t see the man and doesn’t see the needs.
In this moment, and reflection, the parable comes home to us in our context and it makes us wonder. In light of your time in God’s word, and in light of your relationship with Jesus, have you seen Lazarus?
Because if we have a relationship with the Lord, if we have seen the resurrected Lord at work with us, then we can see Lazarus as well.
Move 2- Blindness
As he thinks about this text, John Donahue says, “One of the prime dangers [of the rich man] is that [his wealth and his life] causes blindness [to overwhelm him and limit his] . . . perspective. It is an age-old story.” And I bet that it is one that we have witnessed as we care for our community.
The rich man is blind to the needs of his community, of his brothers and sisters who share a religious tradition and history and story with him. He is blind to the on-going needs that God calls him to address in God’s Word. Even though he may have grown up in the church and with God’s word before him and his family, he is blind to the application of the Word.
His blindness extends to the mandate given through the scriptures to him: care for the needy, discern how you can help support the ministry and work of God. In this way It is someone else’s problem.
By fostering and growing a relationship with the very person whose resurrection is alluded to at the end of this passage, we are called by God to continue caring for one another—in times of tragedy and in our everyday lives.
We are called by God to NOT be blind to what God asks of us each day as we spend time with the Lord. We must discern where and when Lazarus is right outside our gate waiting, and hoping, that we will care for him/her. Repeatedly in his earthly ministry Jesus tells his followers that they are to care for one another.
You and I are called to discern where these needs exists because we are in are communion with God, and part of that communion is a realization that we are to be constantly discerning what God asks of us. At its core, that discernment is simply is a stewardship question.
Move 3-
You see when we see Lazarus, when we notice the need that Lazarus both presents, and represents, we are called to action because we have internalized the message of the gospel that Jesus taught. We are called to be stewards who help when our discernment leads us to follow the example that we study and consider in God’s word each day.
Or as I read this week:
“What humanity needs is a love that sticks around, a love that stays put, a love that hangs on. A being-with love. That is what the cross represents for us. [That is what the gospel that Jesus’ taught is]. A love that hangs on [in the face of suffering and trauma]. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. God’s invitation is, a hand to hold on to that love, a hand that extends towards other,” and as you hang on to it, we practice being willing to give and support and care for the Body of Christ.
Our text tells us that if we wait, if we lose track of who Lazarus is in our community and church, then we lose track of the gospel’s message.
And losing track of the gospel, as the rich man did, leads us towards a path of ultimate suffering. It leads us to the place where nothing will convert us because we are so blind to the needs that are all around us that our eye line cannot be moved to give for another person.
For as the man asks Father Abraham to send Lazarus back to save his brothers and his father, the reply comes: if they did not follow the lessons in God’s word, lessons that the person of Jesus exemplifies, then nothing will save them.
That is not a people that you and I want to be.
Conclusion
Sadly, the rich man and his family learned this lesson in a painful way: the way of torment. As a church this is not a story we want to duplicate as we adopt and follow the gospel of Jesus. So, have you seen Lazarus?
I wonder what God might be asking of you as you care for him/her?
DM
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