Text: Luke 16:19-31;  I Timothy 6:5b-11, 17-19

We are back in Luke this morning, our lectionary gospel for this season.  We diverted to Mark last week as we "Let the little children come to me," which Luke covers also, but I preferred Mark's presentation.  As the preacher, I get to choose.

But we are back in Luke this morning with yet another parable that is unique to Luke.  Luke had a bigger buck parables with which to choose, or at least chose to dip into the bucket more often than the other gospel writers.

So we get the parables of the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, and the Unfruitful Fig Tree, to name a few, appearing only in Luke.  So it is with the "Rich Man and Lazarus."

In all of Jesus' parables, Luke and otherwise, only one parable character is referred to with a proper name.  Otherwise, Jesus parables are generic, like, "There was once a man who had two sons..."  "There was once a man who was going down a road from Jerusalem to Jericho..."  "There was once a sower who went out to sow his seed..." or "...a judge who neither feared God nor respected man... and a widow who lived in that same town."

Powerful parables, leaving the characters unnamed, perhaps intentionally as a way of inviting us into the story, to consider our role as the unnamed character.  Try it on, the prodigal son, the unwise servant, the rich fool, the unmerciful steward, and see how it fits. Certainly it makes it harder for us to dust off the parable if we are invited to play a role.  Right, Shelby (Rich Man character in skit presented during the gospel reading)?  I hope you recover.  I also hope to recover my cash (prop used in skit).

The question the parable asks, "Is the unnamed person me?"  Am I the parent, the prodigal, the rich man, the ruler?  How does the parable apply to me?

The lone exception is the parable of the "Rich Man and Lazarus."  We have a name, uniquely a proper name in the parable, "Lazarus."  Thank you, David (Lazarus in the skit).  Well done.

Not to be confused with the Lazarus in the Gospel of John, the friend of Jesus who is the brother of Mary & Martha, and brought back from the dead by Jesus.  That is a different Lazarus, and not the subject of this morning's parable.

But in the parable we are given a real name, Lazarus.  Sometimes we think both characters are named, for the rich man in the parable is commonly referred to as "Dives."  But this is church tradition at work.

The church has historically called the rich man "dives," but this is because the Latin word for rich man is "dives" (dee-vays).  So call it the parable of "Dives & Lazarus," if you want, but "dives" is not a proper name.  It is generic for "rich man."  Only Lazarus is named in this parable, and only in this parable does Jesus call any of his parable people by their proper name. And the person is a poor person, which I think is pretty powerful.  And a part of Jesus' point.

What is it about?  Well, good news or bad, I think this parable has more to do with life in this world than life in the afterworld as described by Jesus in the telling of the story.  As Jesus said, "I have come that you may have life and have life abundantly."  (John 10:10)

Jesus means here and now, not tomorrow in heaven.  Though heaven certainly is a part of the promise, preferably reserved for tomorrow and not received today.

So what about today?  Well, we are in Luke, where for a few chapters and quite a few stories, Luke has been hammering us with Jesus' teachings about money. Again, not riches in heaven, but spoils on earth. 

To quickly review, Jesus has preached parables about:  a rich fool who spends all of his time and capital building bigger barns to house his stuff, only to die upon completion, never even getting to take out his toy tractors to play with them.  How tragic! (12:13ff) About a great banquet, to which the wealthy are invited.  But who has time if you have a lot of money?  You've got to be busy spending it, counting it, growing it.   So they miss the banquet.  Fortunately this leaves empty seats at the table, and so the less fortunate are able to get in.  Waste not, want not.  ((14:15ff)  About a favored son, who cannot wait for his dad to drop dead and demand his inheritance, so he prematurely cops his cash, and runs off and ruins his life, well, nearly, except for the amazing grace of his father. Whew!   (15:11ff)  And finally a complicated parable about a wasteful , servant, last week's lectionary reading and too confusing to cover, but concludes, "No servant can serve two masters... you cannot serve both God and money."  (16:13) We get that!

Jesus preached a lot about riches.  He warned about wealth.  So here comes another one, the parable of the "Rich Man and Lazarus."  By now we've become familiar with rich men, if not a bit bored by them.  But who is this Lazarus?  Well, with intended irony, the name Lazarus means, "God has helped."

Oh, really?  As the story opens one would not presume so.  Here lies Lazarus, upon the city sidewalk, ill, unfit, unfed, unsheltered, oozing with sores the dogs would lick (like I needed that description), outside the gated community of Dives, the rich man, dressed in purple, the customary color of the wealthy, because it was the most expensive cloth, purple die harvested from the rare sea shells of the Aegean.

Hmmm...perhaps our rich man wore a red hat as well, and attended pajama breakfasts on Sunday mornings.  Where were some of you two Sundays ago (reference to state "red hat" convention held here two weeks ago)?  Look out!

We do know Dives feasted divinely on a daily cuisine propped upon couches within his walled compound.  No, from the distance it doesn't really look like Lazarus has fulfilled his name sake, "God has helped."  The tables seem tilted toward Dives.

But as is true in many of Jesus' parables there is a great switch-a-rue.  Come heaven and the tables turn.  Now Lazarus is resting reassured and comforted in the bosom of Abraham, and Dives, well, his day has come too, and he now knows if not the discomforts of life, the discomforts of afterlife.  Which would you prefer not?

Jesus' audience for this parable is our friends the Pharisees.  When studying parables it is always helpful to identify the setting, including to whom is Jesus' speaking.  Is he speaking to his disciples, the poor people, the scribes & Pharisees, his mother & brothers, to whom?  Here he is speaking to the Pharisees, a favorite target for these teachings.

Though careful not to dismiss the Pharisees too quickly.  We are not intended to identify with Lazarus in this story.  We are not the poor.  Dogs do not lick our sores.  We are the fortunate who have medical insurance.  There are many who do not, but not in our neighborhoods.

Furthermore, we should not dismiss the poor too casually, copping out with the good news that, well, they are going to get their rewards in heaven, so why should we care for them now on earth?  How convenient.

No, no, my friends, we are the Pharisees of today, the haves, the ones with the most, the gatekeepers of the kingdoms on earth, if not in heaven, or in identification with the parable, Dives is us.  So we've got to deal with it.

Yes, this is a story for the wealthy, and we are invited to listen.  Now I do not believe the message of the parable is to threaten us with eternal damnation should we continue to neglect the poor.  This may be so, and if it works, well and good, but I think Jesus is a little more proactive than this.  I mean, after all, to get the message only after we have reached our final destination is a little late.

No, Jesus is delivering us a message for today, and it has more to do with the living in our day than in describing our destination after death.  What is the message?  Well, that's pretty clear. With our wealth comes responsibility.  And if we don't meet our responsibility the consequences will be hell, however you interpret that.  There will be hell to pay.  As Jesus said, "To whom much is given, much is required."

We cannot step over the poor at the gates of our McMansions or at the borders of our nation and pretend that they don't exist.  The problem, that is, the poor people, won't go away.  For Jesus is here, and Jesus won't let us forget.

It reminds me back when ex-wrestler turned politician, Jessie "the Brain" (formerly "the Body") Ventura, was governor of Minnesota.  Remember that?  And he made the comment, "Religion is a crutch for the weak and losers." 

Will Willimon, then Dean of the Chapel at Vanderbilt, now a Methodist bishop, responded, "That was an incredibly perceptive statement for a professional wrestler.  Christianity is for the weak and losers.  That's exactly who Jesus was for."

Well, Will is taking a little liberty here to make a point.  Indeed, Jesus did come for the weak and

losers, but he came for the rich as well.  He just didn't want the wealthy to get lost in all their stuff.

In November of 1965 Linda Fuller told her husband, Millard, she was leaving him.  Standard story, she had been long and increasingly ignored as he had been long and increasingly absorbed in making money.  Successfully so, which is often the hook, Millard was realizing a million dollar a year income from his business.  Again, this is back in 1965 when a million meant something.

Apparently his wife did too, she just didn't know it, for upon receiving her pronouncement, he piled her and the kids into the Lincoln Continental for a long overdue vacation to Florida.  Upon the way they stopped to see some friends in Georgia, who were living at Clarence Jordan's Christian community called Koinonia, which means "fellowship" in Greek, a farm where people lived together communally, sharing their labors and goods as we read about the earliest Christian communities in the Book of Acts. 

Jordan started this farm back in 1942, with black and white residence, as one small step against racism, greed and the many other things that divides us as human beings.  By the way, Koinonia was repeatedly terrorized and vandalized, even bombed, by the Ku Klux Klan. 

When Fuller met Jordan he described himself as feeling a great heaviness in his chest. Perceptively, Jordan noted "a million dollars can weigh awfully burdensome on a man," and suggested perhaps Fuller had become overly attached if not addicted to money.

To Fuller's credit, instead of denying Jordan's challenge, and fleeing on down the road to Florida, he stayed at Koinonia  for a month, listening to and learning from Jordan, who preached, among other things,  "What the poor need is not charity but capital, not case workers, but coworkers.  And what the rich need is a wise, honorable, and just way of divesting themselves of their overabundance."

Fuller divested himself of his business, saved his marriage, and founded Habitat for Humanity, which today has built over 100,000 homes for the working poor with volunteer labor, including I think we are up to about 15 or 16 homes in Great Falls. 

Millard Fuller, who is UCC by the way, was spared the depths of hell.  Not the hell of afterlife as described by Jesus in his parable about Dives, but the hell Dives was living while on earth. For as C.S. Lewis portrayed hell, hell is not a flaming inferno, but a dark, cold, and above all, boring place, where people choose isolation over community, loneliness over joy, miserliness over generosity, and separation over relationship.

In Lewis' hell, the proud people are free to leave.  But they don't.   Why not?   As Lewis writes, "There is always some-thing they insist on keeping, even at the price of misery.  There is always some-thing they prefer to joy."  Or as one dweller demands, "I don't want a relationship with God.  I want to be left alone." 

As C.S. sums it up, "There are only two kinds of people in the end; those who say to God, ?Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, ?OK, have it your way, your will be done.'  All that are in hell, chose it."

Dives salvation was right outside his door.  His light was Lazarus.  He just couldn't see it.  No way.  He only had to open the door and himself to relationship with Lazarus.  But he preferred his isolation and hell. 

Could he have tossed a nugget of gold out his window now and then as the road to redemption?  What if he made a "beggar's plate to go" once a week and sent it out with a servant?  Would this have spared him his parched conclusion?

I don't think so, for as the German theologian, Jurgen Moltmann aptly approaches the subject, "The opposite of poverty is not wealth.  Rather, the opposite of both (poverty and wealth) is community."

The doorway to this community is Jesus Christ - our Lord.  Jesus shows us the way to live in relationship to God and to live in relationship to one another.  Which is one and the same.  And includes not only an awareness of the poor, it includes an outstretched hand to those in need such that we dare to live in relationship with them.

Jesus tells the parable of the "Rich Man and Lazarus," in which Lazarus does fulfill the meaning of his name, "God has helped," for through Lazarus God helps the poor to have dignity, including the assurance that one day they will rest in the bosom of Abraham, and God helps the rich as well, for whom the parable is told, warning them to get a life as well as stuff.

The church, your church, continues through Christ to be the doorway to right living with God.  The church provides many opportunities to enter the door, including the offering we will receive next Sunday and which you heard about this morning, "Our Neighbors in Need." 

Just another opportunity to stay connected to Christ and one another.  Praise be to God! 

AMEN.