Fr. Mark’s Trinity I Sermon

Today’s Gospel—the story of Lazarus and the rich man—embodies three sweeping biblical themes. The first is the reversal of fortunes. As we say during Evening Prayer, “He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away.” A second and related theme is the danger of wealth. The Bible never teaches that wealth is, in and of itself, bad — but it is always dangerous. The final theme is Scripture’s rejection of the idea that “seeing is believing.” Experiencing the miraculous does not necessarily lead to enduring faith.

The story begins:

“There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: and there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.”

The contrast is stark: the regally clothed, gluttonously feasting rich man… the beggar, full of sores, licked by dogs, desiring crumbs from the rich man’s table.

As Lazarus lay at the gate, his physical decline would have been unavoidably obvious to the rich man, who does nothing to help him. As one church father put it, Lazarus “set forth in his own body the cruelty of the rich [man]” (Pseudo-Chrysostom, Catena).

“And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; and in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.”

This reversal of fortunes is just as stark as the initial contrast. The rich man is buried, his corpse presumably carried by his servants to the grave amid pomp and circumstance — yet he wakes up in hell. The poor man, abandoned in life, is carried by the angels into “Abraham’s bosom.”

The Bible never teaches that wealth is bad. Indeed, it is often a blessing from God. In my work at St. Dunstan’s over the past few years I have become particularly grateful for the blessings of wealth and for the generosity of donors and patrons, whose wealth enables them to serve God and do great work for the kingdom in ways that I cannot… Wealth is a great gift. But wealth is a dangerous gift. You can look anywhere in Scripture, Old Testament or New, and you will find the Gospel consistently presented as good news for the poor — but not necessarily for the wealthy. We tend to define the wealthy as anyone richer than me… however rich that is… But all of us are, by world-historical standards, very wealthy. As Fr. Sean likes to point out, think of the hot shower you took this morning. In a matter of seconds, you had water heated to exactly the temperature you wished, a luxury for which the Caesars would have quite literally gone to war. And so, since we are all wealthy, we should all consider how our wealth might deafen us to the Gospel.

Consider the story of the rich young ruler who decided to part with Jesus rather than parting with his possessions: “How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Luke 18:24b-25, NKJV).

Perhaps the Bible’s most stark warning about wealth comes from the Epistle of St. James, in a passage that may well be a commentary on our Gospel text: “Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter” (James 5:1-5, ESV).

Clearly St. James had in mind not mere wealth but rather misbegotten and misused wealth — and yet the whole Bible broadly suggests that wealth is all too easily misbegotten and misused. If we do not see our wealth as a gift from God; if we do not hold it loosely, with gratitude; if we do not treat it as a means for loving others and serving God — it will become the false god Mammon. It will turn us in on ourselves. Wealth allows us to believe we do not need God. If, like the rich young ruler, it leads us to put our possessions ahead of Christ or if, like the rich man in our Gospel text, it results in a scornful indifference towards the poor, then our wealth may well damn us. “Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire.”

I suppose I should say that the church fathers and the Reformers and contemporary scholars alike are all undivided and uncertain about whether Jesus intended our story to be a fictional parable or a literal description of hell. Jesus talks about hell in a number of different ways, some of which are mutually exclusive, so we should be wary of pushing beyond what the text can bear in describing hell. But we should be even more wary of attempts to soften language that Jesus very much intended to be hard and disturbing. For what it’s worth, my position on hell is that it is bad, and that you should do all in your power to avoid it.

Returning to our story:

“And [the rich man] cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.”

The rich man recognizes Lazarus and knows him by name, but he gives no sign of regret for his previous indifference to Lazarus. He does not even speak to him, instead asking Abraham to send Lazarus to serve him. He seems to think their relation should still be as it was in life: the poor serving the rich, the rich ignoring the poor.

After Abraham informs the rich man that this reversal of fortunes is just, and that his request for relief cannot be fulfilled, the rich man cries out, “I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house, for I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment. Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.”

I distinctly remember hearing that line as a child and thinking, “I don’t buy it.” “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” How can reading the Old Testament compare with an appearance from the dead? When I was a kid, I felt the same way about all those stories we’ve been reading in Morning Prayer lately about the thick-headed faithlessness of the Israelites, despite repeated experience of the miraculous. How can you keep doubting God after so much proof of his power and faithfulness?

I understand better now. The number of times God has confirmed his faithfulness to me throughout my life… the number of times he has done so in near-miraculous ways for St. Dunstan’s in recent years… these reveal the irrational absurdity of my doubts, and yet that head knowledge does not automatically translate into my gut and my heart. I am much less ruffled by apparent setbacks or disappointments than I once was, much more able to trust God not only in my head but in my gut, but I still have those moments of irrational doubt. “Yes, God has been faithful every day of my entire life… but what about tomorrow?” 

Perhaps you have similar experiences, or perhaps not — but consider: if a dead relative visited you in the night to call you to repentance, would you wake up the next day with a dramatically transformed life… or would you start googling psychiatrists?

My friends who have the Church frequently described intellectual doubts as the reason. And of course that’s part of the story. We all face doubts and questions at times. It is a perfectly normal part of the Christian life — nothing to be ashamed about or afraid of. But we do not all leave the faith. Anecdotally, my acquaintances who left the faith were invariably living in ways that did not reflect the truths of the Gospel. They ceased to live out of love for God and neighbor, and then their doubts — the same doubts we all sometimes face — these doubts consumed them. As one friend put it in describing her high school self, “I really didn’t have many doubts about God — he was just inconvenient for the kind of life I wanted to live.”

The simple fact is that a miraculous experience does not ensure a lifetime of faith — anymore than one romantic date guarantees a lifetime of love. Those moments might be wonderful, but fidelity in marriage and in faith mostly depends upon persistence in what can at times feel like day-to-day drudgery. Like the early Church after Pentecost, we must continue “stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers” (Acts 2:42).

The rich man in our story seems to think his problem was a lack of data about reality, but Jesus portrays him not as ignorant but rather as unloving. His problem was a lack of love, and his destination was the natural end of a life of selfishness.

“If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.”

Jesus tells our story to a group of Pharisees who, St. Luke comments, “were lovers of money” (16:14 ESV). This final line about Moses and the prophets — “neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead” — is a prophetic indictment of the Pharisees and of the chief priests and elders who reject Jesus. They had Moses and the Prophets. They knew them intimately. And they were not persuaded “though one rose from the dead.” Not when Jesus raised dead children to life. Not when Jesus raised that other Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha… And when Jesus himself is resurrected, their only thought is how to keep the story from getting out.

The rich man was privileged in his access to Moses and the Prophets and in his wealth — and yet he did nothing with these gifts. We are likewise privileged: with worldly wealth, with the Scriptures, with our baptismal union with the resurrected Christ, and with the weekly miracle that is the Sacrament of the Altar. 

What will we do with these gifts?