______________________________________________________________
 

How Then Shall We, the Rich, Live?
author anonymous
Luke 16:19-31

If you should come into a fortune tomorrow, what would you do with it? If you should win the Big Lotto, which the people at work tell me, is up to $20 million, how would you spend that money? I know what I'd do. First, I'd pay off my debts. All of them. Then, I'd make sure that money was set aside for the children's education and inheritance, and for our retirement. That's not to say I wouldn't retire, at least from the school district, right away!

I like my job at Douglas, but . . . Of course, in all this, I'd establish a trust fund, or an endowment for the church. That wouldn't negate my weekly giving obligations, it would simply be my 10% tithe from my winnings. Then, of course, we'd take a trip. First, to Disney World for two weeks. Fourteen days to see the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, the new wild animal park, and all the other attractions. I'd make sure the kids got to Sea World, Nickelodeon, Cypress Gardens, Universal Studios, and to the Kennedy Space Center.

Then, we'd move on up the coast. We'd stop at Hilton Head and enjoy the beach on our way to a week at Williamsburg – my favorite place in the whole world. We'd go to Jamestown, too. Then it would be on to Washington, D.C., where I grew up. We'd spend four weeks touring the Capitol, the White House, the Library of Congress, the National Geographic Society, and of course you'd have to spend at least three of those weeks at the Smithsonian. Then, there's Mont Vernon, Monticello, General Lee's Mansion, and of course Arlington National Cemetery, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials. We'd stay at the Willard Hotel, the hotel of presidents, where Mom and Dad used to take me for a "grownup lunch" after I got my braces fixed. It would be a trip to remember.

Lazarus, Lazarus, who? There's no one sleeping in the streets in Washington, D.C. And, anyway, didn't Jesus say, "you will always have the poor with you?" After our trip, or better, while we were gone, I'd have the house remodeled and redecorated. First, I'd have the pool equipment moved to the other side of the yard – maybe we'd have the pool rebuilt, too. Then, I'd add another room downstairs for a bigger office, or maybe just a library for all our books, or a room for all Katie's dolls and Matthew's Star Wars, Batman, Ghostbusters and Turtles stuff. Above that, I'd make a master suite. Bob and I would have our own bathroom (and the kids would have theirs). I'd want the kid's rooms enlarged. Then, I'd combine the kitchen, dining and family rooms into a great room. My new kitchen would have a baking area, at least two sinks, and a cooking island. I'd build a deck off the family room, so we could sit on the deck and watch the kids swim. The family room would have room enough for homework, reading, and a nice big round dining table. We'd install a computer with a hard drive big enough for the kid's games, my stuff, and little things like electronic cookbooks, home security management, etc. We'd even have one of those large-screen monitors (not to mention a large-screen tv) so we could all look at a web page together. It would be a grand home.

Homeless? I don't ever see any homeless. Not in Springfield. And, anyway, didn't Ronald Regan say "the homeless are homeless, because they choose to be homeless?" If you were to win the Lottery tomorrow, how would you then live? Would you live, as the rich man in this story? Would you feed sumptuously? The words used here for the kind of eating this man did daily, are the same ones used for the celebration banquet given for the Prodigal Son. It was a feast beyond compare. The rich man ate such a banquet every day. His was not just blatant consumption. It was gross over-consumption. He wore purple and fine linen – the clothes of royalty and the very, very rich. In those days, there were no utensils. People ate with their hands. To clean their hands, they used pieces of bread, which they then threw on the floor. Lazarus wished for one of those "crumbs" the rich man threw away.

Jesus doesn't tell us the rich man's name, but we would call him - Gates, Murdoch, Rockefeller. At the gate to his villa, lay a poor beggar. Unlike most of Jesus's other stories, we know the beggar's name – Lazarus, which means "God helps." This is one of the few stories in which Jesus names a character. Can you imagine the forgiving father saying each morning, "Come on, Prodigal, time to get up for school?" Or the wife saying, "Sower, why did you sow those seeds in the weeds?" Did the shepherdess call her husband Good? No, we know these people by the names of the stories they inhabit.

But in this story, Jesus names a character, Lazarus. The amazing thing is that Jesus names Lazarus. We would expect him to name the rich man. We admire the rich. Who wants to be a poor beggar lying in someone's doorway, begging for crumbs while dogs lick your sores? It was the assumption in Jesus's day that the rich were rich because God had blessed them for some great thing they had done. The poor were poor because they wanted to be, or because they had sinned against God. In this parable however, it is the rich man who ends up in Hades, paying for his sin. Can you imagine how surprised the rich man was to discover himself in Hell? He surely would have demanded the Grand Jury's definition of sin, for he had never committed a crime that he could see. He ate well, dressed well, lived well. But was that a sin? Why Hell? He did nothing.

And that's the point. By doing nothing in the face of such great need, he reduced Lazarus to an object. His sin was not that he was rich. His sin was his indifference to Lazarus. His attitude toward the poor man even in the afterlife did not change (he wanted Lazarus to be sent to him as a servant to help him out, and then to be sent to his brothers to warn them). The rich man shows no regret for how his indifference affected Lazarus when both were alive, only for how the reversal in the afterlife has affected him. The rich man had the power to do something, yet he chose to do nothing.

By doing nothing, he disobeyed Moses and the prophets who, speaking for God, commanded the Israelites to show compassion and hospitality to the strangers, the widows, the fatherless, and the poor. Lazarus, on the other hand, did nothing because he was powerless. He was at the mercy of the job market. Perhaps he was ill in some way or maybe he was an outcast. Jesus didn't say. Only that he was a poor man, covered with sores. There are many things to which we are indifferent, which we take for granted. The sunrise, the changing seasons, planting time and harvest time.  [continue]