“Lying at the rich man’s door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table.” Luke 16: 19-31
Taken together, today’s three readings add up to a graphic description of how genuine disciples of Jesus are meant to go about embracing and building community with everyone God has invited to participate in the banquet of eternal life. There is no room for anyone to be excluded.
In today’s first reading, the Prophet Amos bitterly criticised the wealthy people of his society, who considered themselves to be on a social rung above everyone else and demonstrated that by living a life of luxury: “Ensconced on ivory beds and sprawling on their divans, they dine on lambs from the flock and stall-fattened veal.” (Amos 6:4) They were self- sufficient and spared a thought for nobody but themselves.
In the gospel-reading, Jesus used the parable of the rich man and Lazarus as a shock-tactic to stun his audience into turning their attention towards the destitute, poor, needy and overlooked members of their society. Luke applied that parable to his community. In his Gospel it served as the climax of three references Jesus had made to the poor people of his world. In the very first statement of what we now refer to as the Beatitudes, Jesus proclaimed: “How blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20). Shortly afterwards, he complemented that statement with: “But alas for you who are rich: you are having your consolation now. Alas for you who have your fill now: you shall go hungry” (Luke 6: 24-25). In today’s gospel-reading we hear the graphic parable of the rich man and Lazarus through which Jesus described the yawning gap that existed between the rich man luxuriating in comfort and the poor man on his doorstep. (The rich man is sometimes named as Dives, a name from the Latin adjective dives meaning rich. The name Lazarus found its way into English from Latin Lazarus, literally meaning “covered in sores or leper”. Latin got the word from Greek, which had taken it from the Hebrew name Eleazar. That’s a name that occurs at least six time in the Old/First Testament. The first was the name of Aaron’s son, a High Priest like his father. Another Eleazar was one of King David’s chief warriors. A third Eleazar rates a mention in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus. The name Eleazar literally means “helped by God”. – a combination of El – one of the Hebrew names for God and azar – literally meaning “helped by”.)
In today’s second reading from St Paul’s Letter to Timothy, the writer uses the title “man of God” – a descriptor that was used to denote a prophet – one who spoke the truth. Through our baptism we are all called to speak the truth, despite the consequences of doing that. In writing to Timothy, Paul makes it cleat that the Christian life is a process of aiming to grow in the practice of virtues like righteousness (treating others with justice), prayerfulness and faith in God. These are values and virtues that need to be cultivated over a lifetime. Moreover, Paul was aware that they are virtues that build friendships and the community we call the kingdom of God on earth.
The gospel parable makes the point that the practices we adopt and keep repeating set the kind of people we grow into. The parable refers to the abyss that separated the rich man from Father Abraham. It is clear that the rich man separated himself from the world around him by retiring to a gated mansion. He knew the name of the poor man who sat at his doorstop but had neither empathy with him nor compassion for him, even to offer him the scraps left over from his partying. The rich man’s way of life had deafened him from hearing the voices of Moses and all the other prophets of Israel to care for orphans, widows, the poor, the sick the lame, the destitute and the foreigner.
The trouble for the rich man was that he had been so devoured by self-interest that he had lost his capacity to care for anybody but himself. Moreover, he had severed himself from his religious traditions and anaesthetised every trace of compassion for the outcast that he ever had. He had descended into spiritual and emotional bankruptcy. The real tragedy of the parable was that the chasm into which he discovered he had fallen had been created by nobody but himself.
There are two clear messages in these readings for us. One is that in choosing to be followers of Jesus, we have to commit ourselves to a lifelong journey of growth into the virtues that are the foundation of the kingdom of God. The second is that we are not only to lock nobody out of our lives but to consciously reach out to welcome and befriend the poor, the needy and the outcasts in our midst. Of such is the kingdom of God, for they, too, are our sisters and brothers.