Sermons
March 30, 2025
Open My Eyes, That I May See
Luke 16:19-31
This parable is truly fascinating to me. It might not be as beloved as last week’s three parables, especially the final one about the father whose lost son returns. But it’s fascinating, because the more you look at it, the more levels it seems to be working on.
We can start at the surface. An unnamed wealthy man, dressed in finery and feasting every single day, either doesn’t know or doesn’t care about the desperately poor Lazarus lying at his gate, starving and suffering with sores all over his body. They both die and go on to very different lives: the wealthy man to “Hades,” as the parable calls it, where he is tormented; and Lazarus directly into the presence of Father Abraham where he is comforted.
Then there’s an attempt by the wealthy man, who has apparently never heard the word “no,” to get Abraham to send Lazarus to help him. I guess that’s a promotion in the wealthy man’s eyes; previously Lazarus was nothing but an unwelcome yard ornament, but now he’s a servant to be ordered around? Abraham says, “No, it can’t be done,” whereupon the rich man asks him to send Lazarus back from the dead to warn his brothers.
Okay, simple enough.
Are we to take from this story that being rich is a sin?
I sure hope not: compared to a lot of people in this world, Mike and I are fabulously wealthy. We have two cars and a big house, more clothes and shoes than we know what to do with, and enough food in our house that we could go for weeks without ever being hungry. Sure there are times when things are tight, like when we have big bills due; but we never have to do without in order to cover them. Most of us here, I would venture to guess, are in a similar situation.
And I don’t think the point of the parable is that it’s a sin to be rich.
It looks like an illustration of the “woes” from Luke’s version of the Beatitudes:[1] “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.” But again, are the woes suggesting to us that being rich or having plenty to eat are sins?
I’m pretty sure they are not. And people in Jesus’ time wouldn’t have thought that way: the Pharisees and other Jews of the time tended to understand the Bible as teaching that righteous people were blessed with health, wealth and possessions—except that the book of Job pretty explicitly challenges that understanding.
Let’s dig deeper.
In Latin America in the 20th century, many Christians subscribed to what has come to be known as “liberation theology.” Liberation theology teaches something called “God’s preferential option for the poor.” This doesn’t really mean that God loves poor people more than rich people; what it does mean, though, is that when a poor person like Lazarus suffers and has no one on his side, God takes his side. “Blessed are you who are poor,” as Jesus says in Luke’s version of the Beatitudes.
The problem is that we tend to spiritualize the whole matter—the poor are blessed in the next life even though they suffer here—and sometimes we let that excuse us from doing anything to help them here in this life.[2]
Did you know that’s where the phrase “pie in the sky” came from? In 1911, a labor activist by the name of Joe Hill wrote a sarcastic little song called “The Preacher and the Slave,” in which he puts these words in the mouth of pious preachers who talk a lot about heaven, but don’t have a whole lot of interest in helping folks here on earth:
“You will eat, by and by,
in that glorious land above the sky,
work and pray, live on hay,
you’ll get pie in the sky when you die.”
Maybe, if the wealthy man in Jesus’ parable noticed Lazarus at all, this is what he thought. And maybe this is what landed him where he ended up after he died.
It’s probably important at this point to say a little bit about where the rich man went.
The text says he was in “Hades.” We tend to assume this is the same as our conception of Hell—a fiery place where souls are eternally tormented. But probably not.
Hades is actually the Greek god of the dead, and the place he rules over is called by his name as well. It’s the place where all of the dead go, not just the place of eternal suffering for bad people.
Similarly, the ancestors of Jesus and his Jewish contemporaries believed in a shadowy world called Sheol, where all of the dead went. Later, as the belief in resurrection began to take shape, Sheol came to be understood as the place where souls went until the Messianic Age, when everyone would be raised and judged according to their deeds. At that point the righteous would go to eternal life, and the unrighteous would go to eternal death.
So yes, it does say the rich man was tormented there, but if what’s behind the term Hades in the text is the Jewish concept of Sheol, then that torment had an end point. I don’t know that we can say this man was in Hell at the end of the story.
Going a bit deeper still…
After Abraham tells the rich man he cannot send Lazarus to him with a cup of cool water, the rich man asks that he be sent to his brothers, to warn them. Warn them of what, exactly? The text doesn’t really say.
We might presume that the rich man’s brothers were also wealthy, and perhaps they lived similar lives to his; but what did he want them to be warned about? I think it might just be that they need to look outside themselves, outside their splendid villas, their designer clothing, and their nighty fine dining, and become aware that there were people around them who suffered in great poverty. And if God is especially on the side of the poor, perhaps the suggestion is that if the wealthy brothers wanted God on their side, the answer was for them to get on God’s side—in other words, to shift their concern away from their own luxury to the needs of those about whom God especially cares. Otherwise they, like he, will come to know the truth of God’s kingdom that Jesus came to proclaim, what theologians sometimes call the “Great Reversal”: The last shall be first, and the first shall be last.
But again Abraham says no. Why?
Because they had available to them the whole witness of Scripture—whenever the Gospels talk about Moses, or the law, and the prophets, this is what is meant—and the whole witness of Scripture is that God’s people who have wealth have some responsibility toward those of God’s people who have nothing. If they were reading their Bibles, they would know that. If they believed their Bibles, they would be helping people in need, and would not need a warning from the great beyond.
But the rich man says, “They do need a warning, and if they aren’t getting it from Scripture, maybe they would hear it from the mouth of someone who had come back from the dead.” And Abraham, again, says no. If they’re too stubborn to take to heart what the Bible says, to what Moses and the prophets have said in its pages, someone coming back from the dead isn’t going to convince them, either.
And, boom.
We’re going along with the story, hearing about this man who wasn’t even able to see poverty at his gate, now we discover there’s something else going on. Jesus isn’t only calling us to charity! If someone has the eyes of their heart screwed tightly shut so they won’t see their neighbors who are desperately in need of food, care, and compassion, they aren’t going to listen to the Bible, and they’re not going to listen to someone who died and was raised.
At this point in the story, Jesus has already told his disciples multiple times that he is going to be killed, and then raised on the third day. By ending the parable as he does, is he now telling them that there will be some who won’t be convinced even by his resurrection to begin walking the path of God’s righteousness?
And we have to wonder whether we are among them.
We do.
We have said we believe in Jesus, and we have made the commitment to follow him. But are we? Or do we assume the answer to that age-old question, “What would Jesus do?” is, “Exactly what we want to do, what makes us the most comfortable”?
Are we going to listen to the witness of Scripture, and follow Jesus in the Way he leads us? And if so, what will that mean?
If Jesus is talking in this parable not just about the relationship between wealth, poverty, and God’s kingdom, but about how people will or will not hear the good news of God’s kingdom even after his death and resurrection, there’s a great temptation here. That temptation is to spiritualize the whole matter to the point that we eliminate the clear call to act compassionately toward those around us who are in need.
If we are indeed listening to the witness of Scripture and the teaching of Jesus, and walking the path he has placed before us, we cannot do that. We can’t do that, because another of the Gospel writers tells us where we will find Jesus, where the path he has set us on leads: “I was hungry, and you gave me food…”
Lord Jesus, open our eyes, so that we may see the needs of the world, and recognize that wherever people are hungry and sick and forgotten, you are there among them, hungry and sick and forgotten as well.
Amen.
[1] Luke 6:20-26
[2] We also sometimes hear Jesus’ response to those who criticized Mary of Bethany for “wasting” perfume worth a working man’s annual income, “You always have the poor with you” (John 12:8), as justification for inaction, not realizing he is referencing Deuteronomy 15:11: “Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.’” It’s not an excuse; it’s an assignment.