It might seem an unusual way to begin a sermon, but I would like to quote from a Formula One racing driver, the late, great Ayrton Senna – my hero! Senna died a few years ago and movies are being made about his life. He was probably one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of all time! He was a man of faith and a man of conscience as well as an awesome driver. He said this, amongst his many notable quotes: “Money is a strange business. People who haven’t got it aim at it strongly, and people who have it are full of troubles.” It seems that Senna recognized as someone who himself was very wealthy, that money and all that money can buy does not necessarily bring happiness.
I think throughout the centuries we have struggled with our relationship with money. We are not quite sure where to come down on the subject. We are not sure if money is a sign that you are blessed by God, and some people have said that. In fact, some ministers have built an entire ministry around the premise that having riches is a sign of God’s blessing. Others have taken the opposite view that in fact riches are a sign of a curse: that to be rich in this world is to be poor in the next; to have riches on earth is a sign, as Senna said, of trouble.
Some have said that money is only a matter of fate. Some will have it and some will not, some will be poor and some will be rich. It really doesn’t matter. It is just the way that life is, and they are fatalistic about it. Everything from Marx and Engels on the left to Hayek and Friedman on the right to J. S. Mill in the middle, there have been philosophers and theorists who have tried to come to some understanding of money, how it relates to our life, and how we relate to it and our morality and our ethics. There are tomes written about it.
Yet in the middle of this maelstrom of conflicting views, in the midst of all the discussions about where money really fits in within the human existence, there comes a story from a Galilean man called Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus of Nazareth walks into this maelstrom with a story. The story is one that all first century Palestinian Jews would understand. It is a story about two characters, two figures, that they could probably see walking down the street on any given day, characters that would represent the ordinary everyday existence of people.
Rather than talk theoretically about rich and poor, rather than going into a theory of how to deal with it or philosophical arguments, Jesus takes the issue of wealth and poverty and looks at it from the point of view of eternity. He looks at it from the point of view that only the Son of God could have – and remember that it is the Son of God who is telling the parable. It is only from his perspective that we could understand this parable and this story.
Remember, it is a parable, Jesus is controlling the story, he is telling the story for a reason. He is not just trying to give a ritualistic explanation or a sociological analysis of what is going on around him. He is simply telling a story in order to make a very powerful spiritual point. He is also talking to an audience, and the Gospel tells us who this audience is rich and loves money. Particularly those in positions of authority and power and even religious prestige, who like to flaunt themselves and to be well known and well liked, those who love their money and the high tables and prestige. Jesus tells the story and the story involves two protagonists. The first of these protagonists we are told is a rich man. In Latin, his name was often called Dives, and Dives simply means “wealthy” so we will call him Dives. Dives, this wealthy man, is described in ways again that the people who were listening would understand. He was dressed, for example, in purple linen, and purple of course was the colour as it has been since time immemorial of the wealthy and the privileged and royalty. It was an expensive fabric to make.
To have purple dye and to have linen meant that you must have a lot of money. It was interesting, because recently I went back and I looked at a sociologist who had looked at the economics of first century Palestine, and in those days the best equivalent that I could put, if you put a ratio between what people earn and what a purple linen robe would be, a purple linen robe would cost about $80, and the average weekly income of a person would be eight cents. Now you see just how wealthy this man was! We also hear that he ate well every day. He was a gourmet! And you say, “That is very nice! He dined out every day. Isn’t that wonderful? God bless him!”
Dives also dined out on the Sabbath and it was forbidden to dine in such a way on the Sabbath. Then, when you think of how the ordinary people were living at the time, often they had one good meal a week if they were lucky and the rest of the time they ate poorly. Again, there is a chasm between the rich man and everyone else. When he died, Dives had a good funeral. It was a real smack-up affair it! It must have been a proper burial with all the burial rites and the body properly placed in the ground, people would have come, they would have eulogized him, he would have been a very important man because Dives wore purple and had good food. And then he dies. We’ll get back to that later.
The second protagonist has a name, unlike Dives, who is just called “a wealthy man”.
This man is called Lazarus. Lazarus, when you turn it into the Hebrew with Eliezer means “God is our hope.” Lazarus has a name: “God is our hope.” Unlike Dives, the rich man, he has nothing. He is a beggar that actually in this life is going under the table of people like Dives and trying to get some crumbs from the table because he is so hungry! Jesus would have known that in first century Palestine those who were the beggars were really the lowest of the low. He had sores on him, because of a lack of cleanliness and malnutrition. And, Jesus is so gross as to say that the dogs lick the sores on Lazarus’s wounds. Complete contrast to Dives. When Lazarus dies, there is no funeral. Why? This is because beggars were put in a common grave and were anonymous in death. He is buried, yet Jesus says, “The angels came along and took him to heaven.”
So here we have two protagonists that could not be more different than one another: Dives and Lazarus; one rich, one poor; one with all the elements of a good life, and the other with all the elements of a bad life. Then, in classic Jesus style, we have a reversal of fortunes. They both die. Dives ends up in Hades, which is the place of the dead in Hebrew. On the other hand, Lazarus goes to another place. He goes to a place where Abraham is, no less! Abraham, as I mentioned recently is the father of the faith. Suddenly Dives who is in Hades sees Lazarus in heaven with Abraham and he is flabbergasted! Everything has changed.
Do you remember the movie made about thirty years ago now, called Trading Places with Dan Akroyd and Eddie Murphy in it? It is according to the movie people, one of the most requested old movies that there are, because it tugs on the heart strings. It is a story about two men, a beggar who is played by Eddie Murphy and a rich man who is played by Dan Akroyd. There are two wealthy businessmen who decide they are going to for these two to trade places and see how they get along. There is this wonderful moment where Dan Akroyd, the rich man, after having lost everything, finds himself going into the offices of the beggar who is now sitting behind the desk and making trades and you really can see how they have traded places! I think Dives in Hades is looking at Lazarus in heaven and understands that places have been traded, and he hates it so much that he calls out to Abraham. He says, “Abraham, can you get that Lazarus to put just a drop of water on my hot tongue?” Such is the nature of how things had changed!
Why did Jesus tell this? Why would he be so strident and so strong in it? It was because he wanted to teach a lesson. He didn’t just want to teach this lesson to those who were listening to him in Israel then; he wanted this for all time. This was a parable that Jesus wanted to be used over and over and over again. I often think to myself as I read this - and I am disturbed by it – I am sure you are disturbed by it – and wonder “Where on earth do I fit in all of this? Am I to identify with Dives and therefore have something to fear for the rest of my days, or do I identify with Lazarus and the fact that maybe I do without and could do with more? Is that simply the message? We identify either with Dives or with Lazarus?
No, I don’t think so. This is because the story goes on. And, this is where we enter the story, where you enter the story. You see, Dives calls out to Abraham, “You do realize I have five brothers. What I would like is for you to send Lazarus back from the dead to go and to speak to my five brothers and to warn them of what has happened to me. I want you to go now and send a message to them that I am here, and there is a great chasm between here and where you are and where Lazarus is. Would you please get Lazarus to go and do this?”
Abraham says, “No.”
Here is the reason why. It is because they have already heard from Moses and the prophets. Even if a man was sent back from the dead to go and speak to them, they are not going to listen to someone who is going to be raised from the dead (Jesus is talking about himself). So, he is saying, “No. They have already had the Word. They don’t need a word now from heaven; they have already got the Word. The Word has already been spoken. What is the Word that has been spoken? I think it is a three-fold Word.
I think the first word is to make sure that we see the suffering in the world and we identify it. So often in the first century Palestine the beggars weren’t seen. They were like part of the furniture or part of the sidewalk or part of the road. People walked by them as it they weren’t there. Dives had never seen Lazarus in this life, although Lazarus had been at the foot of his table begging! Jesus is concerned that they haven’t seen the poor. They haven’t seen those who are in need. They just treated them as if they were non-persons. We might think that is a bit extreme, but the fact of the matter is that happens in the world. We sometimes just simply do not see or do not treat or understand the human plight.
Years ago, at the Law School at Harvard, I took a course in race law in the U.S. There is a very famous law called Georgia versus Cherokee Nation. This was a major debating point about whether or not natives and native-Americans and the Cherokee Nation were actually really human beings at all. That was the debate in law – whether or not they were even human beings! One jurist made the following comment:
They (Cherokee Indians) have the shapes of men, and maybe of the human species – we are not sure – but certainly in their present state they approach nearer the character of devils. Take an Indian: is there any faith in him? Can you bind him by favours? Can you trust his word, or confide in his promise? The torture which they exercise on the body of prisoners justifies their extermination! If we could have any faith in the promises they make, we would suffer them to live, provided they would make war only amongst themselves, and abandon their hiding or lurking in the pathways of our citizens.
It goes on, and it gets more graphic, but the point of the matter is that there was a question as to whether or not Native Americans were human beings!
That wasn’t very long ago in the sweep of human history and yet so often we do the same thing. St. Augustine said, and I think he is absolutely correct, that as human beings we sometimes look upon the poor as if we are voyeurs. We like to feel the emotion of identifying with people who are poor, but then we don’t do anything about it. It is as if they are not there. So the challenge it seemed to those brothers of Dives was for them simply to open their eyes, to see the people around them who were in need, to see the suffering of the world around them and to be conscious of it. Not to be so cold of heart, not to be so caught up in their own wealth that they do not see the poverty of others.
Ayrton Senna said something else: “Wealthy men and women cannot live on an island that is encircled by poverty. We all breathe the same air. We must give a chance to everyone, at least a basic chance.” He said that while visiting a favela in Rio de Janeiro, amongst the poorest of the poor. We can’t live on an island. You can’t live on an island of wealth; you have to see what is around you. What Jesus is saying is what Moses has said with the law and the prophets have said time and time again. You can’t read Amos or Hosea or Jeremiah and not be struck by their concern for those who are in need around us.
There is also a need to listen. One of the problems with the human conscience is that when it ceases to be informed by the Word of God it relativizes everything. It does not feel the conscience moved. The Word of God moves the conscience. The Word of God changes things. The word of Moses changes things, the word of the prophets changes things, but most of all, the Word of the One who was raised from the dead changes everything. There is a need for us to hear. There is a need for us to stay close to the Word of God, not in order that we might have a political philosophy, not in order that we might be able to have a theory of everything, where everything all of a sudden fits together, but to allow the Holy Spirit to move our heart to such an extent that our hearts go out to those who need us and need our love.
I will never forget a friend of mine – we are really on a car theme right now for some reason – who came to me one day and said, “Andrew, I have a real problem. I have noticed that on my car this little light keeps coming on every now and again in the winter time. It is a little red light, and it says ABS on it, and I wonder what it means? Then there is this awful grinding sound. I thought maybe you would know why this ABS thing keeps coming on.”
I said, “Well, I have a clue. Have you read the Handbook?”
He replied, “Good Lord, I never read the Handbook! That is just to make sure that everything stays nice and neatly in my glove box!”
I said, “Read the Handbook. There is a little line that says ABS: a light that comes on when your braking system is actually saving your wretched life!”
He said, “So, it’s a good thing?”
I said, “It’s a good thing it is there; it is a bad thing that you are driving so badly that it is coming on all the time! Read the manual and then you will know and understand the warning signs.”
The Word of God is just like that. Jesus is saying through Abraham to Dives, to the wealthy, to those who have a lot and are blind to the needs around them, “Read the Word that is the sign telling you what is happening.” In other words, “Your conscience will be moved and your understanding improved if you stay close to the Word.” This is why I worry in our culture and I worry in our world that we make decisions and we listen to theories and we listen to ideas, but the Word of God is so often silent or neglected.
There is a great joy at the end of this passage. You might not think it, but it looks pretty good for Lazarus. Everyone seems to have lived well and he lived badly, but he died better. There is a sense in which what happens in this life and the state that we are in this life does affect the next. There is a just God, and there is a compassionate and a caring God. There is a word of judgement for Dives and the judgement wasn’t that he was wealthy – the judgement was that he wasn’t seeing the needs of others around him. You can be wealthy and magnanimous. You can be wealthy and gracious. You can be wealthy and compassionate. In the same way, I suppose you can be poor and indolent, you can be poor and violent, and poor and aggressive.
The message here is that Lazarus, who was a man with no standing, nevertheless must have believed at some point, and was received by none other than Abraham! I don’t want to take this parable too literally, for it is a story, but I must tell you this: For all the gains we might have on this earth, and all the things that we accumulate, and all the prestige that might come our way, it pales compared to an eternity where you can sit down with Abraham. It is one that gives great comfort to those who are in need. It gives great comfort that heaven often reverses what we see in this life.
If all we seek in this life is wealth, if all we seek in this life is prestige, if all that we clamour after is what the world deems as great, then we don’t have God and ultimately we don’t have anything! But in this life, even if we don’t have things, and we suffer and are exploited and not listened to, we have God, we have everything. Jesus clearly loved Lazarus but he also wanted to challenge the rich that they might be faithful. It is okay to live well, but it is preferable to die better, don’t you think? Amen.