September 28, 2025

Sermon Transcript

They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous and ready to share … so that they may take hold of the life that really is life. (1 Timothy 6:18-19)

Many of you know that I grew up as a preacher’s kid. My father was an Episcopal priest, rector, and even a cathedral dean. But long before he held any church titles, he was a struggling high school student with two possible paths before him: college or the draft. The time was the late 1940s. With the Korean War looming, the latter was not the life he wanted. The determining factor was shaping up to be a final examination in his physics class. Dad desperately needed to pass the exam in order to graduate, but his chances seemed remote. No matter how much he studied, no matter how much help he sought, the material eluded him.

As it happened, my grandparents had a friend who was a physicist. This man, out of the goodness of his heart, agreed to tutor Dad on the day before the exam. In preparation for the tutoring, Dad brought home some physics books from the school library. When he and his tutor opened one of them, they saw in a relevant chapter some faint check marks in the margins next to ten specific questions. Since these questions appeared to be good windows into the broader concepts that Dad needed to understand, the tutor used them as a framework for their study session. After four hours of working and reworking the questions they finally called it a night.

As Dad told the story, the next morning he focused his eyes on the dreaded examination. To his utter astonishment, what came into view were the exact ten questions that he and his tutor had studied the previous evening. Dad had done no dumpster diving, no scouring of his teacher’s garbage can, nothing unethical at all to obtain the questions. He’d merely pulled a book from a library shelf without the slightest inkling that he held in his hands the source of the examination. Then with the help of a gracious tutor he’d studied the problems that were marked in the book. Dad still sweated through the final exam. When the grades came in, his was a C+. It was enough to pass. It was enough to graduate. He went to college. He signed up for the Air Force ROTC. He served as an officer in Japan, not a foot-soldier in Korea. The grace and the gift by which he passed the physics exam changed the course of his life.

Today’s reading from the Gospel of Luke (16:19-31) is a parable that Jesus told in hopes of changing the course of our lives. Quite frankly, Jesus means for it to haunt the hell out of us. The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus is essentially a three-act play with three principal players: the rich man, Abraham, and Lazarus, whose name in Hebrew means, “God is my help.” Over the centuries Biblical commentators and preachers have given the rich man a name, too. They call him “Dives,” because dives is a Latin word for rich. As for me, I don’t know much Latin. So today, I propose that since the English word for rich is rich, and since Rich is also a proper name, let’s refer to the rich man as Rich, whose name in English means, “I have a lot of money.”

The curtain rises for Act I. In the first scene we find Rich in the lap of luxury, dressed in an expensive, fetching purple outfit that could not have been easy to find. He feasts sumptuously every day in the open-air courtyard of his villa. In the second scene we meet Lazarus, who is a poor beggar at the gate of Rich’s home. He’s full of open sores, and longs for the chunks of bread that Rich and his family use to wipe their mouths and hands, then throw to the floor. In the third scene of Act I, both men die. Rich is buried, probably with an elaborate funeral. “Why do the good die young?” they would wail. We can imagine one of Rich’s five brothers offering a solo. Perhaps John Lennon’s, Imagine there’s no heaven, with another brother on keyboard. Lazarus, we are told, is carried by the angels to be with Abraham. The curtain comes down on Act I.

The curtain rises on Act II and we have moved from this life to the next. Imagine: there’s a heaven. Lo and behold, there’s a hell, too. In the first scene we learn that a great reversal has taken place. We see Rich in hell, being tormented in the flames. In the second scene we see Lazarus now in the lap of luxury with Abraham. Here, finally, we get some dialogue. Rich calls to Abraham and begs for mercy. He asks if it might be possible for Lazarus to bring him a drink of water. “Not possible,” replies Abraham. “You’re getting what you deserve, and the chasm between is too great. It’s fixed in place. This is permanent.” Rich presses on, asking Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his five brothers. Rich thinks his brothers will pay attention if someone returns from the dead. But Abraham is less optimistic, saying that they already have Moses and the prophets. “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone rises from the dead.” The curtain drops on Act II.

Finally, Act III. Act III isn’t staged. It’s only implied in the parable. Act III asks us to return from the afterlife to this life, and imagine the five brothers. You see, Act III is supposed to haunt us. The five brothers are you and me. Will we pay attention? The suggestion is that like my father, we have everything we need. We have Moses and the prophets and even one risen from the dead – Jesus – to tutor us. With this parable and others like it we have the test in advance. What is more, with this life we have time: time to amend our lives. The parable is full of red herrings that can throw you off the path of its meaning: the temperature of hell, the furniture of heaven, the chasm, the angels, the color purple. Don’t be distracted. The gift the parable offers is the tutors, the test itself, and time to do something about it. Act III is this life, yours and mine, now.

“What just a minute,” is what many people say. Not so fast. They are not convinced they want to buy into the picture of reality the parable puts forth. It isn’t fair that Rich should spend all eternity in torment because, for a few decades at most, he ignored the needs of Lazarus. His was only a crime of omission. The punishment doesn’t fit. The parable is unjust. The great reversal merely reverses, not heals, the conditions we deplore on earth, and projects them onto a heavenly stage. One could argue here that Rich’s temporary negligence actually earned Lazarus an eternal reward. “O happy fault,” is a phrase that Augustine coined to describe how God can wring good out of evil. Would you like to hear the phrase in Latin? Again, I don’t know much Latin, but to impress you, it goes like this, O felix culpa. O happy fault! In the end, Rich’s fault brought blessing upon blessing to Lazarus. So perhaps in the bigger picture we should be thanking Rich, not condemning him. He was instrumental in securing eternal glory for Lazarus.

We can say more in Rich’s defense. It’s important not to read too much into the parable, but I can imagine that Rich did, in fact, reach out to Lazarus over the years. It could be that the reason Lazarus was at Rich’s gate every day is precisely because there he found food. Rich knew Lazarus’ name. Perhaps when Lazarus was well enough Rich would pay him to run minor errands. He gave him work. Did it help? It did not. Did Lazarus ever change? He did not. Day after day Lazarus would return. Rich was completely unsuccessful in getting Lazarus off the street, to say nothing of encouraging him to take hold of a better life. How easy it is to imagine that over time any youthful, can-do idealism that Rich harbored waned, until he just gave up trying.

This brings us back to Act III, starring the five brothers of Rich in this life, otherwise known as you and me today. What must we do to inherit eternal life? What must we do to avoid Rich’s mistake? Are we to plunge ourselves into a flurry of good works in the effort to save Lazarus? Perhaps. But beware. Lazarus is a complex being, hindered by the same stubbornness and willfulness that beset you and me. In order to sustain your effort you will have to remember that the calling of Jesus is not to be correct and successful, but loving and faithful.

So then, is the answer that we should divest ourselves of worldly goods? Was Rich’s mistake as simple as being rich? No, being rich is not a sin. In today’s portion of Paul’s First Letter to Timothy (6:6-19), we’ve heard that possessing wealth isn’t sinful in and of itself. But it does pose risks to the soul. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. The temptation of the wealthy is to buy into a delusion that what they have sets them on a higher, wiser, more sophisticated plane of existence than those who lack basic resources. Apparently, the temptation was one that Rich could not resist. Rich goes to hell not because of his riches but because of his superiority complex. His downfall is his haughtiness.

Consider: even in the flames of torment Rich still thinks of himself as a winner, an insider. And Lazarus? Well, Lazarus is nothing better than his errand boy who should fetch him a drink. Rich’s superior air is intractable. The great chasm between heaven and hell is in his own heart. Those who want to be rich need to be careful of Lazarus lying at the gate. Lazarus may be the gate. For Rich, the test all along was to treat Lazarus neither as an errand boy, nor as a bum, nor as a charity case, but as a brother. Hear again the words of St. Paul: As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.

Rich, the rich man, reminds me of no less a personage than Ebeneezer Scrooge, the main character in Charles Dickens’, A Christmas Carol. You know the story. Over the course of a harrowing night’s sleep Scrooge is haunted by a series of ghosts who try to disabuse him of his love of money. When the ghost of Christmas future finally shows Scrooge his own, unkempt, unvisited grave, Scrooge cries out, “Why show me this, if I am past all hope?” In the parable, the news is bad for Rich. But in Dickens’ story, the news is good for Scrooge. He is not past all hope. My favorite scene in the book is the final chapter, when he wakes up on Christmas morning and realizes that he has time, “that the Time before him was his own, to make amends in!” Then with a joy he’d never known he embarks on taking hold of the life that really is life.

Likewise, the news is good for you, and me, and all of us on this side of eternity. We are not past all hope. We who are on stage in Act III have everything we need for salvation. By God’s grace we have Moses and the prophets and even one risen from the dead to tutor us. By God’s grace we have time for amendment of life – time to realize that life is a school for learning to be brother and sister to Lazarus. By God’s grace we have today’s parable and others like it, even as my father had the questions of a critical test before him in advance.

Imagine there’s a heaven. Allow the grace of God to go to work on you through this parable. Indeed, let it haunt the hell out of you, so that in setting our hopes on God, we will fight the good fight of the faith. We will be rich in good works. We will take hold of the life that really is life.