The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus Luke 16

 

The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus

Luke 16:19,ff

St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church 4 November A+D 2021

 

 

Death comes to us all.  It is vain to be like the rich man, faring sumptuously every day without a thought for his neighbor.  God made you to love, and in a sinful world, and with a sinful flesh and mind like you have, loving means suffering for others.  Life is not a bed of roses, but if it is, others have picked the thorns for you.  All pleasure comes from pain in this earthly life, just as our mothers carried us for nine months and endured the pain of childbirth.  If life itself does not enter this world without pain and suffering from another, then why would we think we can live life without suffering? 

 

The rich man is not given a name.  The poor man is.  Lazarus.  Jesus gives the rich man no name because his name is not written in the book of life. The book of life is not filled with those who live only to pleasure on earth.  Pleasure on earth is not the highest good. 

 

I could argue that this rich man’s pleasures made him miserable on earth, and therefore, in order to be happy on earth, you should be willing to suffer.  But this is not always true.  The rich man fared sumptuously, he lived happily, he was in a good mood every day.  He had good food, companions, and comfortable clothing.  His suffering did not come on this earth.  It came in hell where God sent him.

 

Why did God send him to hell?  Because he didn’t love his brother, and therefore he didn’t love God.  He took from God.  He took his riches and God gave him joy, but he was not thankful.  All the gifts God gave him did not result in him humbling himself and thanking God and looking at the oppression and misery of a beggar laid at his gate.

 

If you live for yourself and pleasure you will live forever away from God’s goodness and mercy when you die.  If you live without love on earth, you will live without love in hell forever.  This is just.  This is right.  This is not God punishing too severely something that wasn’t that bad. 

 

Greed is idolatry.  It is worshiping the creation rather than the creator.  It is calling the source of good something that is merely a neutral means to good or evil.  You can use money for good or evil.  But the love of money is the root of all evil.  It is not money that is the root of all evil.  It is the love of money.  The sin is in the heart of man.  If riches increase, do not set your heart on them, says David.  To set your heart on your riches is to deny God and ignore the love your neighbor needs.

 

Lazarus was right at the rich man’s gate.  They laid him there where there was an abundance of what the poor man needed, but Lazarus didn’t even get the crumbs he longed for. 

 

Lazarus means God is my helper.  He trusted in God, and as the rich man is a picture of the promise of worldly pleasure and riches, so Lazarus is a picture of every Christian, whether rich or poor.  On this earth he is despised and no one wants to help him.  The dogs come an lick all the sores that are over his body.  He is despised, and the world does not esteem him.  He is in pain, and the world does not alleviate the pain.  He is poor, and no riches can alleviate his pain.  Only God is his help.

 

God doesn’t seem to be much of a help to him, does he?  He lets him suffer with sores and dogs.  He doesn’t make him richer.  He doesn’t seem to help his earthly situation.  Just as God made the rich man rich, he seems to have made the poor man poor.  It is as Solomon says, “The rich and the poor have this in common, The Lord is the maker of them all.”  And the rich and poor have this in common. They both die. 

 

Paul says in Hebrews, “It is appointed for man once to die, and then the judgment.”  We all await the resurrection, but our souls immediately go to either heaven or hell.  Jesus speaks in earthly terms about the spirit’s joy in heaven and the spirit’s torment in hell.

 

The rich man’s misery is described in some detail.  He is in anguish.  He is in torments.  His tongue is dry and he is constantly thirsty.  He sees the beauty of heaven but cannot reach it.  He argues with Abraham, but loses the argument.  He wants Lazarus to serve him by going and getting water for him, and then he wants Lazarus to go back from the dead and warn his brothers. He doesn’t get anything he wants.  He is without hope and without God, just as he was in the world.

 

Lazarus joy is described only in simple terms.  He has good things. What are the good things?  He is in Abraham’s bosom.  Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.  Lazarus has righteousness.  He is clean and pure.  With righteousness all his sores are gone.  There are no dogs licking his sores.  He doesn’t long for crumbs from the rich man’s table.  He isn’t in misery.  He is happy because his faith in God has brought him to join father Abraham, the father of all those who believe.

 

And he is our father, if we will have him.  The rich man calls him father Abraham, but he doesn’t have him as a father except by the flesh.  He is our father because he did not trust in his works, and when God tested him, he was even willing to give up his only son whom God had given him.  Abraham believed God when He told him, “I am your shield and your great reward.”  So did Lazarus.

 

Beware of all manner of covetousness, every kind of greed, for your life does not consist in the abundance of your possessions.  Remember the proverb,

 

“There is one who makes himself rich, yet has nothing; And one who makes himself poor, yet has great riches.”

 

Those who make themselves rich and have nothing are those who do not repent of their sins, but ignore them and constantly look for something other than God to alleviate their pain.  They have nothing, because what they think gives them joy and pleasure is finally dust that can’t help them. 

 

Those who make themselves poor, yet have great riches, are those who repent of their sins. They see that they are poor in spirit, that they have no righteousness of their own, that money and power and pleasures and food and drink and clothing and all the earthly blessings and responsibilities of life are not righteousness.  Possessing them does not mean that you possess God. 

 

But there was one who was rich, and made himself poor, that through His poverty we might become rich.

 

He saw our hearts admiring the rich man who fared sumptuously every day, but he goes to hell.  He saw the flesh stupidly loving what didn’t give any wisdom.  And He came to fulfill Moses and the Prophets. He came to fulfill every word that comes from the mouth of God, so that we might rely on it, and see that not money, not pleasure, not power, but only the Lord is our helper.

 

There are parents telling children to wait having children until they can afford it.  They place money above love.  There are parents telling children to wait getting married until they have experienced life a little more.  They place pleasure above love.  There are parents who tell their children to act like they do, to live for a decade or two of leisure at the end of their lives, as if God will not come and say to them, “You fool!  This day your soul is required of you!”

 

Hell has habit of scaring sinners.  Charles Dicken’s Scrooge literally has the hell scared out of him by seeing the results of his callous greed.  But being scared doesn’t change hearts so that their lives change.  The rich man’s brothers may have gotten scared by Lazarus, and maybe they would have visited Tiny Tim and given him a goose, but it wouldn’t have made them stop trusting in their riches. 

 

It is only when we know that only the Lord is our help, when we believe the Bible, Moses and the prophets, that a power that does not come from money or pleasure or earthly power changes our hearts. 

 

The one who knows the Lord is his help is the helpless one.  It is the one who believes that I am sinful birth, that every thought of my heart has strayed from God, that I have not loved the needy next to me, who need me to think of him and not myself, that I have not loved God, who made me to love Him because He is love. 

 

There is one who made himself poor, yet has great riches.  That is Christ, the Son of God.  He had love.  He had righteousness.  He came and received hatred and disdain.  He came to His own and His own did not receive Him.  They mocked him and spit on Him and brought him judgment, though he had done no wrong, though he never lied.  And the Gentile dogs did not lick his wounds, but made them with spear and nail and thorns on whip and fist and words of insult and disdain, and He was so poor, carrying the sin of the world, taking on our true poverty, our true need, to be our help, and when they were not giving Him anything but pain, He said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” 

 

He made Himself poor.  He gave up all His righteousness to be treated as all sin.  God made Him to be sin for us.  And in so doing, Jesus made himself rich.  You, the sinner, are the riches He claims.  Lazarus is His wealth.  It is the soul and body of a human being that He redeemed, bought, suffered for with His human flesh and blood. 

 

He is your help because He cherishes you.  You are His treasure, and He is yours.  What does the world offer you that is greater than knowing that the almighty Lord and maker of the rich and poor, the ruler of all the affairs of men, the bloody man acquainted with grief, the joyful man, alive from the dead – what is greater than to have Him as your help?

 

And He helps you.  He cleans your conscience.  He takes away your doubt.  He meets you in the worst misery and shows you how His misery has brought you the greatest joy.  He meets you in poverty and shows how His poverty makes you rich with the confidence that heaven itself is yours.  Moses says so. The Prophets say so.  Jesus loves me!  This I know, for the Bible tells me so.  Little ones to Him belong.  They are weak, but He is strong. 

 

This earthly life must be full of suffering.  Those who think they can avoid all suffering are those who don’t want God, because God became a man to suffer for us, to carry our sin, to die our death.  The God the rich man didn’t want is the Christ who suffered.  The God Lazarus needed is the God who suffered for him and Abraham and you and me and every sinner under the sun. 

 

 We are rich in Christ.  Let us use our riches for love of our neighbor.  Abraham’s bosom, his heart, is where the Gospel is purely preached and the sacraments are rightly administered. Let us rest in Abraham’s bosom tonight, in faith that the Lord is our helper and will be until death. 

 

For this God is our God forever and ever.  He shall be our guide even unto death.  Alleluia.  Amen.