Date: September 22nd & 25th
Preacher: Pastor Ashley Rosa-Ruggieri
First Reading: Amos 6:1a, 4-7
Psalmody: Psalm 146
Second Reading: 1 Timothy 6:6-19
Gospel: Luke 16:19-31
There are many topics in our culture that people would rather not talk about. I am sure you can think of a few examples of things you would rather not discuss with most people you meet. According to a study earlier this year done by Ally bank, money is one of the top topics that people do not want to discuss. In their survey, 70% of respondents in the United States said that they thought any talk about money was rude. Money can be a difficult topic to discuss in our world. It is inherently linked to power and respect in our society, and that often means we do not like to acknowledge or talk about it even when it affects our own lives. And yet we come to worship today, remembering our readings for last week that said no one can serve God and money. Add to that statement the readings for this week in Luke and in Amos, and we clearly have many readings focused on the topic of wealth and faith. If we look more broadly at the Bible, we would find that these are far from the only times money comes up in scripture. Luke’s Gospel especially has an emphasis on monetary inequalities, and how they come to be balanced and reversed through the coming kingdom of God. In this week’s reading we have another parable from Jesus that demands we consider what it means to view wealth in relation to how we live in the world and live out our faith.
Our parable today in the Gospel of Luke focuses on the relation between two people–a rich man, and a poor beggar named Lazarus. Even with only this information, we can already see how Jesus’s teachings often flip the expectations of power when it comes to money. This is because we often are much more likely to know the names of the rich and powerful in the world than we are to know the names of the homeless and poor among us. Yet in this story, the rich man’s prestige in his community is established, he has money to buy and wear purple cloth for example, which would have been very expensive, but he is the one who goes unnamed. He is a generic rich man in this story. On the other hand, the man who is a poor beggar, hoping to eat scraps from a table and seen as so unclean that dogs lick his wounds, is given a name in this parable. His name is Lazarus.
This change in storytelling sets up the parable right from the beginning for Jesus to subvert what is expected. He starts by telling all about their lives, the rich man living in luxury and Lazarus sitting at his gate, hoping for food. After the death of these two men, one ends up with Abraham and the other in Hades, with a large chasm in-between. The rich man, now in hades, pleads for his thirst to be quenched, for Lazarus to help. Abraham reminds the rich man that during his life, he had luxury and everything one might want, and so now it is Lazarus’s turn to receive comfort, for he had received none of this on Earth. Abraham boldly states, “Lazarus is now comforted, and you are in agony.”
When these first requests are dismissed, the rich man then pleads with Abraham that Lazarus be sent to at least warn his five brothers about what is to come. The rich man asks for this because from his perspective, he was never fully prepared for what it would mean for him to die and his actions to affect what would follow his life. The world saw him as powerful, worthy, prestigious, and respectable, so how would he have known that was anything but true forever. Since he sees this as an unexpected consequence, he asks that his brother be warned so that they might not find the same fate. The response he receives here from Abraham gives us great insight into what Jesus is teaching in this parable, and it again reverses what is thought to be known by the rich man.
Abraham refuses to send Lazarus back from the dead to warn the rich man’s brothers, and the reasonings are this: they already have Moses and the prophets to listen to and follow, and if they cannot follow them now when they have them, then even a person rising from the dead will not help them. Moses here is meant as a broader symbol for the Law found in scripture. Moses was the one who received the tablets of the commandments, he was a messenger to the people Israel in the wilderness, and so his words and heritage along with the words of prophets throughout history should be enough for even the rich to understand what it truly means to live in a way that is heeding their words of wisdom. An example from the prophets for us today can come from our reading from Amos: “Alas for those who…lounge on their couches, and eat lambs from the flock…who sing idle songs…who drink wine from bowls, and anoint themselves with the finest oils…Therefore they shall now be the first to go into exile…and the revelry of the loungers shall pass away.”
Amos is not the only prophet to have passages like this, nor is this the only place in the book of Amos where wealth inequality is a main point. Laws throughout other books in the Hebrew scriptures are also very clear on the importance of caring for those who are systemically powerless in society. For those who are poor, orphaned, widowed, foreigners, imprisoned, oppressed, and sick or disabled. The clear message has two parts. First, wealth and riches spent in lavish ways should never be seen as more important than the wellbeing of one’s neighbor. And second, this message has already been in scripture, even if it was ignored by the rich man and his brothers. Money can corrupt easily when it is the only thing given importance. Jesus’s parable is meant to turn our understanding of money and power upside down—to point to the inequalities and say they do not have to be as they are in our world. And so even though money is uncomfortable to talk about, we discuss it today because our scripture does not shy away from rebuking the lavishly rich who ignore the poor.
Jesus’s parable makes his point very clear—follow the messages from the Lord that we already have in the Law from Moses and the Prophets, for if those are not enough, then nothing else can possibly be good enough to teach these things. Jesus tells this parable because he saw wealth disparity that was harming many people and communities around him, and the rich who were ignoring the poor among them were not following the scriptures that they read and proclaimed in worship. Money may be seen as power, but Jesus’s parable urges us to try reversing what we have always been told. Consider what our scripture is already telling us, through the Law and the Prophets, and upend the norms of this world that uplift the rich and leave the poor hungry. So, let us follow Jesus’s example in telling this parable, and have discussions about wealth in our world, even when the topic can be difficult. Thanks be to God.