Text: Luke 16:19-31
In the name of + Jesus. Amen.
Today’s Gospel from the lips of Jesus is a story. Its theme is a reversal of fortune. It involves a rich man who loses everything, and a poor man who gains everything. It is a cautionary tale. And the punch line, the conclusion, the pinnacle of the story is the resurrection of Jesus.
The key to understanding the meaning behind this story involves the audience that Jesus is speaking to. After having completed the Parable of the Dishonest manager, with the moral of the story that you cannot serve two masters, that you cannot serve God and money, the Pharisees, who were both the audience and the target (for they “were lovers of money”), were mocking Jesus. Our Lord shot back at them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.”
In other words, the Pharisees are full of themselves. Because of their wealth and the respect of men, they don’t think they need God. They don’t think the Law applies to them. They don’t think they need the Gospel. And they certainly don’t think they need Jesus to keep them from hell and give them eternal life through the shedding of His blood. “It is easier,” He tells them, “for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the Law to become void.” And he reminds them of the sixth commandment, of true marriage and sexual purity. It seems like some of them did not think that applied to them either.
And then, our Lord tells them a story in which they are represented by a character: an unnamed “rich man.” The other character is a poor man named “Lazarus” – whose name means, “God has helped.”
The rich man lives like a king, whereas Lazarus is a beggar. Lazarus would love the table scraps from the rich man’s table, but they are not shared. Lazarus dies, and God helps him by bringing him to heaven, to Abraham’s side. The rich man, however, dies and goes to Hades, where he suffers.
And now it is the rich man who becomes the beggar, seeking relief from Lazarus: “Send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.”
The rich man is told that what occurred in life is the cause of what is happening in death. And the irony is that the rich man, who lived a carefree and self-centered life, is in torment, but Lazarus, who suffered, is now helped by God in heaven. The rich man is also told that there is a chasm separating heaven from hell.
At this point, Jesus brilliantly uses the story to teach the Pharisees about the Law and the Prophets, and about Himself. The rich man asks to warn his brothers to repent, but he is told, “They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them.” In other words, dear friends, we are being warned right now by the words of Holy Scripture. We need to repent of our sins. We don’t need some supernatural sign. We don’t need some kind of mystical appearance from our dead relatives. And in fact, Jesus prevents our dead relatives from appearing to us, and He forbids us from even trying to contact them through mediums and séances and praying to them.
If you want to know God’s will, dear friends, if you want to hear Him speak to you: you have the Bible. You have the Word of God. You have a church where the Scriptures are read and proclaimed. You have a pastor whom the Holy Spirit has sent you to preach and teach the Word to you. These are the kinds of gifts that the Pharisees rejected, because they were wealthy. They had their material things in this life, their “good things,” that made them love money. They did not spend their time in God’s Word, because it wasn’t important to them.
Jesus is warning us not to be like them.
The rich man protests that Moses and the prophets aren’t enough: “if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.”
The rich man now understands what is needed, and what he lacked in his earthly life: repentance. We need to have a change of heart, we need to turn from our sins, we need to stop loving money and material things more than the Word of God. We need to stop worshiping idols and turning ourselves into false gods. Our Lord has given us His very flesh for the life of the world. He gives us His name at Holy Baptism, and He gives us His body and blood in Holy Communion. He gives us forgiveness in Holy Absolution. He invites all of us to be a “Lazarus,” one helped by God – God in the flesh, God who broke into our world to rescue us, God who has indeed come back from the dead.
For the rich man asking for someone to come back from the dead is actually fulfilled in our Lord’s resurrection. Jesus died for the sake of our sins, and rose from the dead to conquer the death that we deserve, to give us a share in His life that has no end. But Jesus doesn’t rise from the dead to make us repent. For as our Lord says, “If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.”
Dear friends, hear Moses and the Prophets! Listen and read and study the Holy Scriptures! These living words are the means by which the Lord helps us, speaks words of comfort to us, and delivers everlasting life to us. We gather in the Divine Service week in and week out, because we need help. The proud Pharisee came to the synagogue and temple not to beg for help, as did Lazarus, but rather to flaunt himself in front of the Lazaruses of the world. And this proud attitude continues to this day. This is why it is necessary to repent. This is why the Holy Spirit caused this parable to be recorded in Scripture, and read to us this very day, dear brothers and sisters.
Dr. Luther described the day to day life of the Christian as repentance. It is not done once, but daily, continually, in prayer, in praying and reading the Scriptures, in gathering around Word and Sacrament, and in being forgiven our sins when we fail.
For what condemned the rich man was not his money, but his love of money – for it was a love that pushed away the love of God, a love that got in the way of Moses and the prophets, a love that spurned the greatest love of all: the love of Christ who goes to the cross to suffer for us (to help us Lazaruses), and to beg to the Father on our behalf. And thanks be to God that the Father is not callous and uncaring like the rich man. The Father is infinitely rich, but also infinitely merciful. His grace is without measure, and He continues to speak to us in Word and Sacrament. Instead of merely dipping his finger in water to cool our tongues, Jesus allows His entire body to be sacrificed in a holocaust, even as blood and water flowed from His pierced side, so as to keep us out of hell, to help us, and to welcome us to the side of Abraham.
That warning that the rich man sought for his brothers, we are hearing today, dear friends: today, while it can still make a difference. Now is the time to repent. Now is the time to receive the help of God. Now is the time to reject the false gods of money and self, and turn to the one true God, the God of Abraham, the God who helps us, the God who preaches to the Pharisees and the beggars alike, bringing the good news of salvation to those who are baptized and who repent and who believe the Gospel!
For unlike those who reject Moses and the Prophets, we are indeed convinced because One has truly risen from the dead – even Jesus Christ our Lord. And by His compassion, we are led to compassion. By His humility, we are led to humility. By His help, we are helped. And like another Lazarus, whom Jesus was to summon forth from the grave, we too will be raised – not merely to Abraham’s side, but even in the flesh.
God has indeed helped us, healed us, given us our “good things” even as a life that has no end. Thanks be to God, now and even unto eternity! Amen.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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