Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time: 9-25-16

Peace be with You,

Both the gospel message for last weekend and this, present themselves as unique challenges to those of us who live in a land of abundance.  For many of us, there is never a question as to whether or not our daily needs will be met, and this, to be sure, is a good thing.  However, it also lends itself to the delusion that we are somehow self-sustaining, which almost immediately estranges us from God.  For, after all, if we are completely self-sufficient, what need have we of God?  Even if we don’t conceptualize our situation in this manner, quite often the implication is there in a not so subtle manner.  For even those of us who claim to be and indeed seek to be followers of Christ push him to the fringes of our lives, relegating any time we spend with him to Sunday, an hour a week.  And even then we wonder why service takes so long; we have things to do after all!  The gospel this weekend provides a stern check to this kind of thinking (even if subconscious), and attempts to wake us up to the fact that we are, indeed, totally dependent on our God.

The parable of Lazarus and the rich man which we find in our gospel reading today from Luke is both tragic and heart-warming, providing an opportunity to reflect upon the way we view the world around us.  To begin, we find a rich man whose day to day experience in life is much like that of the experience of many of us.  He, like many of us, has all he needs, plenty to eat, and a nice secure home to live in.  In contrast we find the most pitiable of all characters, Lazarus.  A poor, starving man, filled with sores, who sits at the gate of the home of the rich man, begging for food while dogs lick his sores.  This last detail provides us with some cultural perspective.  For in ancient Jewish culture, dogs were an unclean animal, and thus to be associated with a dog was to be unclean, the lowest of society, an outcast.  One might wonder, was Jesus here critiquing a Jewish cultural perception?  Were the poor thought to be poor because of their own fault, in much the same way that those who were sick were thought to be so because of sin?  We cannot be sure; however, the implication seems to be there and thus, because of how the story ends it provides a very strong rebuttal of the so-called gospel of prosperity so prevalent today.

As the story goes, both men die, passing on to their respective eternal destinations.  It is here that the setting begins to reverse itself.  As a rich man of some substance, we would expect there to be some sort of gathering in honor of the man, praising his worldly success, however, this story is not told by society at large, but from the purview of God.  Here, we can draw a parallel to our first reading from Amos.  There, Amos addresses those who ‘are at ease in Zion, those who feel themselves secure, the notables of the nations’ (Amos 6:1).  Then after sarcastically exposing their luxurious existence, the prophet concludes by telling them that they “shall now be the first to go into exile, and the revelry of the loungers shall pass away” (Amos 6:7).  The words the revelry of the loungers shall pass away are significant for our purpose, as the word revelry was used to describe the feasting that took place in honor of the passing of an individual of importance.  What Amos is saying to the rich of Israel (whom in other places he charges with the crimes of extorting, abusing and ignoring the poor) is what Maximus says to Commodus near the end of the movie, Gladiator: “The time for honoring yourself will soon be at an end.”  This is the experience of the rich man, faced with the judgment of God, as the rich of Israel in Amos, his life is not commemorated nor celebrated; instead, he is exposed to the painful experience of being separated from God, Love itself.

For his part, Lazarus has a much different experience, the reasons for which can be explored in light of the fact that he actually has a name in the story.  First, the name itself has something to tell us.  The name Lazarus is a Hellenized version of the Hebraic name, Eleazar, which means “God is my help.”  It is in his very name that we are meant to see the intimacy which God has with the poor.  It is only those who are truly poor who in a very real way pray “give us this day our daily bread,” making the words of Our Lord theirs.  Secondly, the sheer fact that Lazarus receives a personal name while the rich man does not is extremely significant.  Recall that in the parable of the wise and foolish maidens, those maidens who are unprepared for the coming of the bridegroom and appear at the marriage feast late, knock at the door, pleading to be let in, to which the Lord replies, “Truly, I say to you, I do not know you” (Matt 25:12).  To have a name is to be known, thus Lazarus is known by God and retires into eternity welcomed by Abraham, his father in faith.  In contrast, the rich man possesses no name, unknown to God, for just as his ancestors who Amos spoke so harshly to, he too had ignored the plight of the poor, and refused to care for the least, those who are so precious to God and whom he identifies with (cf. Matt 25:40 & 45).

We see then that the dangers of being wealthy are not new, but rather have been present as long as there have been haves and have-nots in society.  It is a reality that when we are surrounded by plenty that we must fight to remember that none of us is less dependent upon God than another, and that all we have is a gift to be used for the common good.  It is in light of this very real challenge that we find Paul addressing Timothy, a young leader in the early Church, who was sure to be faced with such a dynamic within the community he led.  Immediately before the passage we hear today, Paul warns Timothy that “the love of money is the root of all evils, it is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced their hearts with many pangs” (1 Tim 6:10).  This is the experience of the rich man in the gospel, and in order that Timothy and those in his care might avoid this end, Paul provides Timothy with some advice, which can do much for us today as well.

My friends, today, Jesus, through Paul call us to “Fight the good fight of the faith” and “take hold of the eternal life” to which we are called (1 Tim 6:12).  How do we do this?  By shunning all that the world tells us can make us happy (e.g. wealth, pleasure and power), and instead focus on cultivating ‘faith, love, steadfastness and gentleness’ (1 Tim 6:11).  By cultivating these qualities we will more readily seek the good of all around us, and thus imitate and move closer to the one who possesses these qualities perfectly, Jesus Christ, in whom we are called to “take hold of the life which is life indeed” (1 Tim 6:19).

Your servant in Christ,

Tony

Tony Crescio

Tony Crescio is the founder of FRESHImage Ministries. He holds an MTS from the University of Notre Dame and is currently a PhD candidate in Christian Theology at Saint Louis University. His research focuses on the intersection between moral and sacramental theology. His dissertation is entitled, Presencing the Divine: Augustine, the Eucharist and the Ethics of Exemplarity.

Tony’s academic publications can be found here.