How can wealthy people escape hell? Luke 16.17-31

Luke 16.17-31

Last week we looked at the very difficult passage from the beginning of Luke 16. It was difficult because it is hard to understand

 

This week it is also a difficult passage from Luke 16 – not because it is difficult to understand, but because it is extremely challenging. And it is a bit scary.

 

It is a story about wealth, about hell and heaven and it is a story about how we can begin to change.

 

It is a story about wealth.

Jesus has been speaking in the previous verses about how you cannot serve two masters.

You will be split in two.

Story of the Admiral getting into a launch. He had one foot on the launch, one foot on the jetty, when a sudden wave pushed the boat away from the jetty. Something had to give, and he ended up in the water.

Jesus says 'You cannot serve two masters, you cannot serve both God and wealth'.

And then we are told, ‘The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this, and they ridiculed him’.

 

And so Jesus tells this story. He wanted, in the words of one commentator, "to reveal through this story that they loved their money more than people, their possessions more than the poor, their clothes more than compassion, and their extravagant feasts more than sharing food with the hungry.”

 

Here is the archetypal wealthy man. He is so archetypical that he doesn’t even have a name.

But he has everything. He is dressed in the best, in the most fashionable clothes in the most expensive fabric - purple and fine linen. He eats the best, ‘he feasted sumptuously’. He lives in a privileged place, a gated community or house. When he dies there is a funeral - no doubt a grand affair.

 

And there is the archetypal poor man. Except this poor man has a name, Lazarus. He lives by the gate of the rich man. He has nothing and he is desperate. He would happily eat the scraps that come from the table of the rich man. But the only creatures that seem to notice him or have any sympathy for him are the dogs, who lick his sores. When he dies, well – not even a burial is mentioned. His body is probably thrown into some municipal pit.

 

I think that we can assume that the rich man does not see Lazarus.

Well, he may have seen him, in the sense that he was something to be stepped over every morning. He may have seen him as a problem. He may have seen him as someone to be used – notice how, even when he is in Hades, he treats Lazarus as someone who is there to serve him: ‘send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; send Lazarus as the messenger boy to my brothers’.

But I suspect that he did not really see Lazarus – certainly not as a person.

 

Perhaps we might feel sorry for the rich man.

It wasn’t his fault that he was rich.

"Mr Podsnap was well to do, and stood very high in Mr Podsnap's opinion. Beginning with a good inheritance, he had married a good inheritance, and had thriven exceedingly in the Marine Insurance way, and was quite satisfied. He never could make out why everybody was not quite satisfied, and he felt conscious that he set a brilliant social example in being particularly well satisfied with most things, and, above all other things, with himself." (Dickens, Our Mutual Friend)

 

And it wasn’t his fault that Lazarus was poor.

Why was Lazarus his responsibility? Why couldn’t Lazarus stand on his own two feet and do some work for a change, instead of lazing around and lying outside his gate, begging for money, and probably wasting it on drink.

What had he done to deserve having Lazarus pitch up on his turf?

 

But the rich man is clearly guilty in God’s eyes. After his great funeral when the priest and everybody, no doubt, says very nice things about him, he goes to hell, to Hades.

 

The rich man had broken the second great command: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself – as if he was one of your own’.

This story is the anti-story to the story of the Good Samaritan. The Good Samaritan became a neighbour to the man who was in need because he saw him and showed compassion on him.

Here is a man who, by any definition of the word, was a neighbour to the rich man. But the rich man had done nothing.

Perhaps on just one occasion he could have stopped and had a conversation with Lazarus. Perhaps on just one occasion he could have told his servants to take the scraps to the beggar living at his gate.

But he shows no sense of compassion.

 

He was blinded by his wealth.

He did not have time: he had parties to go to, estates to manage, deals to strike, people to influence.

He was arrogant. He really did think that only he and his stuff mattered

And he probably preferred not to see, because he knew that if he did see Lazarus, he would have to do something

 

This story comes to us as a warning

 

We have seen this, week in, week out, as we have been reading through Luke’s gospel.

 

Jesus says that in the Kingdom of Heaven the powerful will be humbled, and the rich will be sent away empty. He says, ‘Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry’. He says it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. He tells people to sell everything they have and to give to the poor before they can begin to follow him.

 

It is not that being rich is bad in itself.

In the Kingdom of God there will be abundance and provision for all.

The problem is that riches and wealth blind us.

They blind us to the poor, to compassion for the poor, and they blind us to God and our need for God.

 

And the consequences are scary.

Lazarus goes to heaven. The rich man goes to hell.

 

Now Jesus is telling us a story. He is not offering us a worked-out theology, a description of heaven and hell.

 

But Hades here is portrayed as a place of torment and separation. The rich man is in torment and is told by Abraham, ‘Between you and us a great chasm has been fixed’.

We are used to think of hell in terms of torment, because we have been shaped by things like Dante’s inferno and the icons of demons with pitchforks casting people into a fiery furnace. I asked someone what they thought that this banner was about, and they said ‘hell’. But actually this story is the only place where hell is described as a place of torment (although in Matthew, Jesus does speak of hell as a place of eternal punishment and unquenchable fire, the second death)

Whatever our own views, that should at least make us stop and reflect.

 

But I think it is more significant that heaven here is portrayed as a place of comfort and communion. Yes, Lazarus is comforted, but Lazarus is also beside Abraham. The rich man, ‘sees Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side’ (literally ‘in his bosom’).

Lazarus is beside Abraham, part of Abraham, the father of all who have faith in God, who was called righteous by God because he had faith.

What we have here is a picture of the communion of the saints, of people who – because of faith – are alive to each other and alive to God.

 

 

You see, wealth and riches blind us to others.

We start to live for this world only, for the good things of this world.

And the poor - and notice that Jesus never identifies the poor - the poor are simply those in need. They are the invisible ones, who serve our comfortable little world - the Tajiks or people from other former soviet republics, who do the jobs here that nobody else wants to do, for salaries that nobody else would take (every country has their equivalent). But basically, so long as they are invisible, apart from when we need them, they do not matter.

 

But as we become blind to them, and others in need, so we become blind to people created in the image of God. We become so focussed on our own little life, that we become blind to God, to the love that God has for us and the love that God has for them.

 

And hell is simply a fixing of that, a continuation of that process of blinding. We find that suddenly there is a point of no return. A chasm has opened up. And we are lost and alone and there is nobody there who can help us.

Even now we are either growing into citizens of heaven or citizens of hell.

We are either becoming more blind to others - and I assure you that as you grow older it is extremely easy to become blind to the needs of others, or to become increasingly judgemental - or we are asking God to have mercy on us, to open our eyes to others, to give us love for them - so that we see ourselves as part of them.

 

But the good news is that it is not too late, and we can change

God has given us what we need in order to change

 

The rich man thinks that if the dead Lazarus were to pay a visit to his brothers, then they might be shocked out of their self-centred hedonistic lifestyles and start to look, to notice the poor, and to show compassion.

 

No, says Abraham. That won’t change them. Not even if someone rises from the dead

We know that. Jesus rose from the dead. There was plenty of evidence then for the resurrection; people saw him. And there is plenty of evidence today that he really did rise from the dead, but that in itself does not change people.

 

No, says Abraham, we already have what we need to begin to change: and it is there in the Bible.

‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone rises from the dead’.

 

The answer to social injustice is .. bible study!

The answer to our own lack of love, lack of compassion is .. bible study!

 

Of course, I am not talking about just academic bible study, but deep inner listening to the bible. Reading it, studying it with a heart and mind that treats the bible as the Word of God, that is open to God, that is genuinely asking God to teach us, and to change us, to change our way of seeing, our way of thinking, our way of living.

 

Paul writes: let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom. Colossians 3:16

That can happen when we are on our own, or in a group, or in our services.

 

And as we read with an open mind and an open heart of the love of God, of how each person is created in God’s image, of the purpose of God, of the righteousness and judgement and mercy of God, then he will, by his Holy Spirit, begin to open our eyes.