Sermon for Sunday, September 25th 2022 – Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost – there was a rich man

Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 26], rcl yr c, 2022
Jeremiah 32:1-3A, 6-15; Ps 91:1-6, 14-16; 1 Timothy 6:6-19; Luke 16:19-31

there was a rich man

In CS Lewis’s book The Great Divorce, he offers a creative proposal for what the beginning of the afterlife might look like. The perspective we get is of someone who has recently died, and is discovering a strange world and its inhabitants.

Early on the main character finds himself on a bus leaving a town. “It seems the deuce of a town,” says the main character to a new friend, “and that’s what I can’t understand. The parts of it that I saw were so empty.” The reason the town is so empty, it’s explained, is that people are quarrelsome and always want to move away, and gain distance from their neighbour. And if they find another quarrel, with another neighbour? They move further away yet.

And when the main character asks his new friend about the people who had been in this strange world the longest, he hears that “They’ve been moving on and on. Getting further apart. They’re so far off by now … [a]stronomical distances. … a chap has a telescope. You can see the lights of the inhabited houses, where those old ones live, millions of miles away. Millions of miles from us and from one another. Every now and then they move further still.”

And when a couple of people had made the journey to see the closest of these far-off men, they found Napoleon, still complaining about others. “ … he never rested. And muttering to himself all the time. ‘It was Soult’s fault. It was Ney’s fault. It was Josephine’s fault. It was the fault of the Russians. It was the fault of the English.’ Like that all the time. Never stopped for a moment. A little, fat man and he looked kind of tired. But he didn’t seem able to stop it.”

Now I know very little about Napoleon, I don’t know if he was petty, or a complainer, or if he didn’t get along well with others. But that’s not the point, and I can’t imagine it was Lewis’s point either. The point of the story in The Great Divorce was rather simple: how you live your life now is how you may well spend eternity.

Much the way Lewis’s Napoleon is a quarrelsome man who simply wants to blame others and get away from those he finds contemptible (which is most people as it turns out), he finds himself at an astronomical distance from all other people, all alone in a big house with only his complaints to keep him company.

There’s something similar happening in the Gospel reading today. In it we have “a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger what fell from the rich man’s table.”

After each of the two men die, we get Jesus’s description of the afterlife, where the poor man is given rest, because this is simply the fate of the poor according to Jesus’s Sermon on the Plain: “‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” And “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.”

And the rich man is “In Hades, where he was being tormented,” which also should be no surprise, if we were to look back to that same Sermon on the Plain: “woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.”And “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.”

What I’d like to point out though, is that like CS Lewis’s vision of the afterlife, the rich man doesn’t change much, and we can see in his torment a continuation of how he lived his life—aside from the nice suits and Michelin-starred meals, that is. And it shouldn’t be lost on us that a rich man who ignored a poor man in this life won’t even speak directly to the poor man in the afterlife. It’s Abraham that the rich man would speak to; “Abraham, we have some school chums in common, remember? Do me a good turn old boy, and summon that poor man for me.”

And, a man who lived with servants in life still feels like he can tell others what to do. “Father Abraham,” he says, “could you get that Lazarus guy to do something? He should really help me actually, and go and get me a glass of water. I’m parched down here. And could you make sure it comes with ice and a squeeze of lemon?”

Should we be surprised that “a great chasm has been fixed” between Lazarus and the rich man, if in this life, there was already a great chasm between the rich man and Lazarus?  Between someone who had already avoided and never spoken directly with the poor man?

The story ends with a number of references to resurrection, and we should be attentive to these as well. Of course, the rich man seems to still think he can tell others what to do as he things of his brothers; “Abraham, be a good boy would you? Would you resurrect Lazarus for me? And then tell him to go visit my brothers?Surely they will believe!” “[I]f someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” For Abraham, however, belief and unbelief, even if it is something of a mystery, is still observable and describable: “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets,” says Abraham, “neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”

I’ll end saying a couple of things. This may be a difficult word to hear for those of us who would identify more with the rich man than with Lazarus. And it should be sobering, and it should give pause, and it should be an opportunity for self-reflection on the ways we treat the poor among us. This is intentional on Jesus’s part.

But also, the story reminds us that success in this life doesn’t prepare you for your death. But death and loss in this life might very well prepare you for what’s next. The poor man is the loser here in life, and he is the one in paradise with Abraham; and the winner in this life, a winner who would avoid all the losers of this life, is the who loses the most in the next.

We would also be wise to keep in mind that there has been one among us—like the father who sees his prodigal son a long way off and rushes to embrace him—there has been one among us who can cross even the chasm  between Paradise and Hades: and that’s Jesus, the firstborn from the dead, and the harrower of hell, sent even there to bring the dead to life.

And so we should have hope that even the rich man is ensnared in the life of God, and will find grace in torment, and does find the love of God in his heart, and through that, the love of others; that there is still a chance to repent,  to treat Lazarus not as a servant but a friend in Christ; and have confidence that grace can penetrate the thickest and stoniest of hearts, and that each of us would be prepared, through our repentance and love of others, for the life of God in the world to come.

The Revd Dr. Preston Parsons