Pentecost 16 – 2022
Luke 16:19-31
Marian Free
In the name of God who gives some of us more than we deserve or desire. Amen.
I am not an economist, but it is clear to me that the world economy has vastly changed over the course of my lifetime. Small, local businesses have been overtaken by huge multi-national companies which, by all accounts, care more about the profit margin than they do about those workers who produce the profits. They are more interested in the return that they can give to their shareholders and the enormous salaries that they can offer their executives than about the workers upon whom they depend for their income.
While huge (even obscene) bonuses are given to those at the top of the corporate ladder, and healthy dividends are given to shareholders, those who generate the income rarely see any benefits from their contribution to the revenue. Global corporations are sometimes so profit-driven that their employees endure terrible (often dangerous) conditions in order that their company might reap the reward and that others might wear cheap clothing and their need for on-line shopping might be satisfied.
Today, few executives – even if they do live in the same country as their employees – would not know them by name, let alone know anything about their families or living conditions. We are far removed from the days of small businesses in which the boss knew those who worked for him (her) and who, when times were good, would share the results with those upon whom the business relied, and who, when labour was in short supply, would offer higher wages to attract staff.
While many of us may lament the current situation of globalisation and the emphasis on profit over care (for the labourer, the environment, or indeed anything beyond the desire to increase the corporation’s income), we find ourselves complicit in a system in which the majority support the lifestyle of a few. We are happy to pay less for consumer goods produced by vulnerable, underpaid people in third world countries and to indirectly support global corporations who meet our need for convenient on-line shopping. Many of us, particularly those of us who are now retired, are dependent on our investments (personal or through superannuation funds) for an income and are therefore reluctant to act in such a way that would result in a lower standard of living for ourselves.
So, if ever there was a parable that hit you straight between the eyes it would be the one retold in this morning’s gospel – the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Nowhere else does Jesus speak so directly about the afterlife or about the consequences of our lifestyle in the present. As we listen/read to the description of the place in which the rich man and Lazarus find themselves, we are filled with a level of dis-ease. We feel ourselves condemned along with the rich man, and realise that if, like the rich man we find ourselves on the wrong side of the chasm, there is no escape, no way to cross to the other side and no means to get any relief from our suffering.
Our discomfort can mean that our immediate reaction to the parable is to distance ourselves, to look for a way out. We reassure ourselves that we are not like the rich man. For starters, we are nowhere near as rich, and we are generous with what we have – donating to charities that support the poor and homeless and paying our taxes so that the government can make social welfare payments and build housing. We comfort ourselves with the knowledge that the image of Hades presented here is unique and does not match other images of the afterlife. (Of course, we expect to be judged, but to be honest most of us are confident that God’s mercy will see us spend eternity in a place of peace and light, where our every need is met and in which we need not even think about there being an alternate destiny (let alone have such a place within our field of vision)).
What is striking, and what causes the best of us to squirm, is the implication in the parable that our eternal fate depends not on whether we are “good” or “bad” in conventional terms but on our relative wealth. Jesus is deliberately sparse on detail. Indeed, we know nothing about the two men except that one is fabulously rich and the other so desperately poor that he would settle for crumbs that fall from the table. It is our imagination that makes the rich man callous and thoughtless, but his crime seems to be only that he is fabulously rich. As far as we know, he may well have been law-abiding and generous – paying the Temple tax, supporting widows and orphans, and insisting that anyone who came to his door be fed and clothed. Likewise, there is no evidence that Lazarus is “good”. The parable leaves open the possibility that he is not, that he brought his poverty on himself – through loose living, being caught out stealing, or by over-imbibing in alcohol.
Our imaginations see the rich man going in and out of his gate and ignoring Lazarus’ suffering, but again there is nothing in the parable to suggest that the rich man even notices Lazarus. (Equally, there is nothing to suggest that he doesn’t see and doesn’t offer some relief – however small.) Whatever the rich man does or doesn’t do or see in regard to Lazarus, what is clear is that he does nothing to address the situation that allows him to be so rich and Lazarus so poor.
According to the parable, what matters is that the rich man had received good things during his life and Lazarus had received evil things (16:25). In Hades the situation is reversed and just as there was a chasm between the two in life, so there is in death. It was not their behaviour (good or bad) in life that determined their fate but their collusion (or not) in the systemic inequities that resulted in some people living in relative comfort while others existed in dire poverty. The situation is possibly exacerbated by the rich man’s inability to recognise that his lifestyle (not to mention his apathy, greed and selfishness) contributed to and reinforced the differences between himself and Lazarus.
In the end, the parable suggests, there is no wriggle room. We might have worked hard for what we have, lived a good and righteous life and have been generous with this world’s goods, but if, at the end of the day we have failed to recognise that the system has benefitted us and disadvantaged others, and, if we have done nothing to rectify that state of affairs, we will be found wanting.
The solution begins by seeing – seeing the poor at our gate, identifying the ways in which we support a system which puts (and keeps) them there and doing what we can to build a more just and equitable world.
Swallowsrest 