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Seeing Lazarus

September 27, 2025

Pentecost 16 – 2025

Luke 16:19-31

Marian Free

In the name of God whose preference is for the poor, the widowed and the orphaned. Amen.

During the week I learnt a new expression which was coined to describe Elizabeth Gilbert’s book Eat, Pray, Love^[1]. The expression “Priv Lit” or “Privileged Literature” was introduced in 2010 by writers Joshunda Sanders and Diana Barnes-Brown in an article titled Eat, Pray, Spend. I came across the expression in a comment on Gilbert’s latest offering All the Way to the River in which (as I understand it) Gilbert describes the wild ride she and her lover go on when the latter is diagnosed with cancer. The expression ‘Priv Lit’ refers to: “literature or media whose expressed goal is one of spiritual, existential, or philosophical enlightenment contingent upon women’s hard work, commitment, and patience, but whose actual barriers to entry are primarily financial”.

Authors of these sorts of biographical narratives use their own life experiences as a model for others, assuming that these can be universalised and forgetting that they write from a position of wealth and privilege that few others can aspire to.

While this term was first applied to Gilbert, it could just as well refer to a number of other authors who are so focussed on their own issues (and resulting solutions) that they are blind to the very real problems faced by women (children and men) all over the world – including in their own country of the United States. Self-actualisation, dealing with grief through travel, or restoring a villa in Italy pale into insignificance in comparison with the hour-by-hour struggles of homelessness, starvation, injury and loss experienced right now by millions in Gaza, the Sudan and elsewhere. These (usually expensive) “solutions” to pain and grief are meaningless to the millions struggling to survive in many of first world countries who cannot afford homes or, who if they have homes have to decide between keeping the lights on and feeding their children.

In today’s parable the unnamed rich man could (like the authors above) be described as tone-deaf and blind. Lazarus, the only person named in parable, lies at the gate of the rich man. It is inconceivable that the rich man doesn’t know that he is there, or that Lazarus is hungry, dependent and covered in sores that are licked by dogs. Not only would the rich man have to pass Lazarus every time he left the house, but Lazarus would also have been visible from within the house. The architecture of the time was such that even the homes of the wealthy were built directly on the street, and those going past would have been able to see inside to the courtyard. Lazarus would have been able to at least glimpse the goings-on inside the home and maybe the obvious signs of wealth. All the daily to-ing and fro-ing, including the delivery of food, would have to have passed by him^[2].

There was nothing in the way of social services in the first century Mediterranean. Those without families, those unable to work, the widowed and orphaned were often forced to beg. Jewish law made up for this lack by building into it an obligation to provide for the poor, the widowed and the orphaned not, as AI helpfully summarises, “as an optional act of charity, but as a fundamental expression of the righteousness and justice of God”. This is perhaps most clearly expressed in Deuteronomy 15:7, 11 – “If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbour.” “Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbour in your land.’”^[3]

The rich man in the parable was a Jew; he knew the law; as we learn when he appeals to Father Abraham after his death. In life though, the rich man appears to have no self-awareness, no understanding that his wealth is a privilege not a right, and no concept of the obligations his position and his faith entails. He is either so self-absorbed, or so self-righteous or perhaps so disgusted by Lazarus’ condition that he looks right past or right through him.

We live in a time in which the problems facing the world seem insurmountable. Many of us find ourselves frozen in indecision because any contribution we can make to the solution is but a drop in the ocean. On our own we cannot impact the systemic abuses that lead to entrenched poverty, we cannot end the wars in the Ukraine, in Gaza, in the Sudan and elsewhere, and we can’t, as individuals, stop climate change. We can, however, examine our own lives and try to understand how our attitudes, our lifestyles and even our political allegiances impact the poorest of the poor. We can try to understand how systems we unwittingly support further entrench poverty and inequity. We can recognise and be thankful for the advantages that we do have and acknowledge that throughout the world and in our own nation there are those who, through no fault of their own live in situations of dire poverty, unable to properly house and feed themselves or their families let alone manage to fund health.

If nothing else this parable urges us not turn away, but to keep our eyes firmly focussed on the state of the world around us, to try to comprehend (and change) the systems that trap people in poverty and to do all in our power to ensure that all people have adequate access to food and shelter, health care and education.

Like the rich man (and his brothers) we already know what to do – it is all there in our scriptures.

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;

and what does the LORD require of you

but to do justice, and to love kindness,

and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8)

Today is the day to open our eyes and ears to the cries of the poor, the oppressed and the overlooked.

This poem could be our daily prayer:

If it should be, loving Father of all,

that, all unknown to us,

our eating causes others to starve,

our plenty springs from other’s poverty,

or our choice feeds off other’s denial,

then, Lord,

forgive us,

enlighten us,

and strengthen us to work for fairer trade

and just reward. Amen. (Donald Hilton, Blessed be the Table)^[4]

^[1] Gilbert’s journey of self discovery was actually subsidized by her publisher.

^[2] Many scholars assert that Luke was written for an audience that was well-off and urban dwelling. The inclusion of this parable, not found elsewhere, seems to support this view.

^[3] Or this from Amos 6:4f Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory,

and lounge on their couches,

and eat lambs from the flock,

and calves from the stall;

who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp,

and like David improvise on instruments of music;

who drink wine from bowls,

and anoint themselves with the finest oils,

but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!

^[4] Quoted by Chelsea Harmon, Working Preacher, September 25, 2022.

Tags:'Priv Lit', obligation to the poor as an extension of God's righteousness, rich man and Lazarus, tone deaf and blind
Posted in Luke's gospel, Parables | Comments Off on Seeing Lazarus

No wriggle room – Supporting systemic injustice

September 24, 2022

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.