Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Amen.  The story of the rich man and Lazarus is probably one of Jesus’ narratives that is familiar to many of us.  After all, the simple dialogue between the rich man in hell and Abraham in heaven is certainly unique and can raise all kinds of interesting questions relating to heaven and hell.

            And yet despite the simplicity of Jesus’ story, it still holds a very profound message which speaks directly to us today.  For instance, most people in the time of Christ considered wealth an outward sign of God’s favor.  The rich man was probably seen by many in his own time as someone who had been blessed by God.  No one would have actually expected the rich man to be cast into the fires of hell for all eternity.  What’s even more, the rich man probably used some of his wealth in service to people like Lazarus.  Likewise today, we often hear some of the most popular televangelists and Christian authors tell us that Gospel is really about prosperity, in other words, if we do things just right or believe in a certain way, God will bless us with material wealth.

            And then there is poor old Lazarus.  Nothing really seemed to go well for him—after all, he was at the mercy of those around him, completely unable to help himself.  He was reduced to begging, and the dogs that licked his soars were about his only friends.  And yet, interestingly enough, it is Lazarus who ends up in heaven—not exactly what most people would have been thinking.  He wasn’t rich and didn’t seem blessed by God in any way at all, and yet God had prepared room for him at his heavenly feast.  How many times do we see people like Lazarus and probably think God’s blessings are not upon them.

            While these are just a few ways in which this story still teaches us, we stand to learn even more when we ask ourselves how we actually fit into the story itself.  In other words, if you and I were to appear in this narrative, who would we be, and what would that mean for us?

            Now for most of us, we probably don’t see ourselves as Lazarus.  We don’t have to beg for our food, our health is generally good, and we certainly don’t have dogs licking our soars--in fact we probably don’t even have soars.  And yet part of us wants to relate to Lazarus—he is after all the one who ends up feasting with Christ in heaven.

            But what about the rich man, do we see ourselves in his place?  Something tells me we probably don’t.  Most of us probably don’t even consider ourselves to be rich.  Certainly when we compare ourselves to those who are considered rich today, we don’t have billion dollar portfolios like they do.  To set us apart even further from the rich man, we probably see ourselves as generally good people.  We probably like to think that we would have helped Lazarus even more than the rich man.

            But its at this point when we really begin to separate ourselves from the rich man that we run into a great deal of trouble since the rich man also sees himself as a good guy and probably one who actually helped people like Lazarus from time to time.  Just look at the fact that the rich man wanted to help his brothers.  To make matters even more complicated the rich man probably saw himself as blessed by God and figured he didn’t need to worry about salvation all that much.  After all, its pretty easy to become spiritually complacent when things are going well.

            For us it’s also rather easy to think the same way the rich man does.  We are constantly indoctrinated with the belief that we are good people.  People who deserve good things, especially from God.  We’re told constantly by the world that when we have to stand before God, if we ever do, that everything is going to be okay because most of us haven’t done anything really bad.  We pay our taxes, go to work, raise a family, and sometimes we even try to look out for our neighbor—see we are supposedly good people who deserve good things, including eternal salvation.  This is the message that we are all tempted to believe, the message that the rich man also grabbed a hold of.  And too often we actually believe this message just like the rich man.

            And unfortunately for us this really puts us in the camp with the rich man, even though none of us would like to admit it.  And what’s even worse for us is that God doesn’t really care how much money we have, he doesn’t see any good works we do for our neighbor as meritorious of heaven, and he certainly doesn’t think that we are good people.  On the contrary God sees us for who we really are, just as he saw the rich man for who he really was—a sinner.  Poor sinners is all that we are in the eyes of God, sinners who have no inheritance in heaven, who can produce no true good works for the neighbor even though we try, and in the end who are nothing more than lost and condemned persons.

            And yet there is also some good news for us.  We have Moses and the Prophets; and this is where we differ from the rich man and his brothers.  As we gather together in order to hear God’s Word, we have Moses, the Law of God, that remind us continually that we really aren’t good pople, that we deserve to go to hell, and that all attempts to merit heaven by any number of different works which appear good in the sight of men are futile because the source of those works, our heart, is spiritually decadent as Christ reminds us in John 8 when he says, “everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.”

            But this message of condemnation, this message of the Law that we are lost just like the rich man, is not the only message.  We also have the Prophets and they testify to Christ that He has been sent by the Father in order to conquer our problem of sin.  And this is the way in which we relate to Lazarus.  Like him, we don’t have anything to offer God; we can’t even pretend that we do.  Instead, like Lazarus we must solely cling to the promise of the Gospel—the promise that Christ, that God himself, has done something for us and will ultimately bring us out of this sinful life into heaven for eternity.  For all of those times when we have failed to keep God’s commandments, when we have failed to love our neighbor, or have performed good works thinking that they make us good people worthy of God’s blessings, and in truth for all those times when we have been the rich man, Christ forgives us.  And he does so because when we hear the law pronounced upon us and then by faith cling to the promised Messiah for hope, Christ’s fulfillment of God’s law, his good works to the neighbor, and his sacrificial death all become ours.  And in return he takes our sins, our failure to truly love our neighbor and keep God’s law, upon himself and carries our guiltiness for us.

            So in the end to the question who are we in this story; we are both the rich man and Lazarus.  And while we may not be as poor as Lazarus or as rich as the rich man, we are truly poor in spirit recognizing that we don’t have anything to offer God and yet rich in Christ Jesus by faith, who on the last day will proclaim before all that we served the least among men and kept the law of God, not because of our wealth or position in life, but because His good works have become our good works.  So when the law of God is pronounced upon you and when you realize that you are like the rich man, that you are not that good person you think you are, take heart for Christ has forgiven you and now counts you as the children of Abraham who will feast for eternity with Christ and Lazarus.

            In Jesus Name, Amen.

 

Vicar Mark Taylor