Galatians 2:16-20;
Luke 16:19-31
It is tragic
that some distort the way of Christ into a magical formula for becoming wealthy
and successful according to conventional standards. It is pathetic that some misinterpret the
demands of God’s Kingdom to support whatever political or cultural agenda they
happen to like. Our recent readings from
the gospel according to St. Luke present the way of Christ very differently, for
they demonstrate that He often made those who were last in the eyes of the
world the first to receive His healing mercy.
Remember the grieving widow of Nain whose only son He raised from
death. Recall the Gadarene demoniac, a
Gentile whom He restored from a wretched existence of isolation and fear. And today we remember poor Lazarus.
A rich man with
the benefit of the great spiritual heritage of Abraham, Moses, and the prophets
had become such a slave to gratifying his desires for indulgence in pleasure
that he had become completely blind to his responsibility to show mercy to
Lazarus, a miserable beggar who wanted only crumbs and whose only comfort was
when dogs licked his open sores. The
rich man’s life revolved around wearing the most expensive clothes and enjoying
the finest food and drink. He surely stepped over or around Lazarus at the
entrance to his home on a regular basis and never did anything at all to
relieve his suffering.
After their
deaths, the two men’s situations were reversed.
The rich man had spent his life rejecting the teachings of Moses and the
prophets about the necessity of showing mercy to the poor. He had blinded himself spiritually to the
point that he could not recognize Lazarus as a neighbor who bore the image of
God. He remained blind to the love of
God after his death and could perceive the divine majesty as only a burning
flame of torment. When the rich man
asked Father Abraham to send Lazarus to his brothers to warn them of the
consequences of living such a depraved life, the great patriarch responded,
“‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if
someone should rise from the dead.’”
That statement
applies to the corrupt religious leaders who called for Christ’s crucifixion
and denied His resurrection because they wanted a warrior king who would
slaughter their enemies and give them earthly power. We must not rest content, however, with
seeing how the Lord’s statement applies to others, for it challenges us even
more as those who have received the fullness of the mystery of God’s salvation. Our responsibility is far greater than that
of the Jews of old, for as members of Christ’s Body, the Church, the Holy
Spirit strengthens and sustains us in seeing and serving our Lord in our
neighbors. Since every human person is
an icon of God, how we treat them reveals our relationship to Him. Christ taught that what we do “to the least
of these,” to the most wretched people, we do to Him. If we become so obsessed with gratifying our
own desires for pleasure or impressing others that we refuse to convey His
mercy to our neighbors, our actions will show that we have rejected our Messiah
and denied the truth of His resurrection.
We will then be unable to bear witness to His victory over the
corrupting power of sin and death.
Regardless of what we say we believe or our membership in the Church,
our actions will demonstrate that we want no part of the salvation that the God-Man
has brought to the world. Like the rich man, we will exclude ourselves
from the joy of the Kingdom. Remember
the words of the Lord: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall
enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in
heaven.” (Matt. 7:21)
Lazarus, like
everyone else, bore the image and likeness of God. There is simply no way around the basic truth
that how we relate to our neighbors reveals how we relate to our Lord. What we do for even the most miserable and inconvenient
people we encounter in life, we do for Christ.
And what we refuse to do for them, we refuse to do for our Savior. Our salvation is in becoming more like Him as
we find the healing of our souls by cooperating with His grace. While we cannot save ourselves any more than we
can rise up by our own power from the grave, we must take up the struggle to order
our lives according to His commandments in order to open our souls in humility
to receive His healing mercy as “partakers of the divine nature.” If we do not
do that, we will suffer the spiritual blindness of the rich man in today’s
gospel lesson and bring judgment upon ourselves, regardless of how much or how
little of the world’s treasures we have.
In the midst of
our materialistic and consumeristic culture, it is easy to overlook St. Paul’s
warning that “Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a
trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into
ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of
evil.” (1 Tim. 6: 9-10) Wealth is not evil in and of itself,
but orienting our lives around it so easily becomes a false god that inflames
passions of greed, fear, self-centeredness, and a lack of love for our neighbors. Due to love of money and the self-indulgence
it fuels, the rich man in today’s parable became so enslaved to his passions
that he closed his heart completely to his neighbors, even to one so obviously
suffering right before his eyes. Because he would not show love for poor
Lazarus, he degraded himself to the point that he simply could not love God. As St.
John wrote, “whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and
shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?” (1 Jn.
3:17) The Lord Himself taught that love of God and neighbor are the greatest of
the commandments. (Matt. 22: 37-40). It is no surprise, then, that the rich man
experienced the torment of bitter regret after his death, for he was in the
eternal presence of the Lord Whom he had rejected throughout his life. He had learned to love only himself, having turned
away decisively from God’s love. Hence,
he was capable of perceiving the divine glory as only a burning flame. As St. Basil the Great proclaimed to the rich
who refused to share with the poor, “You showed no mercy; it will not be shown to
you. You opened not your house; you will
be expelled from the Kingdom. You gave
not your bread; you will not receive eternal life.”[1]
Some struggle to
understand how the requirement of living righteously relates to the gracious
mercy of God. This difficulty often
roots in a misunderstanding of our epistle reading from St. Paul when he
teaches that we are “not justified by works of the Law but through faith in
Jesus Christ.” The Apostle was responding
to the insistence of some of his fellow Jewish Christians that Gentile converts
had to be circumcised and become observant Jews before being baptized. He taught that this perspective, which he
strongly rejected, replaced trust in the gracious mercy of the Savior with obedience
to religious rules as the very foundation of our hope for sharing in eternal
life. That is a completely different matter,
however, from discerning what it means to live faithfully as those who are
entrusting themselves to the mercy of Christ. For example, St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians
that persisting in gravely sinful behavior has devastating spiritual
consequences. He includes thieves, the covetous,
and extortioners, along with idolators and others, among those who will not inherit
the Kingdom of God, if they do not find the healing of their souls through repentance.
(1 Cor. 6: 9-10)
There is no competition
between faith and faithfulness, which are like two sides of the same coin. Since
the Savior taught that “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,”
we must invest the treasure of our time, talents, and energy in tangible
actions that convey the mercy of the Savior to the poor Lazaruses of our lives,
as well as to those who grieve like the widow of Nain and who suffer like the
Gadarene demoniac. (Matt. 6:21) Doing so
is not a matter of religious legalism but of offering ourselves to the Lord in
union with His great Self-offering for the salvation of the world. It is a matter of living as those who are in
communion with Christ. His Kingdom stands in stark contradiction to the ways of
the corrupt world. If we are to gain the
spiritual clarity to behold His glory as something other than a burning flame, then
our lives must embody the same gracious mercy that we ask from Him every day of
our lives. That is how we will be able
to say truthfully with St. Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no
longer I who live, but Christ Who lives in me; and the life I now live in the
flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
