Today is my second week of doing services in both of the congregations I serve. The readings for this week are Luke 16:19-31 and 1 Timothy 6:6-19, and once again, parts of this sermon are recycled from last time these readings came up.
I found helpful Stephanie Mar Smith’s column in Feasting on the Word Year C, Volume 4, as well as this column from Andrei Rogobete and David Lose’s commentary here.
Here’s the livestream (from Living Hope this week) and the sermon audio from CTK.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen
Did you know that the most common topic in the Bible (other than God) is money? It depends how exactly you count, but somewhere around 2,300 verses in the Bible talk about money, the poor, debt, and similar topics.
In lots of places in the Bible, money is viewed positively. Prosperity can be seen as a sign of God’s blessing. There are passages like Psalm 112, which says, “Happy are those who fear the Lord, who greatly delight in his commandments…Wealth and riches are in their houses, and their righteousness endures forever.”
In the one-year Bible reading plan I’m doing, I’ve been reading 2 Chronicles this week, and there’s a clear pattern of God sending prosperity to the good kings who follow God’s law. Money is not always bad. It can be a blessing. But there are also plenty of verses in the Bible about the dangers of money, like we just read.
Some of you were here last week when we heard a parable from Jesus about a dishonest manager using his master’s wealth to buy himself favor. We talked about how as clever and creative as people are in trying to get rich, we are called to be just as creative, just as ambitious in doing God’s work.
Well, we’re still talking about money today—as I said, it’s all over the Bible—but these lessons are about the dangers of wealth, particularly how it can insulate you from the needs of those around you, and the dangers of relying on earthly wealth for eternal security. If God cares about justice, as we said last week, then God cares about money and how it’s used.
Here, Jesus tells a story about a rich man who dressed in fine clothes and feasted every day. For him, life was good. Notice Jesus does not say he’s a thief, or dishonest, or anything like that. This guy is just rich. Jesus’ story doesn’t even include a name for him, because his entire identity is focused on his wealth. That’s who he is. He seems content to focus on himself and enjoy what he has. He’s confident and secure inside his gated mansion.
He doesn’t notice this poor fellow named Lazarus, who stays outside the rich man’s gate. (By the way, this isn’t the same Lazarus Jesus raises from the dead, just a character Jesus makes up for this parable.)
The rich man thinks of Lazarus as someone below him, a different class, part of the scenery, certainly not someone he associates with. He’s not cruel, or mean, or racist, or whatever; he simply doesn’t notice Lazarus’s problems.
He doesn’t need to notice Lazarus, because his position in life is secure. After all, he’s rich. What does it bother him if this beggar needs something? Shouldn’t he just get a job? Life isn’t really that hard, right? After all, I’m doing fine. It’s kind of sad what that poor guy is going through, but it’s not my fault; it’s not my responsibility. He can deal with his own problems.
As Jesus tells the story, they both die, and the poor man, Lazarus, ends up in a good place with Abraham, and the rich man ends up somewhere else, a place of torment.
(Side note: Please don’t hear this story as a guidebook describing heaven and hell or how you get there. That’s not the point Jesus is making.)
Anyway, as he’s being tormented, the rich man can see Lazarus and Abraham, and he asks Abraham to have mercy on him and send Lazarus to give him just a little bit of water.
The man’s dead, and he’s still doing the exact same thing he did in life! He’s still not noticing Lazarus as a person, as a child of God, only as someone who can serve him. Amazingly, even here, he still only cares about himself. And yet here, his wealth can’t protect him any longer. The earthly security he trusted in is gone.
And then, in a flicker of generosity, he expresses concern about his brothers, who are still alive, and apparently living similarly self-centered lives. He doesn’t want them to end up in the same place he’s in, so he asks for someone (Lazarus will do) to go warn them to pay a little more attention to their own lives
Abraham responds, if they haven’t gotten the message from Moses and the prophets, how is God supposed to get their attention? They wouldn’t notice even if someone were to rise from the dead!
That’s a literary technique called foreshadowing. I’m sure it didn’t mean much to the people listening when Jesus said it, but by the time Luke is writing this and for us reading it, this ought to jump out, because we know one who has risen from the dead: Jesus, the one telling the story. Has he gotten our attention? Have we gotten the message to use our wealth to care for our neighbors? Have we gotten the message that we are blessed by God in order to bless others?
Our society is all about self-reliance, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, not having to take a handout from anyone. Try hard enough and you can accomplish your dreams! Ever heard that? That’s an American message, but it’s not a Christian one. Certainly taking responsibility is good, but ultimately, our security comes from God. So is our trust in God or in something else?
In 1 Timothy 6, Paul writes, “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. But as for you, [people] of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness.”
Noticing people in need, seeing the problems in our world and working to make a difference requires trusting in God, rather than trusting in our wealth or in ourselves.
There’s no financial benefit to helping others. But if we trust in God, then we hear the call to pursue the benefit of others. We find our identity not in money or wealth, but as children of God, claimed by Jesus and called to love and serve our neighbors. Trusting God sets us free to answer God’s call to, as Paul puts it, do good, be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share.
One of the temptations of this parable is for us to say, “Well, we’re not all that wealthy. Jesus isn’t talking about us.” According to Oxfam, there are 26 people in the world who have the same wealth as the poorest 50% in the world, 2.9 billion adults. If any of those 26 people are here, let’s chat after service about the church’s mortgage! It’s true, none of us have wealth on that level.
But if you have net assets of $10,000, you are comfortably in the wealthiest half of the world. That’s most of us. If your net financial worth is over $100,000, you are in about the top 10%.
Jesus’ point is not “wealth is bad.” The New Testament gives us multiple examples of wealthy followers of Jesus using their resources for good, Pricilla and Aquilla funding Paul’s ministry, Lydia providing him a place to stay, Joseph of Arimathea donating his own tomb for Jesus’ body. This is not about how much you have; but about what you do with it.
The rich man is condemned not for being wealthy, but for ignoring his neighbor’s needs. He had the chance in life to cross the chasm separating him from Lazarus, and he didn’t do it. Instead of using the wealth God had trusted to him to serve his neighbors, he used it to insulate himself from them. The love of money is the root of all evil, not money itself, but putting trust in it, making it into an idol, a goal in itself.
In his letter, Paul reminds Timothy that as we brought nothing into the world, we can take nothing out of it. It’s the old joke that you never see a funeral hearse pulling a U-Haul trailer. You can’t take it with you.
Instead, Paul says, take hold of the eternal life to which you were called. Change your perspective on what really matters in life.
Taking hold of eternal life doesn’t mean focusing on heaven and ignoring what’s going on around you in this world.
Instead, it means what Jesus proclaimed: The kingdom of God is at hand, here, among us. We are living eternal life now. We’ve been claimed as children of God and given eternal life, so live like it.
Eternal life has begun, which means we don’t need to fear death; we don’t need to spend our energy seeking temporary riches. Instead, Paul tells us to live as the citizens of heaven we already are.
Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. Value relationships, not stuff. Live well, not to earn God’s favor, but because of what God has already done for you.
Because our hopes are set on God, we can do good by loving and serving our neighbors. Because we have been claimed, forgiven, and set free, we don’t have to set our hopes on the uncertainty of riches—we have a better option!
We can be content with what we have; we can use what we have to do good, to follow God’s commands. Thanks be to God.
Amen