“Something there is . . .”
What put one on this side of the wall and one on that side of the wall? Chance?
Gospel Reading: Luke 16:19-31
For Sunday, Sept. 19, 2010: Year C - Ordinary 26
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
From “Mending Wall,” by Robert Frost.
Just another game? One on a side? It comes to nothing more?
On one side is the rich man clothed in purple and making merry everyday. On the other side is the poor man covered in sores, the dogs licking at the open wounds, wanting only to eat the crumbs that fall from the table of the rich man’s daily feasts.
On the inside is the Rich Man. On the outside is poor Lazarus. But there is a gate. Without a gate there is no grace. Lazarus lay outside that gate. A gate can let other people in. But a gate can also let you out.
There is a separation in the story.
On the one side is life on the other side is death. In the story things are one way on this side and they are reversed on the other side.
There is a great chasm. On the one side the Rich Man is in torment in the fire. On the other side is the poor man
in the bosom of Abraham. Rich Man to father Abraham. “Send Lazarus. All I want is the drip that falls from his finger to cool my tongue.” Father Abraham to the Rich Man, “No grace for you. Between us and you a great chasm has been fixed. So that one who wishes to cross over from here to you would not be able, nor can they cross from there to us.”
You dance with the rung that brung ya.
Let’s clarify. The Rich Man is rich. What did he do to get rich? Nothing. In this first century world one did not change social status. There is no pulling ones self up by one’s boot straps. No earning one’s way up the social latter. You dance with the rung that brung ya. He was born that way. Purple. He was royalty.
The poor man was poor. What did he do to get poor? Nothing. He was born that way.
Wrong assumption.
Notably absent, but often inferred, in this story is any moral righteousness and/or sinfulness ascribed to the Rich Man or Lazarus. A modern reader of this story often assumes the Rich Man is a transgressor of the law and the poor man is righteous by virtue of his vulnerability. Wrong assumption. The assumption of the first century hearer of this story would have made the opposite assumption. The Rich Man is righteous by virtue of his richness. The poor man is a sinner by virtue of his being covered in sores.
What did the Rich Man do to land in Hades? Nothing. What did poor Lazarus do to be taken up in to the bosom of Abraham? Nothing. Those first hearers would have been scandalized. The Rich Man is made to suffer is condemned for no reason. An eternity of torment and he has not been accused of any transgression of the law. The first hearers would not be scandalized by Lazarus condemned to a life of suffering before he was even born, before he had a chance to transgress the law. Funny.
That is just the way it is.
In life, by an accident of birth, the Rich Man gets to make merry every day. In life, by an accident of birth, poor Lazarus suffers outside the gate with the dogs tormenting him. In the next life the Rich man suffers, tormented by fire. In the next life Poor Lazarus lives luxuriantly in the bosom of Abraham. That is just the way it is.
Why do they make such good neighbors?
What do we make of this parable world?
I do not like it. What if the real world was like this?
The Hardest Question
What if, by accident of birth, some were born into prosperity and some, by accident of birth, into suffering? By accident of birth, some born in to privilege and some born in to poverty? By chance and not by sin some were beautiful and comfortable and confident and smart. And some by chance and not by sin some were unattractive and irritating and scarred and not that smart. As an observer of this world, one could not judge the privileged as righteous; one could not judge the socially impoverished as guilty. Especially knowing that in the next life it could easily be reversed. What put one on this side of the wall and one on that side of the wall? Chance? And in the next life, one on the side of the pine trees and one on the side of the apple orchard? Chance? In a world like that all one can hope for is a gap in the wall. There is something that does not love a wall?
Russell Rathbun is a preacher at House of Mercy in St. Paul, Minnesota, the author of Midrash on the Juanitos (Cathedral Hill Press, 2010) and the curator of The Hardest Question.
Do you think this might be a pre-destination (or election) kind of parable? It does seem to imply some sort of action leads to heaven or hades because of the rich man’s appeal to warning his family who is still living.
How does verse 28 inform your question (that it might all be chance)?
September 20th, 2010 at 8:32 pmAfter struggling through the preaching once again of Luke Chapters 15 & 16, I find my interpretation of the chapters departs from what is found in most commentaries. I’d like to test my interpretation with you, my friends to see if I am straying too far.
The parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin are calls for the shepherds of Israel to repent of their exclusiveness (“what man of you, having a hundred sheep…”). The Prodigal Son parable is an even stronger call, as the elder brother is intended to represent the Pharisees who complain that Jesus is welcoming sinners and eating with them. (The Prodigal Son parable is not at all intended to urge lost sinners to turn from sin and seek the Lord. It is intended to call the righteous to repent of their exclusiveness.)
Next is the parable of the dishonest manager. Here, I think the estate of the master represents God’s covenant with Israel (this is a deliberate allegory on Luke’s/Jesus’ part). Judaism is in crisis, with the destruction of the temple; the gospel is likewise in crisis, as Paul struggles against the demand that gentile Christians keep the law of circumcision. So the dishonest manager is commended for loosening up the rules and forgiving debts in a time of crisis. I thought of the example of southern university football teams in the sixties that refused to recruit blacks until they realized they couldn’t win any games that way. Then they began to actively recruit, offering scholarships — making friends with unrighteous mammon – to put themselves literally back in the game. The people targeted by this parable, I think, are the jewish Christians who want to hold the gentile Christians to the standard of the law. They are invited to be like the dishonest manager & make friends for the Kingdom.
The rhetoric is complicated, because Luke can’t portray Jesus as directly condemning Jewish Christians; he has to disguise the adherence to the law as a matter of financial selfishness, and the target of his rhetoric — Judaizing Christians — are disguised as Pharisees.
Finally there is the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. “Feasting” was a standard trope for membership among the covenant people/inclusion. The image of the “great chasm” or barrier echoes the barrier of circumcision (or other onerous rules of holiness), reversed in the afterlife in Lazarus’ favor.
The appearance of Abraham in the parable, and the mention of “Moses and the prophets” which the rich man’s family “have” suggest that there is more to this than a matter of the ethical use of wealth. Unjust class relations are a universal concern, not just a Jewish one. So why make it so exclusively Jewish by these references? These references to the OT suggest that the rich man’s wealth is symbolic of the covenant/Torah, which the strict Jewish groups could claim to “have.” The statement “neither will they be convinced, even if someone rises from the dead” is a slam against the Christian legalists, suggesting that they don’t even have faith in the resurrection as long as they insist on erecting legalistic barriers against gentile Christians.
I conclude that what we have in these two chapters is Lucan rhetoric in favor of softening the rules in favor of gentile Christians, in the midst of a controversy about circumcision in the church. The meaning is not obvious, however, because Luke had to tread lightly so as not to scandalize any of the factions more than they already were.
The next question is, how to preach this in my church today?
September 20th, 2010 at 11:06 pmBritt, I really like this reading. I was just talking to my partner in crime last night about how I thought these parables all came out of Jesus’ love for the Pharisees and his desire to free them. I Like how you take it a step further, and turn to the Jewish Christians. It makes a lot of sense to me that the Great Chasm is an issue that separates the Jewish and the Gentile Christians. How do you preach that? Well, super conservatives and super liberal Christians even feel like they are part of the same faith–is there in obligation or ever benefit to coming together. From here, Circumcision seems a small chasm compared to issues of same sex–well, sex and abortion. Let me know what direction you go.
September 21st, 2010 at 11:32 amJoel, that it all might be by chance is one reading. I am thinking now not the best one. A good one but there are many better. For instance I am really taken by Britt’s reading. But as you point out, it does seem like in verse 28 the man wants Abraham to warn his 5 brothers about something specific. I wonder what he wants them warned about, that Abraham thinks Moses, the prophets and a man rising from the dead should have been able to communicate to them?
September 21st, 2010 at 11:41 amI still think that this is a parable about the chasms we construct (don’t think that a wall is a chasm unless it’s protecting us from going over the edge) and the bridges that we can build. I think Russel is spot on in his indication that one reading of the Torah would suggest that poverty is punishment and wealth is reward. That reading is suggested throughout the scripture.
But unlike those readings the parables of Jesus tend to pick up an alternative reading that is equally as strong. In that reading God does prefer the poor and makes the wealthy responsible for their actions toward the poor as a condition for faithfulness. This reading reverses the entitlement mentality that says wealth is mine to enjoy because I have somehow earned it. Job’s problem wasn’t his wealth, for instance, but that he did not place himself in a relationship to the poor that made sense to that reading of the Torah that prefers mercy, grace and ultimately building a bridge between the wealthy and the poor. So when God speaks out of the whirlwind, God says, “Pour out the overflowing of your anger and look on all who are proud and abuse them. Look on all who are proud, and bring them low; tread down the wicked where they stand. Hide them all in the dust together; bind their faces in the world below.” (sounds suspiciously like the magnificat) When God speaks he orders us to do the binding and loosing – we build the walls and the bridges…
If everything in life is gift, then the righteous life is not found in building a wall that protects us from the chasms that exist between people, or avoiding the messy places of life. Rather, the faithful will find ways to walk the edge of these chasms, treating those we find on the boundary as children created in the image of God – and not merely refuse to be abandoned by the gate. And the hard question is how do we follow a marginalized God who rejects the entitlement mentality and empties himself…
Perhaps then the gap we are looking for in the wall or the bridge we are looking at that spans the chasm, is the cross…. And those who would follow Jesus must go there…
September 21st, 2010 at 1:05 pm