SPEAKER_00: A reading from the Gospel according to Luke.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter sixteen, beginning at verse 19.
SPEAKER_00: There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen, and who feasted sumptuously every day.
SPEAKER_00: And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table.
SPEAKER_00: Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores.
SPEAKER_00: The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's side.
SPEAKER_00: The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side.
SPEAKER_00: And he called out, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water, and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.
SPEAKER_00: But Abraham said, Child, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things.
SPEAKER_00: But now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish, and besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.
SPEAKER_00: And he said, Then I beg you, Father, to send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them lest they also come into this place of torment.
SPEAKER_00: But Abraham said, They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them.
SPEAKER_00: And he said, No, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.
SPEAKER_00: He said to him, If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: The Gospel of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Grace and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: In today's gospel, Jesus tells us a parable about two men who lived basically in the same house, but in radically different ways.
SPEAKER_00: The one man, the rich man in the parable, lived in the master suite.
SPEAKER_00: He enjoyed banquets in the great banquet hall, while the other one, Lazarus, lived out on the front entryway, out on the doorstep.
SPEAKER_00: The rich man was the stylish one, dressed well.
SPEAKER_00: He's the one who had the best parties, the kinds that everyone wanted an invitation to.
SPEAKER_00: He surely had the most lavish of homes, and even his public reputation was surely solid.
SPEAKER_00: He probably maintained a foundation that would give to all the most popular causes so that everyone around town would say that man is the one stylish, rich, and thoughtful about the world.
SPEAKER_00: The other man, Lazarus, is the kind of person that society would call a deadbeat.
SPEAKER_00: A person who looks terrible, smells even worse, and is the kind of person who has nothing to contribute.
SPEAKER_00: And is the kind of person that someone would describe as a drain on our resources, someone who can only receive things.
SPEAKER_00: Now we're told that both of them lived different lives, but that, you know, in the end, death is the great equalizer, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so it seems like from this reading initially that in the end they both meet their demise in death.
SPEAKER_00: But in the parable that Jesus tells, death is not so much kind of a universal end for everyone regardless of their situation, but a crossroads.
SPEAKER_00: A place where these two men and their paths intersected, and yet from this point on there is still more road ahead.
SPEAKER_00: It's clear from what Jesus says that these men continue to exist even on the other side of death.
SPEAKER_00: And from the other side of death, they go on radically different paths.
SPEAKER_00: The rich man goes on a path to torment, while the poor man, Lazarus, proceeds to paradise.
SPEAKER_00: And it's in this moment of the parable that we find this rich man who surely was accustomed to giving orders, using his resources, his power, and his authority to take something he wanted to have happen and to see it happen in reality.
SPEAKER_00: And he now wants to make another change.
SPEAKER_00: And so this one accustomed to making things happen, he gives a command to the person he sees on the other side of the great chasm between condemnation and salvation.
SPEAKER_00: You see, Jesus tells us that Lazarus was seen at the side of Abraham, and so the rich man says to Abraham, Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.
SPEAKER_00: And instead of the usual, yes, sir, right away, sir, whatever you want, sir, Lazarus hears, excuse me, the rich man hears a word that he is perhaps not accustomed to hearing.
SPEAKER_00: Basically, this.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham said, Child, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is a terribly sobering moment in the parable.
SPEAKER_00: This is a moment when this man realizes just how little he has on the other side of death.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a sobering moment because it throws into sharp contrast for you and me just how badly we can sometimes judge our strength or our standing based on what our eyes can see about what we have achieved in this world.
SPEAKER_00: You surely can remember a time in your life where you felt an increasing sense of power as you saw perhaps your income or your assets increase at the same time.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you felt a sense of accomplishment and worth and purpose as you achieved success or the admiration of your colleagues.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe there was a time you just felt happy because you were finally able to get that car or something else you had set your mind to.
SPEAKER_00: Or perhaps there's a sense of security you have because when you drive home at night, you drive to a particular neighborhood or a particular place in a particular house.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you can remember a time when you felt immortal because of your youth.
SPEAKER_00: Or perhaps in some other way, some good that God gave you, you took to be some form of ultimate power or security or standing.
SPEAKER_00: And you can remember, perhaps even right now, you can look around in your life and see many good things that God has given you.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what makes this particular moment in the parable some of the most terrifying words in Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: Because this rich man who had all these things, who was the kind of person that if someone on the outside looked at the situation, would say, This rich man is surely blessed by God, and the poor man is surely cursed by God, it's in this moment that he receives this terrifying answer.
SPEAKER_00: Basically, some version of this.
SPEAKER_00: What are you now complaining about?
SPEAKER_00: You got all the things that you ever wanted to have.
SPEAKER_00: If it was on your wish list, you got it.
SPEAKER_00: If it was in your dreams and desires, it was yours.
SPEAKER_00: You had all your goods.
SPEAKER_00: But the problem here is that this man had turned his goods into his gods, and now he's finding out in a great moment of terror that his gods have let him down.
SPEAKER_00: Now he's the one who's doing the begging.
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of stunning irony and turnaround in this parable, and this is one of them.
SPEAKER_00: Now he is begging.
SPEAKER_00: He says this send Lazarus to my five brothers.
SPEAKER_00: Warn them about this torment.
SPEAKER_00: Let them know, give them the perspective that I lacked, this perspective that I have only now that I am dead, and let them be saved.
SPEAKER_00: And again, another sobering answer from Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: He says, They have Moses and the prophets, the scriptures, let them hear them.
SPEAKER_00: And so the rich man presses, he says, Surely, no, Abraham, if they saw Lazarus raised from the dead, if they saw this, then of course they would surely set aside their goods and follow the true God instead, to which Abraham disagrees.
SPEAKER_00: If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: You see, death had unmasked the reality of this man's life.
SPEAKER_00: But this had happened at a moment when it was too late.
SPEAKER_00: It took death for him to finally see that the beggar at his door was the man who was, turns out, rich in God's grace.
SPEAKER_00: It took death for this man to realize that while that poor man was in rags, he was wearing all the robes of righteousness that God could give.
SPEAKER_00: And it took death for the rich man to see that the man who was hungry out on the doorstep was all the while living on every word that would come from the mouth of the Lord, feasting on that bread from heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, of course, we know, and the terror of the parable is that it is now too late for him that this rich man who saw a beggar on his doorstep who had no friends but the dogs to lick his wounds, now realizes that all along he was the friend of God.
SPEAKER_00: You see, this is one of the key lessons that a parable like this can teach us.
SPEAKER_00: That you and I are fallen, the scriptures say, that we have inherited a sinful nature that corrupts our heart.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, you could kind of think of it this way: it's like our heart is installed backwards, to where everything that processes through it somehow gets turned around or flipped around and go comes out the wrong way.
SPEAKER_00: And because of this, then, we tend to trust our eyes more than anything else.
SPEAKER_00: And when we trust our eyes, those eyes can then deceive us.
SPEAKER_00: We let our eyes tell us what is true and false and what is good and what is bad.
SPEAKER_00: And then when that gets filtered through a backwards heart, we draw the wrong conclusions.
SPEAKER_00: Just as in this parable, there would be people who had concluded that the rich man was the blessed one and the poor man was the cursed one, so also we fall into the same trap.
SPEAKER_00: But this is where this reading also shows us a path of rescue from this.
SPEAKER_00: See, one of the great truths of the Reformation that was reclaimed was this idea of sola scriptura or by scripture alone.
SPEAKER_00: And it carries with it many ideas, but one of them is that God alone has the perspective, the kind of high-level view, the beyond death view that we need to then see our life and discern it properly.
SPEAKER_00: And God actually gives us that perspective in his word.
SPEAKER_00: And the best part is you can have this perspective, the same perspective the rich man had when it was too late.
SPEAKER_00: You can have this perspective already now, while you still live and before it becomes too late.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, that's part of what is going on in the mystery of the way the scriptures talk about coming into faith in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's described as a kind of death.
SPEAKER_00: We talk about it with baptism that in baptism we die, that we die with Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And we talk about dying to self or that an old self would die and a new self would rise.
SPEAKER_00: That language means something.
SPEAKER_00: It means that you and I, because we have been brought into faith in Jesus, have already died.
SPEAKER_00: And if we've died to self and if we've died to this world, then we have the perspective that is communicated in this parable.
SPEAKER_00: That we actually can see now the way our life is meant to be.
SPEAKER_00: And then our heart is reinstalled, it's reconfigured and reoriented in a way that we can see the way things really are.
SPEAKER_00: And God reveals this work to us in his word to give us this perspective, to show us that what we think of the way the world works is not the way God makes his work happen.
SPEAKER_00: On the contrary, he makes the poor rich, he makes the lame leap, he takes dry bones that have been crushed into powder and makes them to live again.
SPEAKER_00: All of this, wrapped up in Christ, who is our Savior and salvation, the one who can turn all things around, bring us to life again, and this he does by the power of his word.
SPEAKER_00: We should listen, therefore, to his word.
SPEAKER_00: Now that can be hard.
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, it's hard because still in this life we like to judge things by our eyes.
SPEAKER_00: It's very tempting, sometimes easy, sometimes very reasonable to think that surely the way the world works would be the way things seem to our eyes.
SPEAKER_00: And so we might go to things like pop psychology or self-help, as practical as it is, and we think that must be the way the world is.
SPEAKER_00: That if I can put a few things together in my life, if I can kind of pull myself up out of the mess, then on the other side of it I will have all the blessings I wanted.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe we think in terms of what is popular or might hurry political favor and say, if there's a lot of people that it makes happy, or a movement standing behind it, that surely must be the good way or the good life.
SPEAKER_00: But in all these things, we're going to be making the same mistake.
SPEAKER_00: You could think of it like this: if you see someone, or even yourself, driving that great car, or living in that great home, or achieving that great success, or having that great health, or whatever success or good it might be, we're going to be tempted to think that must be the good life.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe it is.
SPEAKER_00: It's not as if you and I should leave here today and say, boy, it sure is terrible that God has blessed me with so many things that He's using to try to trip me up.
SPEAKER_00: It's nothing like that.
SPEAKER_00: But instead, it's to say, let me realize at all times that these goods are not my God.
SPEAKER_00: And at the same time, that if I have all these goods but do not have Christ, that is not the good life.
SPEAKER_00: That is a non-life.
SPEAKER_00: And if I have all these goods but do not have them oriented towards God and my Savior, then that is not something to be proud of, but it is a prelude to destruction.
SPEAKER_00: And it is one that God our Lord Jesus graciously reminds us of and warns us of here in this parable.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's also fair to say that sometimes it can be the same with churches.
SPEAKER_00: It can be easy to drive around town or search the internet and look around and say, surely that place over there with the sprawling campus and the famous pastor, or maybe that place over there with its great success and huge numbers, that must be where God's good life is at.
SPEAKER_00: But then you come to the place that is ordinary and regular and steady, maybe even one with a crumbling parking lot, and yet one full of the songs sung with rich law and gospel, where the sacraments are administered and the law and the word of God and his gospel are proclaimed.
SPEAKER_00: And we see there that there God is at work, bringing dead souls to life again, reconfiguring hearts, and sending us out, not trusting our eyes anymore, but listening with our ears to the way the world is in God's sight.
SPEAKER_00: And then living and ordering all of our days according to that gracious knowledge from God.
SPEAKER_00: That here you can trust your ears more than your eyes.
SPEAKER_00: And here you learn to live forever because you've died to this life and this world, but not in a way that makes you distant and attached from the days ahead, but lets you live into those days and those gifts of God fully to flourish in them.
SPEAKER_00: That you and I, by God's grace and by the power of this word, get to feast our ears on this truth.
SPEAKER_00: We get to listen to the glorious news that Jesus announces, that he has reoriented everything by taking away your sin, giving you a new life, and then on top of it, blessing you with good things to enjoy and to live within and to put to good use for him and his kingdom and for the good of your neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: That you are now not the one who's going to make the mistake this rich man did, that now your goods are not your God's.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, your goods are gifts received from a gracious God, and your perspective is one who is on the other side of death.
SPEAKER_00: And now your language is the language of God, the language of mercy and forgiveness and grace.
SPEAKER_00: And you are the beggar who was made rich.
SPEAKER_00: You are the one who will dwell where Lazarus dwells in the house of the Lord for all your days.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.