Sermon — September 25, 2022
The Rev. Greg Johnston
“[The rich man] called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.’” (Luke 16:23–24)
There’s a lot to say about this story of Lazarus and the anonymous rich man, but there’s one detail that always stops me in my tracks: The rich man knows Lazarus’s name. He knew who Lazarus was in this life, he knew his name, and he did nothing to help him as he lay dying outside his gates. He knows who Lazarus is when he sees him in the afterlife, and he knows his name, and he won’t even address him. He begs for mercy, but he doesn’t beg Lazarus for mercy. When he speaks, he doesn’t say, “I’m sorry, Lazarus.” He doesn’t say, “Now I know how you must have felt, Lazarus.” He continues to ignore Lazarus, just as he had in this life, and speaks to Abraham instead: “Send Lazarus, won’t you, to bring me something to drink.”
This is not an abstract story about the tragedy of economic inequality, about the notion that someone somewhere else is starving while you have enough to eat, and so you should feel guilty, young man, if you don’t clean your plate of all that delicious liver and onions. It’s a very concrete story, not just about inequality but about inhumanity, about what it means to look at another person, to know another person, and to treat them as if their life is worth nothing to you.
In a way, Jesus’ story almost reads like the sermon illustration he would use if he were preaching on the passage we heard from Paul’s first letter to Timothy, although of course the letter isn’t written until long after Jesus is dead. “We brought nothing into the world,” Paul writes, “so that we can take nothing out of it;if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these” (1 Timothy 6:7–8) But here’s the rich man, not just content with having food and clothing but feasting sumptuously and dressed in fine linen and royal purple; and there’s Lazarus, longing to eat even a crumb and clothed only in his sores. “As for those in the present age who are rich,” Paul advises, “command them not to be haughty.” (1 Tim. 6:17) Yet the rich man presumes to order Lazarus around as if he were a servant, even as he suffers in Hades and Lazarus rests in Abraham’s embrace. The rich man is rich in goods, but he’s certainly not “rich in good works, generous, and ready to share,” as Paul says. (1 Tim. 6:18) He has not “[stored] up for [himself] the treasure of a good foundation for the future.” (1 Tim. 6:19) He’s spent his treasure on himself in this world, and he’s now paying the price in the next.
Of course, Jesus isn’t actually preaching on Paul. But they both take for granted what was, without a doubt, the mainstream Jewish opinion of the day, and still is: Both societies and individuals have a moral obligation to help those who are poor. When someone is hungry and you have food, you feed then. When someone is cold and wet, and you have clothes, you share them. When someone needs medical care, and lying in the street, you don’t send the dogs out to lick their wounds; you heal them. This is what Abraham means when he says that the rich man’s brothers don’t need Lazarus to tell them to care for the poor. They “Moses and the prophets,” in other words, they have the Bible, they have centuries of God’s repeated instruction to use their spare resources to care for those who don’t have enough. Whatever we have in this world, we cannot take it with us to the next. Everything we have will one day be taken away, whether we like it or not. But we have a chance, now, to give it away. And that makes all the difference.
Easier said than done, right? We all have things we need or just want in this world. We all have bills to pay. We don’t want merely to survive; we want to thrive, to enjoy our lives, and if we have children, to make their lives easier than our own. It would be incredible hypocrisy for me to stand up here, and wag my finger, and tell you that money is the root of all evil, and then take a paycheck for it. But that’s not what Paul says, and it’s not what Jesus says. What Paul says is not “money is the root of all evil” but that “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” (1 Tim. 6:10) When the love of money overpowers the love of neighbor—when you are so attached to your wealth that you will step over a man whose name you know as he is dying in the street rather than sharing it—then you are in trouble. Then you are already engulfed in flames.
So this is a sermon about stewardship.
Not about “stewardship,” in the churchy sense, as a technical term for a fall pledge drive or fundraising campaign. But “stewardship” in a much bigger sense. “Stewardship,” if it helps you to think about the origins of words, from an Old English compound meaning, essentially “being the one who guards the livestock pen”: a “steward,” originally, is a “sty-guard,” as in a pig-sty.
The steward is not the owner. She doesn’t have an absolute right to the property, to do with it whatever she likes. She’s been entrusted with it, to use it as the owner has instructed. So we are “stewards” of creation, given this earth as our home, but not entitled to destroy it as we are destroying it; it’s God’s, not ours. We are “stewards” of this building, given it for our use and for our worship, but not entitled to sell it or tear it down. And we are “stewards” of our own lives: of our wealth, as little or as great as it may be; of our time, as long or as short as it may be; of our talents, as great or as meager as they may be. We brought nothing into this world, as Paul says, and we can take nothing out of it. We’ve been temporarily entrusted with everything we have so that we can better love and serve God and our neighbors, so that we can be “rich in good works, and generous, and ready to share.”
This is not a sermon about “stewardship,” in the narrow sense. It’s not about the money you give to the church, at all. It’s about stewardship in the broader sense. It’s about what you do with what you have in this life. It’s about the neighbors you see and know, like the rich man knew Lazarus, and what they need that you can give; and it’s about the neighbors you don’t see and don’t know, and what they need. It’s about what it looks like to live a life of “faith, love, endurance, gentleness,” good works, generosity, sharing; what it looks like for you already now to “take hold of the life that really is life.”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.