In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Amen. (Psalm 19:14)
It’s not about the money. Many people hear this parable about the Rich Man and Lazarus and think that God’s got it in for rich people. They seem to be a favorite target of Jesus in his parables. And it’s pretty much guaranteed thate if two guys are in a parable and one of them is described as rich, he’s not going to be the hero of the story.
But it’s not about the money. It’s about compassion. We often use or hear the word “compassion” and understand that it has something to do with caring about other people who are having a rough time. But that’s not quite all of it.
The word “compassion” entered the English language around the year A.D. 1340, from Old French, which had brought it in from Latin as a combination of the prefix “com-,” which means “together” and the root word “pati,” or “passio,” which means “to suffer.” Compassion in its most accurate connotation means to suffer together.
When you really feel the heartache that someone else endures, when tears well up in your eyes threatening to burst through the levee of your eyelids, when your lip quivers as you feel the depths of their despair, that’s compassion. Giving some guy on the street a dollar is a nice thing to do, but compassion is made of steeper stuff indeed.
The story is told of a student taking an exam, who had studied hard and knew all the material, so he breezed through the first nine questions. When he got to the last question, however, he was stuck. It read, “What is the first name of the woman who cleans this school?”
He figured it was some kind of joke. He had seen the cleaning lady lots of times around the school. He could even describe her: tall, dark-haired, in her 50s, but he had no idea what her name was.
As he handed his exam in, with the last question still blank, he asked the professor if that question really counted toward their grades.
“Absolutely,” the professor replied. “You’ll meet many people during your careers. All of them are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say ‘hello.’”
When I worked at Naval Special Warfare, I saw a Navy captain walk up to Gilda, our cleaning lady, and talk to her for a few minutes. This was shortly before Christmas. After talking with her, he wished her well and handed her $20 when he thought no one was looking. It was an act of quiet kindness that brought a smile to Gilda’s face.
It wasn’t just the money, though; it was the few extra minutes that one of the highest ranking people in the building spent talking with her, the realization that people cared abut her, not just about their floors.
A couple months before I retired from there, someone stole money from Gilda’s purse. She had just cashed her check, and needed the money to pay bills, but it was all gone. She had no savings, since cleaning floors doesn’t really pay that much.
When she reported it to our headquarters, some of the financial bean counters and policy wonks were trying to come up with a way to give her an advance on her next paycheck without making it look like the command is responsible for the lost or stolen money. While they were moving beans and decimal points around, an email circulated among the staff explaining Gilda’s plight.
Before anyone could find and cite the particular rules and regulations forbidding us from doing it, the staff had collected enough donations among themselves to replace Gilda’s missing money and gave it to her — policy be damned.
The staff all understood the suffering Gilda was going through. How would she pay her rent? Would her landlord understand or evict her? How would she buy food? Did she even have any at home? How would she get money for gas to come to work until the next pay period?
They could have ignored her plight and continued with their busy schedules, as I did. Or they could have felt her suffering and looked for a way to help her, as many others did.
That’s not one of my finer moments, and it grieves me to remember that I stood by as my own Lazarus was in need. I didn’t deliberately not help; when I saw the first email request, I just bumped it down my list of priorities, figuring I’d get around to helping her later, maybe.
And then the next email popped up on my screen. It explained that some people on the staff, people other than me, had contributed to help Gilda. I was very happy for Gilda; I was heartbroken for me.
There I was, a seminarian whom everyone knew was most of the way through the various wickets of the ordination process — a dedicated and devoted disciple of Jesus Christ — who had just ignored the prime directive of our Lord: to love one another.
It still bothers me. We probably all have similar stories that we rationalize out of our memories.
The guy with the cardboard sign to whom we could have given a hamburger and soda. But it would have meant turning around and going through some fast-food joint’s drive-through in order to get it, using up five minutes that we urgently needed to spend doing something far more important to us at the time.
Or the landscaping guys in our neighborhood who might like a glass of water or soda, or some fresh lemonade. But we don’t notice them working out in the sun while we’re indoors with the fans or air conditioning on.
It’s the failing to notice, the failing to act, that condemns the rich man in our parable. He wasn’t deliberately cruel to Lazarus; he didn’t kick him as he walked past Lazarus each day; he didn’t have his servants drag Lazarus off his property. In fact, he didn’t do anything. And that’s the problem. He didn’t do anything.
Instead of being compassionate, we become complacent. That’s another Latin “com-” word that means “with self-pleasing.” In other words, we become so inwardly focused on our own pleasure that we fail to notice external things. Like other people.
God is focused on compassion, and we see it all through the Bible, with many prophets calling for us to show compassion to each other. Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Micah, Zechariah, and Malachi all write extensively about God’s commands for compassion.
Just a few examples:
Deuteronomy 15:10-11 “Give generously to the poor, not grudgingly, for the LORD your God will bless you in everything you do. There will always be some in the land who are poor. That is why I am commanding you to share freely with the poor and with other Israelites in need.”
In Chapter 22:1-2, Moses describes caring for, and returning, a neighbor’s lost livestock.
In Chapter 24, he tells the Israelites how to treat laborers (14-15):
“Never take advantage of poor and destitute laborers, whether they are fellow Israelites or foreigners living in your towns. You must pay them their wages each day before sunset because they are poor and are counting on it.”
I’ve heard of a farmer who used to hire illegal immigrants to work in his fields. They would work all week long, and then on Friday, payday, the farmer would call immigration anonymously during lunch so all the workers would be rounded up and deported before he’d have to pay them.
In Isaiah (3:14-15):
The LORD comes forward to pronounce judgment on the elders and rulers of his people: “You have ruined Israel, my vineyard. Your houses are filled with things stolen from the poor. How dare you crush my people, grinding the faces of the poor into the dust?”
In Chapter 58 (3, 6-7, 10) Isaiah writes:
“‘We have fasted before you!’ they say [to the Lord]. ‘Why aren’t you impressed? We have been very hard on ourselves, and you don’t even notice it!’ ‘I will tell you why!’ [The Lord] respond[s]. ‘It’s because you are fasting to please yourselves. Even while you fast, you keep oppressing your workers. …
‘No, this is the kind of fasting I want: Free those who are wrongly imprisoned; lighten the burden of those who work for you. Let the oppressed go free, and remove the chains that bind people. … Feed the hungry, and help those in trouble. Then your light will shine out from the darkness, and the darkness around you will be as bright as noon.’”
And the prophet Zechariah tells us in Chapter 7:9:
“This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another.’”
In studying the Bible, one of the keys to determining the importance of a particular issue is how often the subject is mentioned. Some topics are mentioned rarely, and others are a continual theme. The Bible is replete with commands for us to have compassion for each other.
There can be no misunderstanding or suggestion that maybe a particular verse was interpreted incorrectly. It’s a continuous theme running throughout the Old Testament history of Israel into the New Testament history of discipleship.
Abraham tells the rich man in Hades, if they or we, “do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”
And Abraham was right. Jesus shows us that in order to love God we must also love the humanity that he loves. And we ignore him.
He tells us in Luke 6:35-36:
“Love your enemies! Do good to them. Lend to them without expecting to be repaid. Then your reward from heaven will be very great, and you will truly be acting as children of the Most High, for he is kind to those who are unthankful and wicked. You must be compassionate, just as your Father is compassionate.
In John 3:16, we’re told:
“For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”
John also urges us later in his ministry, in his first letter (3:18):
“Dear children, let’s not merely say that we love each other; let us show the truth by our actions.”
And the Apostle Paul in his Letter to the Colossians (3:12), tells us:
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.
There’s no room for doubt about what the Father expects from us in our relationships with each other, is there?
In the 44th chapter of his book, My Imitation of Christ, Thomas à Kempis responds to Christ’s admonition to turn our focus away from the things of this world with the following prayer:
“To what have we come, Lord? Behold, we bewail a temporal loss. We labor and fret for a small gain, while loss of the soul is forgotten and scarcely ever returns to mind. That which is of little or no value claims our attention, whereas that which is of highest necessity is neglected -- all because man gives himself wholly to outward things. And unless he withdraws himself quickly, he willingly lies immersed in externals.”
Our focus on temporal things distracts us not only from each other, but even from the Gospel messages for us. For example, today’s Gospel reading has some important aspects that are often overlooked in our focus on the Rich Man’s wealth.
Many people dismiss this graphic description of the afterlife by Jesus as simply a story about money or kindness, that the flames in verse 24 are not real. Many scholars, however, see this story as more factual than we may realize at first glance, since this is the only parable in which Jesus names any characters. Whether it’s just a parable or an actual narrative, Christ’s words show us some truths that must be taken seriously.
First, this is Hades, not Hell. In the Old Testament, Hades refers to the place where the dead go, regardless of whether they are saved or lost; in the New Testament the place for the dead who are saved is called “paradise” or “Abraham’s Bosom.”
Second, this story reveals to us at least three things about the dead. They’re not simply annihilated as some people believe. They are also not unconscious, as in what’s called “soul sleep.” They’re fully conscious and alert (Matt17:3, Rev 6:9-11).
Also, they have physical bodies of some kind. The Rich Man’s request is to relive his physical thirst. It’s worth noting that the word Luke uses to describe Lazarus dipping his finger in water is Bapto (Bapto [lex], Bayh), from which we get the word, “Baptize.”
Third, it’s made clear to us that people don’t reject God due to lack of evidence. Moses and the rest of the Prophets provide plenty of evidence. People reject God through their refusal to believe the evidence they’ve already seen. They trust the temporary things of this world, even though they are only temporary.
Henry Ford’s mansion, “Fairlane,” still stands in Dearborn, Michigan, as a master example of mankind’s inventiveness.
Ford chose the beauty of the sloping banks of the River Rouge as the site for his new building. The mansion has 55 rooms on three floors, with eight fireplaces, including one made of marble standing 13 feet high. A flick of the finger provided light from any of the 550 switches in the 31,000 square foot mansion.
It’s a magnificent structure, with perfect workmanship and exquisite taste. When it was built in 1917, well before inflation shrank our dollar, it cost Ford just over a million dollars ($1,057,000).
Ford’s ingenuity even reached to the power supply. He wanted to be independent of pubic utilities, so he built his own power plant at a cost of $200,000, using finely machined turbines to feed electricity to the entire estate with enough extra juice to sell to the public utilities in an emergency.
However, when torrential rains hit the Detroit area in 1947, the River Rouge overflowed its banks and flooded into the furnace under the boilers, smothering the fire, which then caused the steam pressure to fall. The turbines stopped spinning and the electricity failed for the only time in forty years.
Ironically, that was the night that Henry Ford lay dying in his bedroom. Though surrounded by an engineering marvel, he left the world just as he had entered it 87 years before — in a cold house lighted by candles.
None of us were born with pockets, and like Henry Ford, we will leave this world the same way we came into it. What awaits us on the other side depends on what we do here.
The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus ultimately is about our hearts. Jesus tells us that where our treasure is, our hearts are also. If we follow God’s will instead of our own, we’ll store up treasure in heaven instead of here on earth. Treasure invested in ourselves yields emptiness, but treasure invested for God yields compassion.
God bless you.
