Homily 26th Sunday C 2022

The story about a rich man and a poor man named Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) was based on a popular folk tale of the time. However, Jesus gave it a surprising ending to enforce his teaching on the Christian attitude to wealth and possessions.

It is not suggested that the rich man had acquired his wealth unjustly, nor that the poor man was a victim of his oppression. Jesus does not call the rich man wicked nor the poor man good. What is clear, though, is that cushioned by his lavish lifestyle, the rich man was oblivious to the presence of the beggar outside his walled estate.

In Jewish religious law, a well-off person was obliged to give some of his surplus wealth to the poor, such as Lazarus begging outside his home. But by being unaware or indifferent to the poor man’s plight and keeping his good fortune to himself (and his own?), he was punished. He was not condemned for being wealthy but for his wilful ignorance and greed. Throughout St Luke’s Gospel, the wealthy are not condemned for having money but for being greedy with it and refusing to support the poor.

When both men died, their fortunes were reversed in the next world. Up to this point, there’s nothing new in Jesus’ telling of the story. Where he departs from convention is going on to describe a conversation between the rich man – traditionally known as Dives (‘rich man’) – and Abraham, the father of the Jewish faith. And it’s from this dialogue that the main point of Jesus’ teaching emerges.

The rich man was condemned to ‘torment in Hades’. Also known as Sheol, Hades was the name of the shadowy place below the earth which Jews, who believed in the resurrection, considered the destination for the souls of the dead. It had two compartments – one where the ‘just’ or good people quietly awaited the resurrection, and the other where the greedy or ‘bad’ were already being punished.

Suffering in this place of torment, the rich man still viewed the poor man as his inferior. Notice how he demanded of Abraham: “Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water to cool my tongue for I am in agony in these flames!” His arrogance and disdain for the unfortunate on earth – the ‘little people’ – went with him to Hades.

Jesus concluded the story with Abraham saying to the rich man what Jesus himself said throughout the Gospels – those who ignore the needs of the poor, wilfully or not, are in for a ‘hell of a shock’ when they die; and, conversely, those now suffering ‘bad things’ in this life through no fault of their own – people born into crippling poverty, for instance – are dear to God and will be vindicated.

This is an uncomfortable message for those of us living in the developed world who, compared with the poor, live comfortable and privileged lives. It’s not a sin to be well-off and have a comfortable life, especially if we have worked hard and justly to acquire it. But Jesus warns us that we must not be insensitive, like the rich man in the story, to the plight of how the other two-thirds of the world live. We must not turn a blind eye to their suffering. As Pope Francis has said:

Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own. (Evangelii Gaudium, n.54)

Michael Campion
Holy Name, Jesmond

25 September 2022