Bridging the chasm: Rich and poor, law and gospel

Luke 16:19-31

One of the hardest parts of preaching is trying to give you appropriate context to the scripture we are reading. Most of you haven’t studied the Gospel of Luke extensively—maybe you have done a Bible study on it—or maybe you’ve never read a word from Luke’s Gospel apart from Sunday mornings at church. It’s hard enough if you read the Bible every day to piece together the context, let alone if you never read it at all. But no matter what you know you need to know this: Context matters. You wouldn’t pick up a copy of Gone with the Wind, read a paragraph, and imagine you’ve got the picture. So how much more important is it with the Bible? We need to constantly be wondering: Where is Jesus in his ministry? Who is he talking to? Where has he been… where is he going? Is this story part of a bigger series of stories?

These are important questions to ask, because Jesus was not the brothers Grimm or Aesop. Their stories were distinct and universal; you can pick up a single Aesop fable and easily understand the moral. On the other hand, Jesus’ parables were specific and contextual. He told the parable of the Good Samaritan immediately after being rejected by the Samaritans. He points to Jerusalem immediately following the Transfiguration, saying that Jerusalem is where something big is going to go down. The context helps us to understand the meaning; everything after the Transfiguration is downhill to the cross and everything should be read accordingly.

One last example of contextual reading for you: In our men’s Tuesday morning Bible Study leading up to Lent we read through the book of Romans. Romans is the perfect example of a book that has to be read in whole; if you read it in part you will miss the point. If you read verses from anywhere in the first few chapters of Romans it is easy to see that Paul’s purpose in writing this book must be to convict people and strengthen the importance of the law. However, if you read anywhere from about chapter 8 on in the book of Romans it’s easy to see that Paul wrote Romans to obliterate the law. If you read all of it you will find something infinitely more interesting: Paul laid out the importance of the law to give weight to our sinfulness. Then he obliterated the law under grace’s power. But you cannot get there from reading only a single passage.

So it is with readings like today’s. The rich man and Lazarus: A parable of Jesus that, if we’re honest with ourselves, should scare us half to death, especially when read on its own. This parable better get us thinking, “What does it mean to be rich?” How much money does it take to be rich?

Life is unfair... but not how you're thinking

“Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?” Jesus asks. Now that’s a great question. In fact, it’s about time, because that’s the question—in various forms—that I get asked more than any other. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do some people seem to get much worse than they deserve? Why do some get better? Where is the justice? This is the most direct Jesus gets in dealing with this question, so this is a good time to perk up and listen, because I’m willing to bet that this is a question you care about.

    Intuitively, we like karma. The idea that people who do bad will end up getting bad in return somewhere down the line is a very attractive one to us. Likewise, the idea that if we are good God will reward us for being good is also attractive. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be how this life often works—good people suffer; some people are rewarded for sins like pride and covetousness and gluttony and lust. God has a plan for history—we can understand that—but individually things are not always so clear. We don’t always get what we deserve. So, if the reason you are being good is because you believe God will reward you with a good things then you might want to find another plan. You have to look no further than the apostles, martyred for their faith one by one after Jesus, to see that the reward for following Jesus is not the type of throne we might like; it looks a lot more like a cross.

    So if not karma, then what? And if we’re not rewarded with good things in this life, then what? And if grace is true, then what? We should be wrestling with all of this; we should be pondering it; because in this mess of brokenness and unfairness that we find in this world the important question is not “Is it fair?” because we know it’s not. Cancer in children, car accidents, war, poverty, a baby born with AIDS—none of these can be blamed for their actions; we can’t imagine they did this to themselves—but even if we start to think about people who have brought their ruin on themselves so often it’s not always clear how in control they really are. There’s the person who is otherwise wonderful but has a problem with alcohol, or the person who has a great heart but whose head is affected terribly by mental illness. Others can’t understand social cues. People are influenced by everything from their body chemistry to their families to traumatic experiences in their past. We all make choices, but our choices are not as all-powerful as we want to believe they are. We are free, but we are also captive.

A man was going down from Jerusalem

Luke 10:25-37

The Samaritans rejected Jesus. That’s what I wanted you to remember from last Wednesday if you were here for the Ash Wednesday service. The Samaritans rejected Jesus. So, when Jesus is asked “Who is my neighbor?” you might be surprised at the answer he gives. “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho” he began, a classic-storytelling trope. Who is the man? It doesn’t matter. What matters is this: “He fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead”—which, as we know from The Princess Bride, is not completely dead but it’s on the way there. Two holy figures pass him by—a priest and a Levite, who was a temple elder. These are the religious guys; the guys who should know what it means to be a neighbor. Hint: They don’t score well here.

            So it is that a Samaritan passed by and the rest is history. The funny thing is that Jesus is just telling a story, right? It’s a parable. He could be using anyone as an example; it could have been the priest who stopped, or it could have been a different sort of outsider who was righteous—a tax collector might seem a likely choice. But no, Jesus told the story of the “good” Samaritan; a member of the tribe who just rejected him. It’s not just that the Samaritans were disliked by everyone—by Romans for being too Jewish and by Jews for being not Jewish enough—they also made a choice to not receive Jesus in their town. If it’s not their heritage that matters and not their choices either, then what does matter?

            All that matters is the present actions of the Samaritan; not his antecedents, not his relatives, and not his past either. You’ll notice that Jesus’ commands are present-tense. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind; and love your neighbor as yourself. There is no past that will disqualify you from doing this in the present; there is no status, like that of being a priest, which will excuse you from the obligation right now. We are judged not by our past or our future but by our right now.