Luke 16:19-31 - Homiletics

The rich man and Lazarus.

A parable so striking and solemn that, as has been said, "they must be fast asleep who are not startled by it." It is in several respects unique. Figure is so blended with reality, so rapidly passes into reality, that we are doubtful where and how far to separate between the form of truth and the truth itself. Indeed, it has been questioned whether the discourse is to be regarded as a parable at all; whether it is not to be regarded as the record of facts and experiences. Alone, too, of all the pictorial sayings of Jesus, it carries thought into the region behind the veil; it gives us a glimpse into the hidden economy. He who has access to the invisible takes us whither the eye of man has never pierced. And yet it is most difficult to settle on what principle we shall interpret the mysterious conversations reported, and what signification we are to attach to the words concerning the world of the dead. Let us not strain the sentences beyond the meanings which they are fairly entitled to bear; let us aim at a calm, truthful, practical application of Christ's teaching to heart and conscience.

I. Consider THE RELATION OF THE PARABLE TO THE WORDS WHICH PRECEDE , AND TO THE CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH SURROUND , IT . The Pharisees, we are told in Luke 16:16 , had derided the teaching as to "the mammon of unrighteousness," their opposition having been intensified by the declaration, "Ye cannot serve God and mammon." The reply of Christ contains an indictment with two counts, in respect of which their mammon-worship was made apparent.

1 . Their self-justifying spirit before men. Their piety was so disposed as to attract the observation and win the applause of men. It was the covering of covetousness, because it indicated a dependence on men, a wish to make gain of godliness. The parable which follows illustrates the same state of mind and heart under another phase of the same world-worship. Certainly the portrait of the rich man resembles the Sadducee rather than the more severe and abstemious Pharisee. But extremes often meet. Pharisee and Sadducee have this in common—man and the present are more than God and the future: to look well, to stand well with society, is really the horizon of the aim and the prize of the ambition.

2 . Their merely outward and legal righteousness. In their casuistry they tampered with the eternally right and good; and their essential unbelief was proved by the failure to see that Moses and the prophets prepared men for that kingdom of God to which John had pointed, and into which he had called every one to press. They were so imbedded in their respectabilities that they felt no need of this kingdom, and did not receive it. The parable presents a man who, having Moses and the prophets, had never awakened out of a false, carnal security, had never seen his real poverty and wretchedness. And all, in the latter part of the tale, which brings out his awakenment when too late—the torments of his conscience, his appeal, his cry, his pleading for his brethren—is intended to vivify the worthlessness and worse than worthlessness of the trust on which the Pharisee was built up, and to declare that, before the judgment-seat of the Eternal, Moses and the prophets would witness against him for his rejection of the Light that had come into the world.

II. Now, having seen its root in moral conditions which Christ intended to lay bare, REGARD THE SALIENT FEATURES OF THE SKETCH BEFORE US .

1 . There is a rich man. No particulars as to his estate are given; no judgment is passed on his character. It is not said that he had amassed his wealth by unfair means, or that he was unjust, or that he was harsh; he is simply presented as rich, fond of show and glitter and good living. Now and again a monarch might assume his robe of costly purple, but purple and fine linen are the ordinary dress of this Dives, and the appointments of his table are always splendid. A jovial, magnificent personage, to whom menials in gorgeous array do homage, and whom all the flunkeydom of his city silently reverences. There is only one drawback. At the entrance to his palace, a beggar—a miserable creature, full of sores—is laid; one so reduced that he is glad of the crumbs which fall from the table. Such crumbs are dainties to him. Clearly, no effort is made to relieve this beggar; none is employed to heal his diseases; his only guardians and mediciners are the curs which prowl about Eastern cities. The "inhumanity of man" is condemned by the action of these curs.

2 . The rich man has no name, the beggar has — Lazarus, or Eleazar, "God's help." Beautifully Augustine asks, "Seems not Christ to you to have been reading from that book where he found the name of the poor man written, but found not the name of the rich; for that book is the book of life?" Thus day by day, the millionaire, reclining on his couch, his table groaning with delicacies, elegantly sipping at this, and taking that, and withal complaining of indigestion, occasionally sallying forth and dazzling all by his splendour, is yet offended by the loathsome thing at the gate, from which the eye is withdrawn. Day by day the gaunt form of haggard poverty obtrudes on the rights of wealth; squalor, in all its hideousness, stares into the face of wealth. Is it not the contrast which, instead of lessening, becomes more intense as the curious complexity which we call civilization develops?—civilization, with its heights separated only by hand-breadths from its depths. Day by day it is so, until—

3 . " Died ." Ah! a word which it is impossible to expunge, which gathers up the fears and tears, which crowns or crushes the hopes of men. First the beggar. To him death is a message of relief, bidding away from sores which dogs have licked to joys in which angels share, from the flagged pavement, hard and cold, of the palace of the rich man harder and colder still, to the embrace and warmth and fulness of Abraham's bosom. "It is well," says Dives, when he misses the bundle of rags and disease; "it is the best thing which could happen to that Lazarus!" But the clock moves on; the "purple and fine linen" begin to hang about the limbs; the viands come and go untasted; there is the sickness, the sick-bed, the muffled knocker, the bated breath of physicians and attendants. Oh, horror of horrors! it is death ! All must be left. The hands which used to be so full are now still, starched, and empty! The poor to die,—that is good; but the rich man also to die! What is the difference between the two? Of the one the burial is noted; no doubt a grand affair, for which, possibly, he had himself arranged. I have heard of a Dives, who, afraid that he might not have a sufficiently splendid coffin, procured a sarcophagus from Egypt, and lay down in it to be sure that it would fit. The burial; yes, but something more! Beggar and millionaire are in Hades—the shell of the Old Testament—the unknown place, the unseen region which contains the departed until the coming of the Lord. What of the beggar? While he was on earth man in pity carried him to the palace gate, and laid him there to starve and rot unless the crumb was thrown to him. When he dies angels carry him to the place of bliss, though not yet heaven, which was signified sometimes by the word "paradise," sometimes by the phrase "under the throne," sometimes by " Abraham ' s bosom." For the millionaire there is only Hades; no purple robe and fine linen, no sumptuous feast; the robe and the linen are now only a garment of fire, the sumptuous feast only a reminiscence continued in torments. To him Hades is only the reservation to the judgment of the great day.

4 . And there is the awakenment. The Lord describes it in sentences which it is better only to summarize. The eyes of Dives are lifted up, and lo! near, yet far off, is Abraham, and—can it be?—with him Lazarus; no rags now, no sores now; his now the "purple and fine linen" and the sumptuous living, for he is in the bosom of Abraham. And through these distances there rings a cry—no cry to the Father in heaven, no cry for repentance; only to "Father Abraham," and only a respite from the pain, even a moment's respite; a cry which is still charged with the old hauteur, "Send that beggar to serve me. " To this he has come; there is no thought of banquet or wines; only the tip of the erstwhile beggar's finger dipped in water and cooling the tongue. Alas! the reply sounds the knell of all hope; mild, yet awful, it is, "Son, remember!" What? The good things are exhausted. He had got all that he had lived for; he had, in the bygone existence, a choice of things, and he had made his choice. His reward was drained. Lazarus had no portion in the world which was gone from sight. His election had been outside of it. He has come to his choice; he has entered on his reward. " He is comforted, but thou art tormented." For the rest, even supposing the will to grant the request, it cannot be. "There is a great gulf fixed" (verse 26), and no passage may be between the upper and lower sides of the Hades of the dead. "Without God, and without hope." Is it a touch of still surviving humanity, or is it lest the misery be aggravated, that the petition of Dives proceeds, "Then send him where there is no gulf fixed; send him to my father's house, to my five brethren" (verses 27, 28). "They have Moses and the prophets" (verse 29). "Nay, but if one went to them from the dead, they will repent" (verse 30). "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead" (verse 31).

CONCLUSION . What a variety of "instruction in righteousness" is suggested by this parable! It invites thought in the direction of the most awful questions which connect themselves with human destiny.

1 . As to the Hades —the condition, or place, of the dead. Dean Alford proposes a good. rule of interpretation: "Though it is unnatural to suppose that our Lord would, in such a parable, formally reveal any new truth respecting the fate of the dead, yet, in conforming himself to the ordinary language current on these subjects, it is impossible to suppose that he whose essence is truth could have assumed as existing anything which does not exist. It would destroy the truth of our Lord's sayings ii' we could conceive him to have used popular language which does not point at truth." What is that, then, in the figures, in the symbols employed, as to which we can say, "Here is matter to be pondered and believed in"? Christ seems to put the stamp of his approval on these things.

2 . To return to the most pressing instruction of the parable; life or death is the choice before every one of us. Death; if to any one comforts are more than duties, if the plane of the existence is a merely worldly one—good things of one kind or another, and the kingdom of God left out of the reckoning. The rich man is not condemned because of his riches; the poor man is not carried into Abraham's bosom because of his poverty. The riches were the temptation, and the soul had been mastered; but one may be rich and yet simple in heart as a child, not trusting in the riches, willing to distribute, and recognizing the stewardship to God for all. One may be poor, yet greedy, showing covetousness by the fierceness with which the sense of want is expressed, by the bitter envying of the more fortunate, by the utter absence of poverty of spirit. But," Son, remember!" if thou livest for good things, thou mayest have them; but then, the greater the prosperity, the greater the curse, the more fatal will the possession be to the true life—the life in God. By-and-by, for even the hardest and dullest there is an awakenment—to shame and everlasting contempt. Here, messages of love, the very pleading of the one risen from the dead may fail to reach the heart; there, where the ever-shifting scenes of this world disappear for ever, shall be heard the voice of conscience, speaking only for doom.