Fourth Sunday of Lent                  

Luke 16:10-31

“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And, at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores.

“The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side.

“He 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.’

“But, Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things and Lazarus in like manner evil things, but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’

“He said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house— for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.’

“Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’

“He said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’

“He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

Are You Listening?

When I was growing up, it was a known fact that the average person would eat up to eight spiders a year, because spiders would crawl into their mouths while they were sleeping. Of course, I found out as an adult that this supposed “fact” was actually an urban legend. This idea, and similar ideas, have existed for a long time; it was printed in a collection of insect folklore in 1954. This urban legend has changed slightly over the years, the most variable factor seems to be the number of spiders eaten. But, it didn’t become one of the most well-established urban legends of our time until 1993, when Lisa Holst included it in an article about how people readily accept anything they read online. After her article was published, this “fact” became one of the most widely-circulated bits of misinformation on the internet.

A similar thing happened with the conspiracy theory about how vaccines cause autism. In 1998, Andrew Wakefield published a paper stating that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine could lead to autism. It was later discovered that the paper was based on scientific misconduct, the studies it contained were fraudulent and the data was misrepresented. There was no control group of subjects who did not have autism, and the links between the possible symptoms from getting the vaccine and autism were found to be correlated, at best, which did not necessarily mean that they caused the autism.

Wakefield tried again to link the MMR vaccine to autism in 2002. This paper was also rejected for having critical flaws.

But, the damage had been done. Since then, there have been many studies showing the link between genetics and autism, and other studies that disprove the connection between vaccines and autism. But, this conspiracy theory is still alive and well, leading many parents to object to their children getting life-saving vaccinations. We are not listening. Something has shifted in our culture. We no longer trust doctors and scientists. We no longer trust experts in their fields or teachers. We trust celebrity. We trust influencers. We trust conspiracy theories that we read online.

Our gospel reading today shows that human beings have not been particularly good at listening for a long time. Jesus tells a very strange parable about two men who die and go to Hades, a poor man and a rich man. The poor man, whose name is Lazarus, is brought to Abraham, the revered ancestor of the Jewish faith, while the rich man was being tormented with flames. Jesus says at the beginning of the parable that in life, the poor man laid at the rich man’s gate, covered with sores, just wishing he could have the crumbs that fell off of the rich man’s table. We can assume that the rich man saw Lazarus all the time, if he was lying at the gate that he would have to use to come and go, and it seems like he didn’t do anything to help Lazarus.

Even while being tormented in Hades, the rich man still thinks of Lazarus as beneath him, and asks Abraham to have Lazarus serve him by bringing him water. Regardless of how the rich man views or treats Lazarus, there is a great chasm between them, and Lazarus would not be able to bring him water, even if he wanted to.

This parable is often used as a warning about Hell. Be good, like Lazarus, and you will not be tormented. And, you will get to be with your ancestors. If you are not good, then you will be tormented with flames. Only, the parable doesn’t actually say that. It says nothing about what Lazarus did or how virtuously he led his life, only that he suffered. He suffered in life, so now, he gets to be comforted. We might infer that the rich man did not help Lazarus in the way that he should have, but that isn’t the reason given for his state of torment. During his lifetime, he received good things, and now he is in torment. The reason given in the parable is more like a balancing of the scales, rather than reward and punishment.

But, this isn’t the moral of the story. Morals come at the end. Lazarus and the rich man, comfort and torment, these are just the setting. All of that is where the story is taking place. It’s not the lesson. We’ve looked at many parables over the last few weeks: The Fig Tree, The Good Shepherd, The Woman’s Lost Coin. The settings of these stories are not the lesson. Jesus didn’t tell these stories so that we would learn that fig trees grow by the side of the road, that sheep get lost, or that people misplace their belongings. So, the lesson of Lazarus and the rich man is not that some people are comforted in the afterlife, and some people are tormented.

So, what is the lesson here? Sometimes, we have context to help us. Sometimes we can see how this story is told in other gospels. Unfortunately, this section of Luke doesn’t really give us any context to work with. We don’t really know why Jesus is telling this parable, or to whom. And, as this story doesn’t appear in any of the other gospels, we don’t have anything to compare it to. So, all we have is the parable itself.

As we continue on with the story, the rich man realizes his predicament, and asks to have Lazarus warn his brothers so they won’t have to suffer the same fate.

And, Abraham says, “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them. If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”

That is the lesson, the point of the whole thing. Listen to Moses and the prophets. And, if you are too stubborn to listen to Moses and the prophets, then neither will you listen to someone who comes back from the dead.

Jesus is, of course, hinting at what is going to happen, how he is going to rise from the dead. And, just like he said, there are going to be a lot of people who refuse to listen to what he has to say, even though he came back from the dead to say it.

But, we can’t just gloss over the fact that this story takes place in the afterlife, because that’s the part that a lot of people are going to focus on. Why did Jesus use this scenario to illustrate his point? Well, first of all, as a story, it makes more sense for this story to take place in the afterlife if one of the characters is going to ask someone to come back from the dead. They both had to be in the same place, which means they both had to be dead, and they both had to be able to talk to each other. Also, there had to be a scenario dire enough that it would warrant someone coming back from the dead to deliver the message.

There are a couple of clues here that help us to understand that the setting is not the message, though. We already discussed that the lesson comes at the end of the story, not at the beginning or the middle. But, there is also the curious use of the word Hades as the name for the realm of the afterlife. This is the name that the Greeks would have used for their understanding of the afterlife, not the name that Jews would use, Sheol. And, even though Luke was written for a Greek speaking audience, Jesus would not have been trying to teach them about Greek mythology. There is no real consensus about the ancient Jewish understanding of the afterlife; documents we have from that timeframe are contradictory. But, as we discussed, the afterlife wasn’t the point of this story…prophets and prophecy are. Listening is the point of the story.

Jesus is asking us to pay attention. Jesus is asking us to listen. If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead. Moses said, “Let my people go!” The prophets told us to obey God’s law. We are in the middle of Lent. We are waiting for the Son of God to be raised from the dead. Jesus told us that the greatest law is to love God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. “This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

We are given many opportunities in our lives to listen. And, listening is hard, especially when what we hear isn’t what we want to hear. Listening is hard when we’re just waiting for the other person to take a breath so that we can say what we want to say. Listening is hard when there so much noise around us all the time. But, we have to listen. We have to listen to each other and to God. We have to listen to the doctors and the scientists and the experts and the teachers and the prophets. God has sent so many reliable and trustworthy people to us to tell us things. And if we won’t listen to them, then we aren’t going to listen to the Son of God, even if he does come back from the dead. Are you listening? Amen.

~ Rev. Charles Wei