September 29, 2013
Reflection
Jesus was a masterful story-teller, integrating imagery from the surrounding culture that would resonate as both familiar and accessible to His audience. But the content of these stories was not simply well-worn truths repackaged in a more imaginative form… The underlying message was often quite provocative or even counter-intuitive. Many of Jesus’ most famous parables communicated a lesson that directly contradicted an accepted maxim or well-established norm of His day. At times, Jesus employed nuance and metaphor to convey these radical messages; in other instances, He eschewed subtlety, taking transparent aim at certain groups or beliefs. The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, which some scholars have suggested is better translated, “the Greedy Man,” is an example of the latter.
The accepted understanding of wealth in first-century Mediterranean culture was that, like health and other forms of prosperity, it reflected favor from God towards an individual or group. This worldview is perhaps nowhere more explicitly on display than in the Book of Job,
This would have been the same attitude held by Jesus’ hearers when he described Lazarus—who presumably found favor with God, based on his very great personal wealth—and his counterpart, Lazarus—who, contrarily, must have sinned quite egregiously to deserve both financial destitution and physical ailment. Instead of affirming this interpretation, Jesus completely reverses it, holding up Lazarus as the example of one who enjoys favor with God and the rich man as the one who had committed the sin. The original hearers undoubtedly would have gasped in disbelief, and more than a few probably would have written Jesus off as deranged.
But what Jesus was challenging was the notion that our gifts—material, physical, and otherwise—are our own, and that they are somehow the just reward for our efforts. Jesus’ contemporaries would have viewed health and prosperity as the result of one’s voluntary fidelity to God’s law. Sin—that is, a failure to adhere to the terms of the Covenant—led directly and inexorably to poverty and illness, as the Prophet Amos is prognosticating to his own audience.
Jesus instead depicts an alternative reality in which sin is erased by the unconditional love of the Father (The Prodigal Son), and material prosperity is not so much a reward for one’s merits as it is a freely-given, unmerited gift from God (The Parable of the Talents) that we are entrusted to use shrewdly for the benefit of the larger community (today’s parable). This notion of wealth as gift that intrinsically entails a correlating responsibility to use it to help those who have less is one that ought to continue to speak to us today. Perhaps, in our modern milieu, it is even more pertinent than ever.
By and large, we tend to think of material success as the result of our individual efforts—hard work in school, on the job, in life. And while financial gain almost invariably necessitates industrious efforts (recipients of trust funds notwithstanding), a more comprehensive understanding of socio-economic dynamics exposes that much of success is “grace,” in the sense that, through no merit of our own, we are born into certain types of families; endowed with varying amounts of innate talents; afforded incommensurate educational and social opportunities; and empowered by fortuitous external circumstances like living in time and place in history wherein people are free to pursue whatever profession they may choose.
It may be tempting—and certainly it is easy—to translate the parable to a modern setting, imagining the rich man to be a Wall Street CEO dressed in an Armani suit, and Lazarus to be a homeless beggar lying—like his ancient counterpart—just outside the building where the CEO oversees his corporate empire. The metaphor would be apt—but it would also be inadequate to the task of communicating the broader message Jesus is relating: it is not simply the financially well-off who are called to use their resources for the betterment of others—it is each of us, insofar as we are uniquely gifted and blessed.
In your own life, as a (relatively) poor student walking to grab a slice of pizza, you may notice a homeless person lying outside the restaurant, but think to yourself, “I can barely afford to buy my textbooks, let alone pay my cell phone bill! I can’t afford to give this guy money…” And that may well be the case. Nevertheless, you also undoubtedly are blessed with immense personal talent and social opportunity—including an intellect that allows you to succeed academically at a prestigious institution like the University of Michigan. Too, you likely are blessed in other ways, relative to your peers. Maybe you are a skilled listener, you boast a
superior ability to manage life’s many minor crises, or you possess some athletic ability.
Jesus challenges us to consider the many ways each of us is “rich,” and who might be our personal “Lazarus.” Maybe it is the socially awkward guy down the hall who struggles to make friends on your floor. Perhaps it is the emotionally needy girl in your friend circle that can’t seem to keep herself together and whom everybody avoids for that reason. The Lazaruses—those sitting right outside the respective doorstep that are not as blessed as we, intellectually, emotionally, athletically, socially—they are the ones we are called to minister to.
Reflection Questions
1) In what ways are you “rich?” To what extent would you say the good things in your life are the result of grace—unmerited gift from God—and to what extent would you say that you have earned these successes through individual effort?
2) What does this wealth mean for your relationship with those around you? What kind of ways might you use that wealth of resources to improve the situation of those in your community? (Is it even your responsibility to do so?)
3) Who are the Lazaruses in your own life? Who are the comparatively less-gifted, unappealing people that you pass all the time… but never pause to engage or assist?
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