“THE ANGEL BEARS YOU HOME!”
Saint Luke 16. 19-31
1st Sunday after Trinity: 26 June Anno Domini 2011
Fr J. William Watson S.S.P.
This is a parable. It may not have happened as a factual event. Jesus tells you this story so that you will hear and know this story. It is all true because it's being given to you from He Who is "The Truth!"
Repent and turn from your old-Adam's "rich man" ways. The wealthy non-believer in the parable is not even given a name. Those who reject the Lord's Love also reject His Holy and beautiful name-which is their own family name as well. Only those adopted by Christ have Christian names to go with their human surnames.
The "rich man" is not rich by the Lord's standards. He relies totally on his own mammon. He thinks only of himself and does not love his neighbor as himself. He does not help clothe, feed or relieve Lazarus because He also breaks the 1st Table of the Law. The man does not love God above all things. The man does not even believe in the God of Scripture.
The poor beggar named "Lazarus" ("God has helped") lying at the gate of the pagan despiser of Grace represents Jesus Himself. For without seeing the Christ at the heart and center of this parable you risk slipping into mere moralisms and "must save the poor and starving or I'll go to hell" self-sanctification legalisms.
The rich man's refusal to aide a fellow human being, one right in front of him (not in Africa, Haiti, Japan or Joplin) is not why he goes to Hades at his death. The unknown and unnamed man's refusal to love is but a symptom of a non-believing heart that has refused Christ's love.
At his own death Lazarus' spirit is brought to heaven by God's Messengers, the Angels, to be with the content, the reality, of Lazarus' own riches and treasure-the Lord Himself! "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." [Mt. 6.21]
One need not, and probably should not, construct a complete cosmology of the after-life, pre-Second Advent, based solely on this parable. Dr. Walter A. Maier II is correct that one should let Jesus inform you as to what this story is all about.
Christians who suffer here in this veil of tears will not suffer when they are in Abram's bosom-Heaven, even before the final resurrection of their earthly bodies. Christians, who starved here for food, family, friends, and basic necessities, crying under their heavy crosses, will no longer weep in Glory where they will be filled with all good/God things!
The reverse is true for all non-believers who "appear" to have so (too) much in this, oh so, temporary life. "You can't take it with you" as the unknown tragedian in this parable found out.
Hell will be full of torments and torment. Of what exact "scientific" and physical or meta-physical types we know not; and it matters not. The torment expressed by the man suffices to make Jesus' point!
In Hell, the damned being truly miserable will finally desire mercy-but it will then be too late. They did not go to hell BECAUSE they refused to show mercy to others during their lives. They went to Hell because they did not believe the Word of God-what the Law said and did to them. They refused the true status of their own miserable fallen state and thus refused God's free mercy and adoption. They, like Eve and Adam, and this "rich man" wanted to "be like Gods" themselves. There is only one God and Lord. If one chooses to be "god," then one should not be surprised that the real Lord finally says "okay, you have made your own desert kingdom and I won't trick you into My arms after you have always driven away my Holy Ghost and My Words."
You learn from Jesus in His story that after death it is too late for miracles, and way too late for Bible study or the preaching of the Gospel.
The Law & Gospel, the Words of Christ, are for the dying and the dead in this life, not for the convicted, judged, executed and damned in the final death.
The Hebrew Bible, the Words of THE WORD, as contained in what Christians call the Old Testament (which can be better denominated as the FIRST TESTAMENT) are all that the unknown damned soul needed. He had all the Commandments of the true Lord in Genesis, the Pentateuch, the Kings, Songs, and Prophets to convict him and slay him. He had all the sweet and pure Evangel in those same Hebrew Scriptures to give Him forgiveness and life in lieu of the coming Messiah-Savior! He rejected God…and so it was done. His brothers had the same Word being shared with them, there was/is no excuse. The Holy Ghost may, or may not, use signs and wonders to work parts of kindling faith, but hear Jesus: "IF THEY HEAR NOT MOSES AND THE PROPHETS, NEITHER WILL THEY BE PERSUADED, THOUGH ONE ROSE FROM THE DEAD."
The Law and the Gospel contained in "Moses and the Prophets," i.e. the Old Testament (and NOW the New Testament as well, in Greek and translated English) contain Jesus. Jesus told the Scribes and Pharisees "…Ye have not His word abiding in you...[ye] search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life (i.e. in doing things, in self-works) and they are they which testify of Me." [Jn. 5. 38-40] Jesus told the two Disciples on the road to Emmaus: "Then He said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning Himself." [Lk. 25-27]
Jesus is this Lazarus. Jesus gave up all His royalty and veiled His Godhood in humiliation. Jesus was surrounded not by dogs but by prostitutes, traitors, collaborators, diseased and powerless losers-sinners. Jesus had no earthly villa, mansion or fine home, but made His home where He was. Jesus had not sores from malnutrition but had open bleeding wounds from your trespasses and from the nails, thorns, and spear. Jesus died not outside the palatial house of an unknown, but outside the Holy City of Peace itself, to be your forever PEACE which passeth understanding. Jesus returned like Lazarus to Abram's bosom, i.e. to the fullness of Trinitarian inter-active love and harmony so that He might now be with you today through His angels. His angels are Michael and Gabriel, to be sure; but they are also all those "good messengers," [ev-angelos] evangelists who preach Him!
You again are carried this morning by angels, and by THE ANGEL Christ Jesus, to His table to receive not mere crumbs, but the Bread of Life and Forgiveness. "Blessed is He that considereth the poor."
In the Name of The Father and + of The Son and of The Holy Ghost