“CARRIED BY THE ANGELS”
Saint Luke 16: 19-31
1st Sunday after Trinity: 3 June Anno Domini 2018
Father Jay Watson SSP
“O Lord, I have trusted in Thy Mercy” That was the constant prayer of the beggar in Christ’s parable. “My heart shall rejoice in Thy Salvation.” He did. Lazarus was carried, no effort or cooperation or choice on his part, by angels into Abraham’s bosom.
The “certain rich man” in the story did not die because he was bad. The beggar did not die in spite of being good. They were both bad. They were both poor, miserable, sinners. The beggar had to confront this reality by the actual physical state of his life—kingdom of the left. But, praise The Lord, he also was confronted with his trespasses by way of those “angels” in his life that shared with him The Word of God. The rich man avoided the light of The Word and slathered his soul and body with the greasy, sweet, sugar & alcohol fuel of mammon—self aggrandizement and ego-enshrinement. His rejection of God and of Truth was successful, and pleasant, up to the point when he died. Too late.
Christ tells you this same story today. It’s not about some moralistic exhortation to be better. The Law commands you daily to not be better but to be perfect. Live by the Law, die by the Law. The wages of sin is death. That’s why the two characters in the parable died. That’s why all men die. Of course, the rich man should have shown compassion on the beggar. Of course, you should likewise be compassionate and sharing and caring with those who need your help. Love your neighbor as yourself.
No doubt, Lazarus himself was greedy and selfish. Being a beggar does not confer salvation. Christ Jesus saves by His Grace and Mercy all the miserable, by way of His forgiving and restoring Word.
Hell is described as a horrible place of torment. The point is not to feel sorry for the rich man but to be with Jesus.
Lazarus point you to Christ. There was a certain rich man, He was The 2nd Person of The Godhead, The WORD, before He became man. He was rich in the fullness of His Divinity—The same essence with The Father and The Spirit—and He was clothed likewise in the fine linen of omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence. He fared sumptuously every day, even before there were “days,” on the love of His Trinitarian being. That God became a beggar by leaving heaven and being incarnate of The Virgin. The enfleshment of The Son is not beggarly, Indeed, Jesus lifts up your human flesh and restores it to pre-fall Adamic perfection by continuing to be The Incarnate One. His perfect flesh and blood obeyed The Law and was always perfectly loving God, and perfectly loving, serving, and giving to His fellow beggarly neighbors—even His enemies. The God/Man was the ultimate beggar as the suffering servant of Isaiah’s prophecy. But He did not beg. He worked and complied. He suffered and died. He did not lay in the gutter having His sores licked by dogs. He hung from the cross and had his wounds bleed Him dry. He was substitute stand-in for all of you “rich men” who ignore your fellow beggars. He has made you truly rich by saving you from hell and placing you with His called and ordained angels that you might always fare sumptuously every day on absolution, regenerating + re-birth, and The Body and Blood of The Grace-Giver Himself.
No moralism. No moral. Just The Word of God.
Lazarus the beggar point to Jesus. And Jesus tells you where He is for you. He is Abraham’s bosom, Heaven in The Flesh, where He holds you, washes you, feeds you, and gives you family and peace. He tells you specifically where He is when He says “[you] have Moses and the prophets…hear them!”
Moses the Lawgiver yes, but also Moses the giver of the pure Gospel, for in the Pentateuch the forgiveness of sins washes over the children of God even as the water gushed out of rock in the desert. Moses wrote about Jesus in Genesis 3 and in countless other places; as did the Prophets; as did King David. The Holy Spirit used these men of faith, “spake by them,” not to write history, geography, science, or moralistic lessons, but to preach Christ Crucified, albeit, wrapped not in swaddling clothes, but in “types” and prophetic oracles.
The rich man, the unnamed outcast to the darkness where the “worm does not die,” where there is “gnashing of teeth,” and where but a single drop of water on the burning tongue would be a relief, the rich man wanted a spectacular sign of power and glory. Send the dead beggar to the five brothers so that they might be impressed with power and might and change their familial sinful life-styles. NO. The Greeks will always look for worldly wisdom, some new “doctrine” to tickle their fancy. The Jews will always, like the rich man, demand one more miracle, one more “prove it,” and, “do it my way.” Christ to you: “hear Moses and the Prophets.” As Saint John the Theologian and Evangelist records The Lord: “search the Scriptures…they are they which testify of Me…for had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me; for he wrote of Me.” [Jn. 5. 39,46]
Moses, who was Prophet, Priest, and King, spoke of, and pointed to The True Prophet, Priest, and King Who now says to you: “Join your brother Lazarus, and all My Lambs; join with the host of Sabaoth at My Meal for your forgiveness and strength. As Lazarus reposed at Abraham’s bosom, you now, like John who laid his head on My breast at The Last Supper, you now will likewise be embraced by Life, Light, and Immortality at My Everlasting Supper. I have risen from the dead and give you Peace.”In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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