MIND THE GAP

Last week we reflected on how Chapter 16 of Luke is about possessions and their proper use, this is the second story in the chapter that begins “Once there was a rich man who...” and there follows a story where (uniquely) Jesus gives his character a name - Lazarus - which means “God has helped” (or “he whom God helps”). Traditionally the rich man is known as Dives - from the latin for “rich”. It’s a further piece of teaching using wealth, possession and responsibility to show us something about life in the kingdom of God.

But the hard thing about this parable is actually not so much about the wealth and riches and their use - it’s just as much about the chasm between Lazarus and the rich man.

Us human beings have, in our fallen way of doing things, responded to poverty, sickness, age, vulnerability, and just plain difference by running away from those who remind us of what we fear.

Since we can't run far or fast enough, we dig chasms between us. The poor live in one part of town, and the rich in another. We dig chasms them around all kinds of categories that disturb us: gender; race or ethnicity; religion; sexual orientation... the list could go on and on.

And the truth is that whenever we dig such chasms, and especially when we seek to make them unbridgeable, we can be very, very sure that we're on the wrong side of it.

The rich man allowed a “great chasm” to develop between himself and Lazarus. He had no compassion, no thought that while he was wallowing in luxury, Lazarus was lying in pain - a situation which he could have remedied. He looked at a fellow human being - also made in the image of God as he as - and felt no grief or sorrow or pity or compassion. His was a sin of omission. He could have done something: he chose to do nothing. He had the scriptures (“Moses and the prophets”) to tell him how to behave - as did his 5 remaining brothers, yet he still ignored his situation.

The parable isn’t a description of the afterlife - of heaven or hell... it’s a cartoon, almost comic in its portrayal of the exaggerated contrast between the rich and the poor - again the Lucan themes of the poor being raised up and the rich being sent away empty; and it’s a hard word, a challenge to us not to dig chasms in the first place...

Fr. Andrew Perry

Rector, St John the Evangelist, Pevensey Rd, St Leonards on Sea