Lectionary Reflection for Proper 21C on Luke 16:19-31

THE HOSPITALITY CHALLENGE CONTINUES

When I was a teenager in a non-denominational youth group, we were fixated on what happens to us after we die. Looking back, I realise that it’s unusual for a group of young people to be so focused on the end of their lives, but this was what our faith was about. Becoming a Christian meant recognising that I was a sinner doomed to hell, praying the sinner’s prayer and asking for God’s forgiveness, accepting Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Saviour, and resting in the knowledge that I now had a place waiting for me in heaven. But in spite of being told that we were now “saved”, there was still the anxiety that we might mess up so badly that we would lose our salvation. And so we talked a lot about staying saved (I even used to end letters and phone calls with the words, “Stay Christian!”) and debated the meaning of every verse we could find that had any reference to the afterlife.

Not surprisingly, we eventually stumbled onto Luke 16:22-23, with its enigmatic reference to the “bosom of Abraham”. With no training in biblical studies or theology, we had no idea what this meant and how it related to heaven and hell. We considered that it might be some kind of purgatory, then rejected that thought as being too Catholic. But what didn’t enter our minds was the possibility that Jesus’ reference to “Abraham’s bosom” in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus might not have anything to do with life after death.

For the last few months, as we’ve been meditating (mostly) on the travel narrative in Luke’s Gospel, we have been repeatedly reminded that hospitality is an essential foundation of the reign of God. In Chapters 15 and 16, we have been exploring a series of five parables that Jesus told to describe what the attitude and actions of hospitality look like. The writer dotted notes about who Jesus was speaking to through this section ( 15:1; 16:1; 15:14; 17:1), but it seems that, regardless of who Jesus was actually addressing, everything he said was heard by everyone—the Pharisees and scribes, the crowd, and his disciples.^¹ This is important because in all five parables, Jesus challenged the religious elites for their love of money (Luke 16:14) and their failure to practice radical hospitality.

As I noted in my reflection on the first part of Chapter 16,² there is a progression in these five parables. The first three, in Chapter 15, focus on the celebration in heaven when something or someone lost is found. Jesus’ point here was to demonstrate that God’s reign is scandalously inclusive, and to show how great the heavenly celebration is whenever someone accepts God’s invitation into abundant life. These stories were a response to the grumbling of the religious leaders about Jesus’ practice of eating meals with “tax collectors and sinners” (15:1), and an indictment on their failure to embody the hospitality of God’s reign. Then, in the parable of the shrewd manager, Jesus warned the religious elites that they were risking their position as agents of God’s grace and goodness and failing to manage God’s “estate” (16:1-2). Every parable was an attempt to wake the Pharisees and scribes up to what God was doing among them, and to invite them to embrace and embody the radical hospitality of God’s reign.

Now, in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, Jesus issues a warning that a habit of hoarding wealth and ignoring the needs of the poor and vulnerable has devastating consequences. This means that, as we will see, Abraham’s bosom is not a place we may go to when we die,³ but a vision of God’s radical hospitality to those who have been dismissed and neglected by wealthy neighbours who could have, and should have, cared for them. It is also a strong call for us to embody God’s all-welcoming reign while we still have time.

RECOGNISING OUR COMMON HUMANITY

In Jesus’ world, as is often still the case in ours, wealth was seen as God’s reward for righteous living and poverty as a punishment for sin. But Jesus completely upended that perspective.⁴ Both in his insistence on sharing meals with poor and outcast people and in his teachings, Jesus declared that “the supposedly blessed are missing out while those apparently cursed are, quite literally, closest to the heart of God”.⁵ This parable, then, was a graphic depiction of how God’s reign turns the values of human society upside down.

The unnamed man in Jesus’ parable was not just rich. He was astronomically wealthy. He wore the finest and most expensive clothes available in his world, and his meals were the equivalent of hosting a great banquet every day.⁶ All we are told about his home is that it was behind a shut gate, which implies that there was also a wall,⁷ but we can assume that it was palatial and opulent. Yet in spite of this extravagant wealth, he refused to allow the poor beggar outside of his entrance to receive even the scraps from his table. Significantly, Jesus doesn’t give this man a name.

Lazarus, on the other hand, is the only person in any of Jesus’ parables who is given a name, and “it means El-Azar, ‘God has helped’”.⁸ His circumstances could not have been more different from those of the rich man. Instead of clothes, Lazarus’ body was covered in sores, which the dogs would lick.⁹ He had no money, no home, no food, and, in the eyes of the wealthy man, no humanity. As Audey West describes it:

Right at the doorstep, neither inside nor out, is the poor, homeless man. The verb to lay (ballo) at the gate is used for throwing worthless salt (Luke 14:35), or throwing something into the fire (Luke 3:9). From the Rich Man’s perspective, Lazarus is a throwaway person.¹⁰