Sermon: "The Rich-Poor Divide"

I remember once having a meal at a restaurant in Oslo,  one of the most prosperous and expensive cities in Europe.  It was a warm evening and people were eating their meals on the tables that had been placed on the pavement outside the restaurant.   To my surprise, a group of people, obviously very poor and very poorly dressed started wandering around the tables.   The tables they made for were those that had been vacated by the diners but not yet cleared by the waiters, so there was still some food on the plates.   These people were eating the food that had been left on the plates.  Before too long the city authorities appeared and quickly removed them.  They obviously did not want tourists to see this.  Indeed I have never seen anything like it before or since. 

Such a story reminds us that wealth and poverty live side by side.  Go to any large city, anywhere in world:  London; Paris; New York; Sydney and you will see areas of great wealth: hotels and restaurants where it costs a fortune to stay or to eat. However, not far from these places people are living in cardboard boxes on the street and begging.   Wealth and poverty are never far away. 

This sounds like the story that Jesus told  a poor man who sat begging at the gate of the house of a rich man. In the story Luke paints a very descriptive picture of the two characters in the story.   

The rich man is depicted as having the most expensive clothes money can buy and who eats in real luxury every day.   It was as though every day he ate the kind of meal that we eat when we go to a special dinner.  For him that happened daily.  He went short of nothing. 

Outside his gate sat Lazarus, a very poor man,  obviously very sick because he had no food and no one cared for him.  His only companions were the dogs who wandered the streets.   

Despite these two men being at the opposite end of the wealth index, they had one thing in common: they were both human, and like all humans they were mortal. Jesus tells us in this story that they both died.  Now death is a great equaliser. It comes to rich and poor alike.  

The two funerals would have been very different and Jesus implies this is the story. 

The rich man would have had what we call  “a big funeral”.   His coffin would have been of the best wood available and probably with gold handles.  The synagogue would have been full.  This is something no one wanted to miss.   After all there would have been a very expensive meal at the best inn in town for everyone.  Then when they got to the cemetery he would have been buried in a grave with an expensive gravestone, probably with a large statue and railings around the grave, or he may even have been buried in his own private tomb in a cave. 

This would have been a great contrast with the poor man’s funeral.  It would have been what we once used to call a pauper’s funeral - the absolute basics. 

In one sense the contrast between these two funerals was meaningless, because both men met the same fate. They both died.    

Jesus now paints a picture of the situation beyond the grave where the roles are reversed. 

Now Lazarus the poor man is with Abraham, the great patriarch of the faith, in the close presence of God, and receiving the best of everything. The rich man finds himself suffering. What is worse for him is that he can see Lazarus whose plight he ignored in earthly life,  in great comfort and peace in God’s kingdom.  He calls out to Abraham to send Lazarus to help him. Abraham reminds him that now the roles are reversed. He is suffering while Lazarus is in comfort.  In the story Abraham speaks of a great pit, which prevents anyone crossing from the place of comfort to the place of suffering.  This sounds so similar to the gap between rich and poor on earth,  the gap between the rich man and Lazarus.  

When the rich man sees there is no way Lazarus can come to help him, he tries something else.  He asks Abraham to send Lazarus back to earth to warn his five wealthy brothers so that they can avoid coming to the place of torment.   “No need for that”  Abraham tells him.  Why don’t they listen to the words of the prophets who teach about God?  The rich man considers this is not enough. If Lazarus goes back they will believe. 

This does not convince Abraham either. They won’t believe even if someone comes back from the dead. 

So what is this story all about?      

Is it a kind of revenge that Lazarus gets to his rich neighbour?     

I think it is much more than that. In this story, Jesus is telling us the reason he has come to this world. He is telling us how God’s standards overturn the standards of the world.  Scripture has prophesied this often. The prophet Isaiah records how God says:  “Your ways are not my ways, neither are your thoughts my thoughts, says the Lord.” Then there is Mary’s prophecy in the song that we know as Magnificat as she prophecies how Jesus will reverse the standards of the words.  “He has put down the mighty from their seat and has exalted the humble and meek.  He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent empty away.”

The story of the rich man and Lazarus is a way in which Jesus tells us how God reverses the standards of the world. 

It is sometimes said that the more wealthy people are the more difficult to convert them to Christ.  It was indeed a criticism of Christianity by the wealthy citizens of the Roman Empire that it is the religion of the weak,  the poor and the slaves and that the wealthy have no need of religion because they have all the want. 

Is this true of our own society?  We are generally a prosperous society.  Does this mean that God is relegated to being either no longer needed,   or just needed occasionally like taking a dusty old reference book off the shelf to look up some information a few times a year?   Wealth can make us independent and allow us to lock ourselves into our castles and not need anyone else.   Poverty can make us realise how dependent we are on others.

Yet when we see it this way all that happens is that the rich-poor gap widens.  The poor become over dependent and there emerges a dependency culture which is degrading to say the least. This is of course just what the story is saying. 

In the world beyond this one the gap has got even wider, but the rich man sees one chance.  “Send Lazarus back to earth.  They will believe if someone rises from the dead.” 

“Will they?” - Jesus rose from the dead.   Does that convince people? 

We can ponder over this for some time but let me summarise what I see in this story.

It teaches us three things: 

• Firstly, that there are opportunities to do something about the rich-poor gap and like the rich man who passed Lazarus every day,  those opportunities are presented to us daily. 

• Secondly, it is not a matter of poor people being dependent on rich people.  In the story the roles are reversed and it becomes the rich man who is dependent on the poor man in the spiritual word. This tells us that life is about being inter-dependent on each other.  

• Thirdly, the story reminds us that we are all dependent on God and calls us to keep in contact with God in daily prayer, to worship him and to live our daily lives in his strength.