Justice ParablesSample

The Rich Man and Lazarus

The Rev. Bo Ubbens

Messiah Anglican Church

Understanding this parable starts with understanding what Jesus has come to accomplish. Jesus is here to upend a world in rebellion against God. We see the effects of that rebellion throughout our lives: oppression and bigotry, greed and poverty, war and slavery. Jesus has not come only to open heaven for us, but to change everything about this world and what it values: to replace oppression with justice, hatred with love, greed with generosity, broken hearts with restoration, distance from God with salvation.

Salvation applies to the whole person, the whole world. Luke explains this earlier when Jesus reads a promise of restored justice and life from the scroll of Isaiah and says that this Scripture is fulfilled as he reads it (Luke 4:16–21). The mission of Jesus is further explained in the Beatitudes, where Jesus upends what we know of the world’s society, economy, and more (Luke 6:20–26).

Jesus presents in this parable a picture of two people positioned far apart in the world. To call the rich man wealthy and Lazarus poor is an understatement. The rich man is at the height of the elite—what we call the top one percent, living in a gated compound. Each day he wears incredibly expensive clothes: purple dye was reserved for lords and fine linen is a reference to brilliantly white fabric made by the laborious “fulling” of cotton with clay. Both worn together is a sign of opulence. He eats sumptuously, his meals comparable to the special feast that welcomes the prodigal son (Luke 15:23). In that culture, a wealthy person might provide a feast like this for a hundred of his closest friends once in a while. Our rich man eats like this daily.

Outside his gate, homeless Lazarus lives in abject poverty. Our only description of his clothing is skin sores, most likely because he has no access to shelter and cannot practice good hygiene. Lazarus longs to feast on even the crumbs from the rich man’s table. To add insult to injury, his “companions” are the unclean dogs that lick his sores, a marker of his culture’s contempt for his situation.

A final clue marks the extreme disparity of their positions. Jews valued burying and so honoring the dead. In Jewish culture, to be left exposed as carrion was a curse from God (see Jeremiah 8:1–2). Lazarus isn’t buried, but the rich man is.

Lazarus, uncared for in life and death, is now in the care of angels, who bear him to Abraham’s side. The man whose only companions were contemptible dogs is taken to sit close beside the honored father of the nation of Israel. Literally in Greek, he is taken to Abraham’s bosom. This is likely a reference to the heavenly banquet (Luke 13:29), a dramatic reversal for one who had no food to satisfy him in life.

The rich man is taken to Hades, where he is tormented. But he has not learned humility from this great reversal. He sees Abraham and Lazarus together. He calls on Abraham to send Lazarus to quench his fiery thirst with a single drop of water from his hand. This sounds pitiful at first, but it is deeply prideful. First, he doesn’t address Lazarus directly but expects someone else to order him, and Lazarus to obey as if their earthly stations of boss and beggar continued into the afterlife. Second, in calling Abraham “Father,” he counts himself as still among God’s people. Finally, he mentions Lazarus by name, which reminds us that he knows him. He knew Lazarus, and his plight, just outside his gate, and he did nothing to aid him. Yet here he is, demanding aid from Lazarus.

Jesus is here to restore what is wrong with this world. Lazarus, ignored by this world’s elite, completely lacking everything necessary to live, is now satisfied beyond imagination. The rich man, who had all the world’s resources yet no regard for the brother outside his gate, is in torment. He has what he chose. And now the gulf between them is too great to cross.

If he had listened to Moses and the prophets, he would have known that we have a mandate to care for our fellows, for the poor, the oppressed, the widow and orphan, the strangers and foreigners in our land. He would have known Abraham himself as one who welcomed the stranger (Genesis 18). He would have known of God’s great care and concern for the poor. He could have chosen differently.

Jesus has come to restore the world according to God’s justice and mercy. The first step was to cross that great gulf himself to rescue us from sin. Then he teaches us what God’s justice looks like and shows us the way to enact that justice on earth as it is in heaven. Let us live into that justice, trusting the Father’s mercy and guidance.