Luke 16.19-31

In the Season of Creation 2022 we listen to the voice of creation. The burning bush (see Exodus 3.1-12) is the symbol for listening to the voice of creation. The unprecedented unnatural fires that effected our region in the northern rivers in 2019 and 2020 are a sign of how climate change effects the most vulnerable. The forests crackle, animals flee, and people lose their homes as creation roars at us from the fires. In contrast the holy fire in Exodus 3 did not consume but affirmed that God hears the cries of those who suffer. The global family is called to heal our relationships with creation and each other. We consider the voice of creation and the voices of those who are silenced, the vulnerable who bear the consequences of our ill-treatment of the environment. The parable in Luke 16.9-13 echoes the call of the season of creation, calling us to heal our relationship with each other and the earth, and to consider the voices of those who are often silenced: the poor, the marginalised and the oppressed.

Background

By way of background, it is helpful to know that Luke 16 is a continuation of Luke 15. Luke 15 and 16 are read together and are Jesus’ reply to the pharisees. The pharisees are irritated that Jesus spends too much time with sinners. In response to the pharisees’ criticism Jesus tells five parables:

1.   the lost sheep,

2.   the lost coin,

3.   the lost sons,

4.   there was a rich man…

5.   there was a rich man…

To my mind the five parables are comparable to the Torah, the first five books of our Old Testament or the Tanach of the Hebrew Scriptures. In the same way that the pharisees conform to the Torah as their standard for morality, so Jesus uses these five parables as his Torah, his gold standard of God’s rather upside morality.

By way of background, it is also helpful to know a little of the historical, socio-economic, and geo-political situation of the first century Palestine in which our parable is written. As you know the Romans colonised the area east of the Mediterranean, a region that includes Samaria, Judea, Galilee, and Nazareth in the north. The northern part, formerly called Israel, already experienced tension with the southern part, formerly called Judah. Jerusalem was in the south. All the wealth was concentrated in the south. The north was populated by farmers who struggled financially. The Romans imposed taxes that disproportionately affected farmers in the north. When the farmers in the north could not pay their taxes, their countrymen in the south, the wealthy Jewish elite, paid the taxes for them. In exchange for paying the taxes, the farmers in the north gave up the title deeds of their farms. These farmers continued to live on the farms that they once owned, but now as tenant farmers who “paid” a percentage of their crop to the wealthy Jewish elite in the south. When the two parables in Luke 16 state “there was once a rich man …” it refers to the wealthy Jewish elite in the south that the pharisees side with. Like the pharisees, the wealthy Jewish elite do not value human beings because they improperly value wealth. Remembering that parables are earthy stories with heavy meanings, designed to help us see systems of oppression, let us meander inside the parable and see what it wants us to notice.

Heavy meanings in an earthy story

As Luke 16 is a parable we do not read it literally but dig deeper for its meaning. In other words, the abode of the dead is not ‘hell’ as we have come to understand it in 21st western Christianity. The imagery is designed to shock us into taking a decision and is not meant to be an explanation of the mechanics of the afterlife. If I had to offer a modern equivalent, the parable in Luke 16.19-31 is rather like the classic “The Christmas Carol” where Scrooge is forced to examine the hold that money has in his life and how he has sacrificed relationships at the altar of money.

As we meander in the parable, alert to any eye-opening encounters, we may notice a reversal where the rich man is nameless, but the poor man is Lazarus, from the Hebrew Eleazar meaning “God helps”. The naming of the poor man dignifies him and graces him with worth as a human being. This is in contrast to the rich man who even in the afterlife continues to see Lazarus as a thing, as a slave who is there to service the rich man’s needs. Notice how the rich man commands Abraham to send Lazarus to bring him some water. Abraham’s reply to the rich man’s dehumanising attitude echoes the songs of the kingdom of God sung throughout Luke. For example, Mary’s Magnificat where the rich are sent away empty and the hungry are filled with good things, and the beatitudes which bless the poor but announce “woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort” (Luke 6.24).

Also notice the chasm that exists between the rich and the poor. The parable invites us to consider the unjust systems humanity has created that widen the gap between the rich and the poor. We know from research that the wider the gap between rich and poor the more unstable and violent a country is. According to the world bank, South Africa is the world’s most unequal society. In Australia the gap between rich and poor is widening as cost-of-living pressures and unequal access to housing effect the most vulnerable.

I noted in the beginning that the five parables are Jesus’ reply to the pharisees who think Jesus spends too much time with sinners. The point Jesus makes in the parables is that the pharisees, like the rich man in the parables, value money too highly and therefore value people improperly. For the rich man and the pharisees alike, the sinners and the poor are “things”, unvalued and not worthy of Jesus attention. The parables offer an alternative economic policy.

An alternative economy

Through the five parables in Luke 15 and 16 we are invited to adopt the Gospel’s economic policy. Instead of putting money at the centre of an economic policy, we are to put love at the centre: love of God and love of neighbour. Instead of using relationships in service of money we are to use money in service of relationships. In this way we are free from money’s hold over us. We are free to see all people as having intrinsic worth, regardless of their place in an economic pyramid. One aspect of our culture is that we look at the oceans, the soil, and the landscape and fail to see that creation shimmers with the divine. Instead, our culture wants to utilise creation as a commodity for short term profits for those at the top of the economic pyramid.

The parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16.1-18), together with the parable of the manager (Luke 16.19-31) invite us to lose faith in our current economic system where the rich get richer and the poor poorer. The parable invites us to open our eyes to see the lies that we are told, the lie of the trickle-down economy where in fact it is the poor who pay for the rich in a trickle up economy. One example of the trickle up economy is research commissioned by Anglicare who were able to show that $68 billion is spent keeping the wealthiest households wealthy. That is greater than the cost of Newstart, disability support, the age pension, or any other single welfare group. The Cost of Privilege report, prepared by Per Capita, shows us the chasm between the rich and poor depicted in this parable, and the how expensive it is to be poor. Read “The cost of privilege” https://percapita.org.au/our_work/the-cost-of-privilege/

The parable invites us to see how eternally death dealing our current system is, to listen to the voice of the vulnerable and creation and adopt the profits another way.