Homily 614 – 17 APE
Holy Transfiguration, Ames, Iowa
October 20, 2024
Epistle:  (182-ctr) 2 Corinthians 6:16-7:1
Gospel:  (83) Luke 16:19-31

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God.

When we hear the story of Lazarus and the Rich Man, we need to take care that we identify with the right characters in the story.

It’s tempting to take on the Lazarus character.  Woe is us, right?  That’s our lives, being denied everything we want, everybody else getting their way, we being left behind, treated so very badly.  We might even shake a fist at God and shout that God isn’t fair!

This is, of course, pretty silly when we think about it.  We here aren’t beggars, we aren’t afflicted with sores – which was more than just illness, by the way.  Having open sores made one unclean, almost like having leprosy.

Being unclean meant you can’t go to the Temple.  Being unclean meant that no one could make physical contact with you, or they would also be unclean.  Having open sores meant you could never try to be made clean, either, since the sores wouldn’t heal.  Lazarus was in a bad way.

The rich man, on the other hand, was absolutely living his best life.  Expensive clothes.  Big, gated house.  Gourmet meals, and lots of them, every day.

Probably a celebrity of some sort – maybe a wealthy businessman.

Blessed Theophylact in his commentary on this story points out that we know the name of Lazarus, but not of the rich man.  He believes this to be important – because the names of the righteous are known to God, written in the Book of Life.  Those without a name are not in God’s eternal memory.

He also deems it important that Lazarus is found in the Bosom of Abraham.  He thinks this is important because Abraham famously was hospitable to strangers.  We have the icons of the visitation of Abraham by three angels, understood to be the Trinity.

Finally, he comments that Lazarus, when he died, has his soul taken by angels.  He presumably had no one to bury him.  Perhaps there was a person who did good, and buried him.  We just don’t know.  But we know Lazarus to be a righteous man, since none of the unrighteous find angels to accompany their souls after they die.

The rich man, we are told, was buried.  I don’t know this, but I speculate his funeral and burial was perhaps as ornate and luxurious as the life he led.  His soul, however, ended up in a very different place.  A place of torment.

It’s less appealing certainly to identify with the rich man, particularly since none of us is likely to consider ourselves as wealthy or extravagant as the rich man was.

What we have to realize is that we are significantly closer to the rich man than to Lazarus.  And that comes with implications.

Lazarus ends up in what is called Abraham’s bosom.  But another meaning for the greek word kolpos, in addition to bosom, is harbor or bay.  A place of safety, a place of refuge.  A place of comfort.

When we look at the rich man, we find after his death, he ends up in torment, separated from the bosom of Abraham.  We can say that this is hades.  There is a root word from which we derive the word hades.  That word is ay-ee-dees.  It means invisible.  To be in hades is to be invisible.  If you’ve ever wondered why we sing “Memory eternal” to the departed – if we are in God’s thoughts, we are not invisible.

Between the two, a place of comfort and a place of invisibility, there is a huge chasm.  Which makes sense – comfort and torment cannot co-exist.  Kinda like light and darkness cannot co-exist.  Or life and death cannot co-exist.

You all know me – so the central question is what do we do with this information?  How should this change the way we live?

Maybe first, we need to notice the people around us, and their needs.  We aren’t told if the rich man ever noticed Lazarus at his gate.  Perhaps not.  Certainly in our day, some places we live are designed to hide people from us.

I had to go to Broadlawns Hospital in Des Moines the other day, and there was a man literally sleeping on the sidewalk.  In a sleeping bag, with a shopping cart full of his belongings.  It would be easy to write off that as part of the quote “big city”.  But those people exist in Ames too.

They are all around us – but we don’t see them.  We overlook them.

I don’t want to be too hard on us.  They are hidden not by us, but by the powers in our city that want them to be hidden.  They live in the trees by Ioway Creek as it flows through town, and under the bridges that cross the Creek.  They live in the ditches that surround the fields.

I’m not suggesting we should go and find them, either – that is too dangerous.  The young golfer from Iowa State who was murdered on the golf course ran into them accidentally.  We should recognize and remember they are there.

Not only are they there, they are human beings, made in the image and likeness of God.  And they have needs.  And our neighbors have needs, although they may be hidden inside their own walls and behind their own doors.  And our families have needs, even if they are hiding it behind the persona they create to hide their needs from us.

We who follow Christ need to be active in developing our relationships with those around us.  With families and neighbors, make sure we have the kind of relationship, based in love and compassion, that makes them comfortable to share with us.

If we don’t have those needs around us, then find the people who do help the hidden ones, and ask them the help they need.  Homeless shelters.  Abused spouse shelters.  Places for those who have run away from the world, and from their homes.

As Christ said, when you do it for them, you do it for Me.  And Christ will never forget.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.  Glory to Jesus Christ.