Lazarus and the Rich Man
Luke 16:19-31
The story of Lazarus and the rich man is typically offered as proof of the torments of hell. The passage is treated as a historical account rather than a parable primarily because Lazarus is named. However, this approach to the story ignores its context in the book of Luke.
A large portion of Luke's gospel focuses on poverty and privilege, the abuse of the masses within the class-conscious culture of the time. The book begins with the pregnancies of Elizabeth and Mary, both ordinary women. The Christ child's birth isn't viewed by the rich and famous but by poor shepherds. Jesus selects disciples from commoners. The devil's temptations of Christ are all aimed at Christ exercising his rightful status and privilege, which Christ refuses to do. Christ's healing ministry focuses on those who belong to the lower strata of society, and his miracles provide them food and healing. In his encounters with people of privilege and in his various parables, he emphasizes the need to love others and to care for those who are less fortunate or less able to care for themselves, like the destitute, the sick, and children.
In the middle of these experiences with and discourses about the poor and the privileged, Luke presents the story of Lazarus.
An immediate contrast is made between the rich man, who is identified only by his wealth and privilege (Luke 16:19) and the beggar Lazarus, who begs for crumbs from the rich man's table. Worse, Lazarus receives no care for his illness, but suffers the humiliation of having stray scavenging dogs licking his sores (Luke 16:20-21).
In death, however, Lazarus is lifted to a place of privilege, dining as the guest of honor with Abraham while the rich man suffers torments (Luke 16:22-24). This reversal of fortune suggests the significance of Lazarus being named in the story. The disease ridden beggar is now the privileged one while the rich man is known only for his abuse of his privilege while alive.
Seeing Lazarus with Abraham, the rich man begs that Lazarus come help relieve his thirst (Luke 16:24). Once again, the rich man acts out of a sense of privilege, seeing Lazarus as nothing more than someone who can be ordered about. But Abraham reminds the rich man of his past life of privilege and Lazarus's past life of suffering, reminding him of his failures to love his neighbor Lazarus, whose pains and hunger he might have helped assuage.
Abraham also tells the rich man that "there is a great gulf fixed" between them (Luke 16:26), a further indication of the reversal of fortune between the two. The rich man who once lived a life of privilege, separating himself from the poor and the destitute, now finds himself separate and destitute.
Once again, the rich man pleads that Lazarus, whom he still sees as less privileged despite Lazarus's place of honor with Abraham, as someone to be sent to warn his brothers. And now comes the moral of the story: Like the rich man, his brothers had the words of Moses and the prophets (Luke 16:29-31), a reflection back to Luke 10:27, where the lawyer correctly summarized the law as "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself." This rich man had failed to live up to the spirit of the law and the prophets, and with his life of privilege, he had ignored his neighbor's needs. As Asaph realized in Psalm 73 and David in Psalm 49, those who glory in wealth have their reward.
The focus of this story is not the torments of the rich man but rather his failure to meet the responsibility of those with power and privilege to care for those less fortunate, to love their neighbor as themselves, to see the poor and destitute as individuals deserving of love.