HAD DECIDED to go only with the Gospel from today's Catholic lectionary, but . . . you'll see.
Luke 16:19-31
Jesus said to the Pharisees:
“There was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and fine linen and dined sumptuously each day.
And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps
that fell from the rich man’s table.
Dogs even used to come and lick his sores.
When the poor man died, he was carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham.
The rich man also died and was buried,and from the netherworld, where he was in torment, he raised his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side.
And he cried out, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me.
Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am suffering torment in these flames.’
Abraham replied, ‘My child, remember that you received what was good during your lifetime while Lazarus likewise received what was bad; but now he is comforted here, whereas you are tormented.
Moreover, between us and you a great chasm is established
to prevent anyone from crossing who might wish to go from our side to yours or from your side to ours.’
He said, ‘Then I beg you, father, send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them,
lest they too come to this place of torment.’
But Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets.
Let them listen to them.’
He said, ‘Oh no, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’
Then Abraham said, ‘If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.’”
Certainly this is one of the most popular of the many parables of Jesus and it is one of the clearest in its meaning. There are so many points of interest in it, first is that it confirms that Jesus believed there was an afterlife for human beings, both the good and the bad and that there were consequences for the way we live in the afterlife. The problem for the theory that there is extermination of the soul at death, either that of those who fell short or of everyone is another one that is included as is, in fact, the belief I hold to of eventual universal salvation of all flesh. He doesn't talk about the rich man, condemned to the flames for the sin of injustice to the poor man who seems to have been saved from the very injustice done to him. I have to depend on other statements and texts to find that hope.
It's certainly not something that would have been lost to the early Christians who kept this alive that Jesus implied in it that he, the someone in "if someone should rise from the dead" wasn't going to fare any better than Moses and the prophets in persuading the rich from their sumptuous injustice. Lazarus isn't raised from the dead in the parable , For those who told this parable in those words Jesus having risen for the dead was a central aspect of their entire thinking.
I was looking around the book Gift and Task to see what Brueggemann may have said about this parable in it and didn't find that. I'm sure it's in there but it's not indexed. Instead, way, way on in Saturday after Proper 27, I found this.
Jesus knew we could not have it both ways, God and capital. His adversaries, the Pharisees, are said in Luke [16:10-17] to be "lovers of money." James in the Epistle reading [James 2:1-13], recognizes that money stratifies society into the rich and the poor, honored and dishonored. We, of course, live in a monetized society in which money defines almost everything; we stratify education, we stratify health-care, we stratify housing and job opportunities. And the higher up we are in social stratification, the less we are able to notice, or want to notice, the process of stratification in which we participate.
In that kind of political economy, James writes of "the royal law": "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." By terming it the "royal law," James suggests it is the law of the new king, the new regime, that is, the kingdom of God. The good news is the overcoming of social stratification for the sake of neighborly solidarity in an economy of justice. It is important to recognize the depth of Jesus' contradiction of conventional monetary arrangements. Terry Eagleton, in noting Jesus' solidarity with "the scum of the earth," observes: "The morality Jesus preaches is reckless, extravagant, improvident, over-the-top, a scandal to actuaries and a stumbling block to real estate agents; forgive your enemies, give away your cloak as well as your coat, turn the other cheek, love those who insult you, walk the extra mile, take no thought for tomorrow."
The contradiction is complete. We, his would-be followers, are left to take up his imperative in concrete, bodily ways.
The passage in Brueggemann's book for today deals with bodily reality as presented in the Protestant lectionary he draws from. But this passage matched Lazarus and the rich man better. I'm glad I found it.
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