Luke 16:19-31

“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’ He said, ‘Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house— for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.’ Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’ He said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

Meditation Text

            What defines a person who is living a life worthy of God’s calling? This kind of question is entrenched in pretty churchy language. We do not understand our daily life in terms of “worthiness” or “calling,” but we cannot escape what these words mean to us. To live “worthily,” into what God would have us do is not to earn our way into Heaven – that would be impossible. Every aspect of our life, nonetheless, has something evaluative behind it. I cannot simply say that I have a job or that I am married, we naturally follow up any category of our life with, “Am I good at my this thing?” Am I good at my job? Am I contributing to a healthy marriage? Beyond the simple categorization of our life into what we are, there is the question of whether or not we are truly living into what that categorization would suggest we believe.

            The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus is one of my favorites in all of the Gospels. In it we see a comically rich man eating at a table covered in every kind of good thing while a poor man sits at his gates every day, sick and tired, and starves. The two men are not described as having lived particularly holy lives, yet when death comes to call the rich man finds himself in a place of torment and Lazarus finds himself comfortably seated with Abraham. The rich man is baffled, but Abraham states the matter plainly. Because the rich man received an abundance of wealth and food and comfort in life, he now faces torment in death. The poor man, however, who knew only pain, now experiences eternal comfort. There is no complex formula here, the rich man’s desire for more and better has left his eternal destiny to be consumed in less and worse.

            As we make our way through life, we need to define how well we are living in terms that are not tied to how much money we are making or how much stuff we have. We can have all the stuff in the world and never be satisfied and after a certain point, money is no longer a means to take care of ourselves but just a way to get more that we do not need. Wealth is a dangerous thing, and possession of it quickly turns to love of it, which we all know is the root of all evil. (1 Timothy 6:10.) We must all be careful that we are not too enraptured by the wealth we have around us, it will ultimately lead us closer to Hell with every penny we acquire. Only generosity can define how much a soul has accepted Christ, because Christ is, at the end of all things, hospitable beyond measure.

            While we live in a country that demands a great deal of money from us in order to have even basic necessities, we cannot deny that simply living above the poverty line in the United States makes us incredibly rich in global terms. It can be difficult, in the midst of paying bills and repaying loans (especially student loans in my case,) to remember the great amount of wealth that regularly passes us by. We know more plenty today than anyone in history has ever known. How do we use it? Do we spend money to get more things? How often do we ever use our money to help people in this world? Especially those who live all around us.

            The fact is that we all love money more than we ought. Returning to our opening question, we are usually more concerned with living a life worthy of money, of Mammon, than we ever are worried about living a life worthy of the Gospel. We collect money to buy more clothes, or electronics, or entertainment. When we come to our final rest, what will our bank account show we loved? God and God’s people, or consumption and leisure? We have to connect our financial habits to our moral disposition, not for any other reason than Jesus clearly does. I do not pretend to be sinless in this matter, but even as I write this out I feel conviction seeping from my wallet. The sting of every dollar meant for the poor I spend on myself, and every check I could write to help the needy I use to feed my own desires.

            Let us all strive to love God and one another more, much more than we love money.