The God of Abraham Gives Life to the Dead

Introduction

We’ve all heard jokes that start with something like, “two men died and got to the pearly gates, and St. Peter said to the first one . . .” The point of those jokes is not to tell you exactly what the afterlife will be like: a literal pair of gates with St. Peter sitting at a desk; no, the point is the punch line, some kind of a comment that lands because it says something clever or true about the kinds of people talked about in the joke. That’s more or less what Jesus is doing in this parable today. His main purpose is not to give us an exact description of the afterlife, his purpose is to make a point to his audience in his day. To understand the parable, it’s important to remember who Jesus is talking to. At the end of last week’s reading it said, “The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him.” Jesus is still speaking to this same audience; particular teachers and leaders of Israel who were greedy and who ridiculed him for his unrealistic attitude toward wealth. Jesus’ parable offers two warnings to leaders of Israel such as this, that we also do well to listen to.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Lk 16:14.

First Warning: Selfishness and Self-Indulgence Kills

The first warning comes in comparing the two characters and their fates. The money-loving Pharisees that Jesus is talking to would have to identify with the rich man in the parable. Much like them, he is a wealthy, powerful man with the means to eat lavishly every day. And like the Pharisees, he knows all too well that he is a child of Abraham. Notice that repeatedly, in the story the rich man calls Abraham “father” and Abraham calls him “child.” He knows he is a “true” Israelite.

Lazarus, on the other hand, is a pitiful figure, someone no one would want to identify with. We’re told that Lazarus sits at the rich man’s gate, desiring to be fed with what fell from his table. This ought to remind us of the prodigal son only a chapter earlier, who “desired to be fed” with what the pigs ate. but instead of pigs, Lazarus is surrounded by dogs who lick his sores. The only thing even resembling kindness he receives is from dogs, scavengers of the street become his companions. As an added bonus, “dogs” was also what the Jews in Jesus’ day sometimes called Gentile pagans.

Oh, and that’s not to mention the fact that the persistent sores all over Lazarus’ body probably qualify him as a leper, someone who can’t enter the Temple court or even live among his people.

Everything about Lazarus in the parable seems to give us the impression of someone on the fringes of the family of Israel, a lost son, an outcast, a man who could have received more kindness from pagans or scavengers than from the leaders of his people. In other words, he sounds a lot like the sinners that Jesus got so much grief for feasting with.

But the punch line and the warning comes when we get a glimpse into the eternal fate of these two characters. Remember the point of the scene is not to teach us what the afterlife looks like; if that were the case, it would just be a description, not a parable. The point is to give us God’s perspective, his judgment on the people of Jesus’ day represented by the two characters: Lazarus, the social pariah and outcast who barely counts as a member of Abraham’s family, is the one who finds himself welcomed by Father Abraham. After all, the name Lazarus is a form of the name “Eleazar,” which roughly means, “God helps.” Meanwhile the rich man, the wealthy son of Abraham, is punished in Hades, the land of the dead. The rich man’s plea for Lazarus to come and serve him brings no help: He refused to help Lazarus in life, Lazarus can give him no help in death. The rich man chose to serve only himself, rather than serving God by showing mercy and justice to those in need. His greed and gluttony turned his wealth into an idol, a false god that could give no life. Lazarus receives help from God, the rich man gets no help from his riches.

The rich Pharisees listening to Jesus must have taken the point: God chose Abraham and his family Israel to be a blessing to the nations, to the whole world, but you leaders of Israel have become so self-indulgent, so self-important, that you aren’t even taking care of your brothers that God has placed at your doorstep. You’re as good as dead already. But God has not forgotten the outcasts. God helps those who have no human helper. Jesus is welcoming them into the family of Abraham. If you don’t repent of your selfishness, you will find that they are included in the family of God, while you miss out.

The warning to the leaders of Israel rings true for us Christians today: Greed, love of money, and self-indulgence are deadly to the soul if we aren’t careful, and they are all too common in modern Western society. You could even say that, relatively speaking, everyone here feasts sumptuously everyday compared to most of humanity for most of history. Even the poor among us are relatively well off. If you make even a modest salary, chances are you’re probably more wealthy than about 90% of the world’s population. God has blessed us richly, but that also means that those blessings can become an idol that cuts us off from God, the source of true life.

St. Paul hammers this teaching home in our Epistle reading. The love of money, the desire to be rich leads people away from the faith, pierces them with the pains of death, and can sprout and grow into all manner of evil. Only God gives life, Paul says; He alone has immortality, He is the one who provides us with everything to enjoy. But He does not give us those gifts purely for our own enjoyment. Just like the rich man in the parable, God has placed people at our gate. Just like Lazarus, God is their helper, but he wants to help them through us. God wants us to be a conduit of his gifts to others. If you try to keep God’s life, his gifts, for yourself alone, you end up cutting yourself off. Like a vein that stops up the flow of lifeblood and doesn’t let it flow to the limbs, you only end up bringing death on yourself.

So who has God placed at your gate? Maybe it’s a family in need that you are able to help. Maybe it’s a relative who always seems to be down on their luck. It doesn’t just have to be about material possessions either, it could just be someone who is lonely, who needs a friend. No matter who or what it is, God wants us to turn out from our selfishness and let his love and life flow through us to others.

Second Warning: Listen to the Message of the Scriptures

But there is another twist in this little story and it serves as a further warning to Jesus’ hearers. The rich man protests, “please, send Lazarus to my brothers, to the other people like me, if someone rises from the dead, surely they’ll repent.”

“It wasn’t fair, Father Abraham,” you can almost hear him saying, “I didn’t have enough warning, if someone had risen from the dead I would have changed my ways.” But Abraham is having none of it. “You had Moses and the Prophets, the Hebrew Scriptures, and their warnings to repent; that should have been enough.” At this point it would be easy to make this sermon about how you should listen to Scripture, not like those godless heathens who don’t read their Bible, or like those ELCA Lutherans down the street, the liberals who don’t think the Bible is really God’s Word. But that just won’t work in this case. It won’t work because that would be ignoring Jesus’ context. See, Jesus is talking to Pharisees, and Pharisees were far from heathens or “woke liberals,” they were the conservative Bible scholars of their day. Their problem was not that they somehow didn’t know Moses and the Prophets. They knew them backwards and forwards. They had a deeper problem.

Their problem was that in all their reading, they missed that the story was all about what Jesus himself was doing: giving life to the dead, welcoming the outcasts to the family of God, and granting forgiveness to sinners. In other words, they missed that the story of the Bible is all about resurrection. They missed the good news that Jesus proclaimed. The reason the leaders of Israel became self-centered and were failing to be generous and merciful to their brothers was because they had somehow forgotten the character of the God they knew from the Scriptures. The God of Israel is all about bringing life from death and help to those who can’t help themselves. He is abundantly generous with his gift of resurrection life. Abraham himself knew that. Paul says in Romans that Abraham is the father of all believers because he trusted in the God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. That’s why Lazarus, Eleazar, ended up being Abraham’s true son in the story: he trusted in the God who helped him, the God who raises up those who are as good as dead. If you don’t see the resurrection in the Scriptures, then you don’t know the God of Abraham.

Many Christians today read the Bible and consider it to be authoritative for their life. That’s good, hopefully you’re one of them. But far too many Christians see it only as a source of inspiring quotes, a handbook of good old-fashioned values, or “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth.” They make the Bible into something other than what it is: the story of the God who gives life to the dead, and who wants to create a people who reflect his generous life to the world. Jesus embodies that story. He is what the Scriptures point to.

And Jesus was even willing to become in every way like Lazarus in the parable to bring that life and resurrection to us. Jesus became an outcast, despised and rejected by men. He associated with those that others considered “dogs.” He became poor and needy, so that we could share his riches. He suffered loneliness, disease, and painful wounds. And, much like Lazarus, he died outside the gate.

But Jesus even went beyond what Lazarus from the parable could do. Jesus descended into Hades when he died, and destroyed its power, its flames and torments, forever. He won victory over death and Hades on the cross, and lives to offer that victory to you. Jesus did all of this so that no one who trusts in him would ever have to suffer the terrible fate of the rich man.

And though Lazarus did not rise from the dead as a messenger to Israel, Jesus did. Jesus rose to proclaim his victory over death to Israel, to the world, and to you. He proclaims forgiveness for all your sins, including selfishness. That is the message of Moses and the Prophets that we can’t afford to miss: God is so determined to share his life with his people that in Christ, God himself became lower than Lazarus the beggar so that you could be a wealthy child of Abraham, a blessed child of God. Those who trust in the God who helps them will share the resurrection life that Jesus brings.

Conclusion

Whether you feel more like a rich man, or more like Lazarus, Christ offers forgiveness, life, and salvation to you. Because of what he has done, when you get to those “pearly gates,” you won’t have to sit outside like a beggar. Christ, your helper, has made you a member of the family of Abraham. You have something way better in store for you than a cartoon afterlife from a corny joke. On the last day, you, like Jesus, will rise from the dead.

In the Name of Jesus. Amen