Sermon Tone Analysis

Life at the top

A couple of years ago, some Cal-Berkeley professors set up cameras at a busy intersection in their city and took note of the behaviors of drivers based on the kinds of cars they were driving.

You know what they found?

They found that drivers who were driving fancy high end cars were more likely to cut off other drivers at the intersection instead of waiting their turn.

It didn’t matter the gender or day of time or the amount of traffic.

They also found drivers of high end cars were more likely to cut off a pedestrian trying to cross the street, even after making eye contact.

Their studies suggested that those in the upper tax brackets are less likely to feel compassion for or empathize with those on the lower rungs.

Similar studies have shown that many at the top believe greed is good, even when there is negative benefit to those below them in the income tax brackets.

What’s fascinating about those studies is that they tend to reinforce our already pre-conceived ideas about class and the relationship between rich and poor.

We all have preconceived notions.

A lot of it is based on real life.

I remember a few years back, a well-known sports figure was videoed burning a $100 bill at a night club.

You hear stories like this and our sense of morality is offended.

The backlash on social media was to be expected.

But what I found funny is that all the outrage happened because it was videoed.

Whoever took the video knew this would play into our stereotypes.

Class envy is a big piece of the worldview on the one side, and lack of compassion on the other and everybody, regardless of class embraces greed in some form or another.

In fact, just by reading the story we just read, every single one of us has a reaction based on where we are in life.

Every single one of us hears that story and before we even close our Bibles we’ve begun to form an opinion about that story and just how we are going to fit that story into our own views on politics and economics.

Jesus is pushing buttons.

Jesus is pushing our buttons with a story about an insensitive rich guy and a poor guy at the other end of the economic scale.

And before we get to what Jesus wants his audience to hear and understand let’s just get this out of the way, right up front.

There is something to be said for what this story is saying about the way those who have means are to be treating those who don’t.

There is no universe in which we can read or hear this story and think, this guy gets a pass for the way he is treating Lazarus in the story.

Jesus is attacking, among other things, the health, wealth and prosperity notion that wealth equals blessing and God’s favor.

Sickness and poverty equals cursing.

Those are myths.

Busting those myths is part of what Jesus is doing.

But having said that, we must come to this story and hear this story on Jesus’ terms.

We must allow our buttons to be pushed.

We’ll start with...

What this story is not

There are a lot of fascinating takes on this entire story.

There are a couple of popular takes on this story that we’re going to say right up front because this story can be totally taken out of context, misunderstood, and misapplied.

First,

This story is not a systematic theology of heaven and hell

It’s popular in Christian circles, when we start describing what heaven or hell are like, this is one of the passages we will come to.

But we must say this up front: We don’t get our doctrine of heaven or hell from this story, other than heaven is good and hell is bad.

This story is made up.

It’s not a true story.

This is what we call a parable.

Jesus invents a story based on real life stuff that is relevant to his audience’s lives, in order to teach his audience a larger point.

That’s going on here.

There wasn’t a rich man who had a poor man named Lazarus showing up outside his house hoping for some crumbs.

But you can bet that everybody knew of similar instances in their culture.

Jesus makes up a story to illustrate a point.

And the made up story includes the things being said about heaven and hell.

This story is not teaching us that when we go to heaven we are carried by angels.

It’s also not teaching us about a chasm between heaven and hell over which people can have conversations.

It’s not teaching us that hell has flames, though that mention here fits with other things that Jesus has said about hell.

All of this is made up.

It’s a fictitious story meant to illustrate a point.

If I say, a man died and he showed up at the pearly gates and Peter is there at the guard house checking people in, am I suggesting that Peter and the pearly gates and the idea that Peter patrols the entrance, that all of that is real?

No. There’s none of that in the Bible.

We use that imagery, typically in jokes, to make a larger point.

Same thing is happening here.

I raise this issue because there’s a lot of bad heaven theology and hell theology out there and this story has contributed to it.

This story is not a morality tale about rich people treating poor people badly

This is not a plea from Jesus for rich people to start paying attention to poor people.

Wealth redistribution.

The story is about a rich man treating a poor man badly.

But that’s not the point of the story.

We’ll get to that in a second.

This is a big, big deal because we have many popular morality tales like this in our own culture.

The Cinderella story is along these lines.

A poor outcast being treated badly by the rich.

In a few months, we’ll entertain ourselves with what may be the most popular of these morality tales in the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a filthy rich miser who sees the errors of his ways, and becomes a benevolent philanthropist for those in economic need.

It’s very easy to read Jesus’ story through the lens of our own morality tales of greed and need.

And when we do that, we will completely miss Jesus’ point.

This story is not about rich people going to hell and poor people going to heaven

It’s also not about miserly people going to hell… or getting their just deserts.

After all, in this conversation, Abraham is in heaven, and Abraham was the Elon Musk of his day.

Absolutely, filthy rich.

None like him in his world.

Nowhere in this text are we told that the rich man went to hell because of the way he treated Lazarus.

It’s not in this text.

you can’t find it because that’s not Jesus’ point.

We’re also not told that Lazarus went to heaven because he was poor and suffered at the hands of the rich man.

Again, these are popular ways to read this story and all of it is being filtered through a lens based on morality and behavior.

What then, is this story about?

Jesus tells us this gripping story with all sorts of emotional baggage.

He is pulling us in precisely because we all have a stake in this.

We all have opinions about this.

He knows the religious leaders are going to be offended because it’s about them.

And the outcasts are going to be outraged, because they know this scenario all too well.

Jesus has us all hanging on the edge of our seats, but this story ends in a way that is jolting for all of us.

What is this story about?

Would you believe it if I told you that this story is ultimately about Jesus?

Go figure.

What this story is

This story is about Jesus

When it’s all said and done, the story isn’t about being nicer to the outcasts… it’s about Jesus.

He’s using a story about the rich and the outcasts to bring the spotlight back to himself.

The love of money

He does this by talking about the love of money.

Earlier in this conversation, Jesus has already confronted the religious leaders about their love for money.

Dr. Luke who is writing this tells us, the Pharisees were lovers of money.

And they have been scoffing Jesus.

Jesus is now telling a story in which we find a man who very obviously loves his money.

And Jesus is going to frame it in a not so nice way.