Chapter
4
by Fr. Thomas Keating
The Parable of Lazarus and The Rich Man
"There was a rich man who
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
angles 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.'" (Luke 16:19-26)
In this parable, the
sudden reversal of roles and expectations so characteristic of Jesus' teaching
is once again manifested. Two extreme situations are juxtaposed. A rich man
dressed in purple, symbol of the upper classes and power, feasted not just well,
but sumptuously--and not just on feast days, but every day. At the gate to
his estate lay Lazarus the beggar. In the popular mindset of the time beggars
were considered responsible for their miserable plight. Poverty was looked upon
as a punishment for sin and for that reason, the hearer would be thinking,
"It's his own fault."
Lazarus dies and is
carried by angels to Abraham's bosom, symbol of the fulfillment of all the
promises made by God to Israel. The rich man also dies and is buried in Hades.
In Jewish religious literature, prior to this time, there is no mention of a
chasm between the just and the unjust that extends beyond the grave. This is a
new note that the parable here introduces. Abraham responds to the rich man's
plea by pointing out that he had enjoyed every good thing during his earthly
life and now is in torment, while the poor man had experienced just the
opposite.
The kingdom of God
in Jesus' preaching presupposes solidarity with the community and its needs. In
this light we begin to see what was wrong with this rich man's behavior. No
particular misdeeds of his are listed. The parable indicates that it was not his
wealth that was the cause of his undoing but his use of it. He failed to share
with the community the abundance that God had given him. Such is the true
purpose of the blessings of wealth. Thus this parable inveighs against the sin
of indifference that fails to share one's abundance with those in need. It does
so by juxtaposing the rich man's private enjoyment of his great abundance with
the extreme want of the beggar for whom no practical concern was offered.
The sin of the rich
man could not have been his wealth as such, since Abraham too was a rich man and
found favor with God as the book of Genesis attests. The rich man's fate
suggests that his sin was his failure to pass through the gate of his estate and
to respond to the desperate need of the beggar. The parable attacks the
complacency of our divisions between rich and poor, the socially acceptable and
the socially outcast. The gate symbolizes the grace that enables us to love our
neighbor--everyone--as ourselves. The rich man stayed in his enclosure. His
failure to go through the gate and to enter into solidarity with the one in need
was the particular cause of his undoing.
Gates can be
barriers or passageways into solidarity with others. In whatever way the rich
man obtained his goods, whether through junk bonds or other means of getting
rich quick, he failed to pass through the gate of his private interests and
concerns to identify with someone whose situation was desperate and whom he
could easily have helped. In the next life things will be reversed. If the rich
man had gone through the gate to reach out to the beggar and had not simply used
it as a barrier to protect himself and his property, his fate would have been
quite different. God does not set up barrier. We do. Our relationship to our
local community and to the human family as a whole determines whether we are in
the kingdom or out of it, both now and in the next life.
To understand this
teaching more clearly, let us look at a modern parable that seems to me to
express in contemporary terms the main point of this parable. The classic movie,
Casablanca, emphasizes what is meant by the word "solidarity"
in this context. In the movie Rick, played by Humphrey Bogart, has a poignant
romance with Ilsa, played by Ingrid Bergman, just before the German occupation
of Paris in World War II. They
agree to leave Paris on the last train. When she does not show up, his heart is
broken. He has to leave to escape the Gestapo and winds up in Casablanca running
a night club. Ilsa turns up one night at the night club with her husband who
turns out to be the prime force in the underground of the French Resistance.
Rick is completely undone by her reappearance in his life. After much
misunderstanding she finally gets a chance to explain what happened. When they
had met in Paris, she had believed that her husband had been killed. When he
turned up unexpectedly, on the very day she and Rick were to leave Paris, she
had decided that her husband who was sick and in hiding needed her and that her
first duty was to him. Hence her decision not to meet Rick at the train. But now
she confesses, "I loved you then and I still love you!" And a little
later, "I ran away from you once. I cannot do it again."
The hero of the
French Resistance is being traced down by the Gestapo. Rick has possession of
two visas. Ilsa finds herself in a double bind: to stay with Rick or to escape
with her husband. She tells Rick, "You must decide for both of us." As
the plot unfolds, he makes the painful decision to put her and her husband on
the plane while he stays behind.
In making this
choice, Rick does precisely what the rich man in the parable failed to do. He
passes through the gate of his own little world into solidarity with the whole
human family. He puts the desperate world situation of his time above his own
happiness. He saw that the leader of the French Resistance, Ilsa's husband, was
contributing to the undermining of Hitler's tyranny and that this heroic man
needed the support of his wife in order to fulfill his role. He could have had
Ilsa for himself, but he chose to let go of his private world with its alluring
promise of personal happiness for the greater good of the whole human family.
This is actually what God the Father has done according to the Christian faith,
in sending his only begotten Son into the world to be crucified for our
salvation. It is this insight into the heart of God and its manifestation in
human affairs that make this film so extraordinary.
As we saw in the
parable of the prodigal son, the father throws away his honor and personal
interests in order to enter into solidarity with his disobedient sons. The
kingdom of God is for everyone who understands that solidarity with the human
family, made concrete in our local community, is the name of the game. Truly
marvelous is the gate that enables us to enter into communion with one another.
In that communion the kingdom of God achieves its highest activity. We are
empowered to be and to act like God. On the other hand, if we use the gate to
protect ourselves from those in need, the gate becomes a barrier that may
continue into the next life.
Both parables speak
of human love that imitates divine love by joining the human family in its
desperate needs. If we are rich, our wealth is for the community, not for us.
And if we love, our love must take into account an ever-increasing
identification with everyone in the human family.
The nature of the
kingdom of God is that is has to be shared. Hence in the Christian perspective,
community is the supreme value. To relate to the whole human family as God's
family is the basic thrust of the gospel. That is why the refusal to be
reconciled is such a serious matter and why, when Peter asked, "How many
times must I forgive?" Jesus replied with a symbolic number meaning
"without end." That is the proper way to love our neighbor as
ourselves.
To be in the kingdom
is to participate in God's solidarity with the poor by sharing with them the
good things that have been given to us. In the New Testament the great sin is to
be deaf to the cry of the poor whether that cry springs from emotional,
material, or spiritual need. Although we cannot help but partake in some degree
in social injustice because we live in this world, we must constantly reach out
in concrete and practical ways to those in need. Divine love is not a feeling,
but a choice. It is to show mercy. The rich man, although he saw the beggar
starving at his doorstep and could easily have reached out to him, just went on
eating, drinking, and reading his Wall Street Journal.
More information can be obtained by reading the book The
Kingdom of God is Like . . .by Fr. Thomas Keating. It is offered in our Book
Store.
