Today’s Gospel story about the rich man and Lazarus sits in a sequence of stories about God’s economy versus the economy of the world. Luke’s Gospel is an economic one, and part of Luke’s overall project was what some Biblical scholars call the “Great Reversal.” The wealthy and powerful are brought low; the poor are exalted. The hungry are satisfied; the rich are sent away empty-handed. This thesis of Luke’s Gospel is woven like a thread through Mary’s Magnificat, the Beatitudes, the Prodigal Son, and many other stories, including this one today. Surrounding this story, we have others about money, management, resource distribution, and hospitality. All of them touch on these economic reversal themes in one way or another, culminating in the story of the rich young ruler who is told “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
It is no coincidence that, after a series of stories about these reversals, the very next thing that happens in Luke’s Gospel is that Jesus is killed by the folks whose economic interests he threatened. That’s downward motion. The powerful engaged in humiliation of the lowly. But then, as Luke has done throughout the whole Gospel, he reverses the action and just when we expect death and destruction, we instead see the upward motion of Jesus’s resurrection and ascension. Luke’s Gospel is about this sweep of hope for the humiliated and justice for the jerks.
We could leave it at that. The rich man is in a hell of his own making, facing the consequences of a series of bad choices. That he gets what he deserves.
It feels like some kind of justice – perhaps especially now, in a divided country and a divided church and among divided families, in a world divided by industrialized nations and destitute ones, between the enormous over-development of the haves and the impact of that development on the have-nots, in these weeks where our unkindness to each other erupts into violence physical and verbal – it feels some kind of justice to read a story where everyone in the end gets what they deserve.
But this is not how Luke’s Gospel moves. The Good News is in the Great Reversal.
And, my friends, we are in need of a reversal.
In a time of separation, we need moments of coming together around common tables.
In a world made of our injustice, we need a future of God’s justice.
In a place plagued by division, we need a movement of multiplication.
See, for me, it is not merely that these stories in Luke like that of the rich man show a great reversal, but that Jesus shows us again and again in the Gospel how we can participate in that great reversal now. And in each one of them, the people doing the work of God are the ones who are engaged in addition and multiplication. Wealth divides. Influence divides. Self-righteousness divides. And that can be the story if we let it.
Think about these stories in Luke. The prodigal son has wealth that isolates him. The unjust judge has influence that isolates him. The Pharisee thinks he’s better than the tax collector. Downward motion.
But God’s gratuitous love also shows up in these stories and others. Where the lost sheep is rejoined to the flock – no matter how lost. No matter how off its rocker. No matter its political persuasion or what news network it watches. No matter how black the black sheep. Or how white. Where the lost coin is recovered no matter how insignificant. Where the banquet table is expanded. Where the love of God reaches this wide.
Even across the chasm that has some of us in hell and some of us in heaven. Even to men who we think need to get what they deserve.
In our Gospel today, we see hell is what happens when there are no other people — none to help us but also none who we can help.
And one good reversal is to offer the cool water to those in the outer darkness.
We have a chance to join God’s work of the great reversal today. To do that, my sense is that we need to be seeking community. Forging it. Insisting on it. Attaching ourselves to others. Sewing ourselves in. Integrating. Grafting. Joining in and joining up. Making things complicated and messy and interdependent and frustrating and joyous. All at once. All together now.
How do we do that? You’re here. That’s a start. And we’re about to gather at the table.
And in a few moments will together participate in one of the church’s great reversals – where regular bits of creation – the stuff of earth and other people, bread, wine, bodies – are elevated. Where little things become great things. Those things are, in part, meant to cue us to the reversals vital to our own lives. They are meant to bring us together when that is not at all what we deserve.
So I’m going to ask you this day – maybe different from other recent times you’ve come to the table – to look each other in the eye on your way here and back. And to begin the work of reversal that, in time, will sew us closely together again.
And that impulse that you feel can and should extend to all our lives and work in community. Seek ways to stitch yourself into this church community, the wider church, and our human family. To see that, in our Gospel, heaven is (with) other people.
Step right up.
Note: The text and audio above is from a sermon delivered at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Fayetteville, North Carolina, based on readings for Proper 21, Year C.
