again i've lost my strength completely
If you’re anything like me, or anyone else with a pulse for that matter, your first reaction to this parable is to wonder how you can try and avoid the rich man’s fate. The irony, though, is that in attempting to avoid his fate, you effectively consign YOURSELF to it!
Despite your best attempts, OR perhaps because of them, your reaction to this parable is very likely to land you in the company of the rich man himself!
…The rich man’s entire life is a testimony to the art of life WELL-lived. Every move he makes, from his residence, to his attire, down to even his fare, are all finely curated affects of his exquisite life.
Lazarus, on the other hand, couldn’t be more different! Everything about his meager life screams, “death." Even before he’s in the grave, the dogs come and feed on his corpse! Lazarus is nothing more than GOOD as dead ALL his life.
Eventually, though, Lazarus and the rich man come to have something in common; they both die.
The rich man has a stately funeral, no doubt. And you can go ahead and assume the attendance was a regular who’s-who. Nonetheless, none of that was enough to keep the rich man from dying.
Not that, that stops the rich man from trying, though! Down there in Hades, the rich man is wheeling-and-dealing! Dead though he may be, he’s still trying to order Lazarus around and pull favors for his family!
It’s absurd! And rightly, Father Abraham will have none of it. He flatly tells the rich man he’s landed on the other side of the one chasm none of his efforts can get him to the good side of.
When Lazarus’ time comes, on the other hand, he just goes ahead and does what he had been doing all his life; nothing! Lazarus dies! So passive is Lazarus that he isn’t even given a proper funeral. Nonetheless, the angels themselves come and carry Lazarus’ corpse away to a place of honor at the great, eternal banquet of the God of Abraham!
This parable reveals that when it comes to Death there’s only one rational response; to die! The thing, though, is that like the rich man, we try and do anything but! When Death lands on our doorstep, we try and avoid it, fix it, or delay it. Anything but be laid low by it!
Of everything we'll do when confronted with Death, the one thing we won’t do is the only thing Lazarus does do; die! In that very act, though, doing nothing more than nothing at all, Lazarus is carried away to Abraham’s bosom while the rich man is stuck in Hades trying to negotiate his way to a better life!
The counter-intuitive wisdom of this parable is the counter-intuitive spirituality of the cross; that of all the things Jesus can work with, Death is his specialty! True spirituality is life lived in real life: death and all.
Lazarus is Jesus’ cup of tea because Lazarus actually goes ahead and does the one thing Jesus has come to do something about, he dies! And in that death, Jesus has everything he needs for his opulent spread of resurrection; nothing but a corpse!
…In trying to avoid the rich man’s fate, we condemn ourselves to it. All our harried attempts to save ourselves by ourselves only keep us running from the one who has promised to save us by himself by his death! It’s about as foolish as that rich man trying to cut a deal in Hades. And it’s twice as torturous, too. Isn’t it?
Which, if you’re anything like me, or anyone else with a pulse for that matter, this is probably where you’re stuck this week. That torturous place of staring down that one fact of your existence you can’t bring yourself to accept, your death.
Now you could, like the rich man, try and argue your way out of it. But it’s not going to do you any good. Your best bet is just to confess that, like Lazarus, you’re as good as dead, even in your life. That one way or another, your life is tilting toward the grave, AND you can’t bring yourself to accept it. In other words, that you’re helpless.
Hidden in that confession, though, is nothing less than the upside-down power of the one who is ‘our help in ages past,’ Jesus Christ himself! Once you give up on all those schemes of trying and save your own life, you’ll be ready to receive the eternal one Jesus has won FOR you from the jaws of death!
…Holy week is hurtling toward us, and if the days ahead mean anything at all, it’s the humbling realization that you can’t pole-vault Good Friday. And, that Good Friday is a confession of faith. Because when you’re in the shadow of that cross, nothing seems good about it.
But when you can’t fight anymore, the goodness of Good Friday will DAWN on you! When you’re as good as dead to all your attempts to save yourself, Good Friday will gleam with the goodness of the one who rises from, not more life, but the dead! The one who rises from the dead, to give his life eternal only to those who are as good as dead! Or even just actually dead.
Yes, that’s a tough spot to be, but if Jesus parable means what it intimates, and it does, then it turns out, there’s a tougher place to be yet…
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