Jesus was masterful at using stories to challenge the power and status of the
religious elite in his day.  With just a few short lines of dialogue (“Blessed are the poor”) or common agrarian images (like a mustard seed), he narrates what it means to live in the kingdom of God.  Our passage today, “The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus,” is part of a longer discourse that Jesus gives in response to being “ridiculed” by a particular group of Pharisees, whom Luke says were “lovers of money” (16:14).  
 
Jesus has much to say about money in the gospel of Luke.  The gospel opens with Mary’s Magnificat, a prayer that celebrates the God of Israel who fills “the hungry with good things” and who sends “the rich away empty” (1:53).  Jesus’
“Sermon on the Plain” (a similar passage to Matthew’s “Sermon on the Mount”) offers blessings upon the poor and woes upon the rich (see 6:24).  Luke 12 features a parable about a rich fool, who stored up treasure for himself but was “not rich towards God” (12:21).  In Luke 14, Jesus received hospitality from a leader of the Pharisees and says to everyone gathered, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid.  But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.  And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous” (14:12-14).  The “rich young ruler,” Zacchaeus, and the poor widow at the temple are all important figures in Luke.  And just before Jesus juxtaposes the rich man’s wasteful decadence and Lazarus’ devastating poverty, he tells the crowd, “No slave can serve two masters… You cannot serve both God and wealth” (16:13).
 
Our passage may be divided into two complementary parts.  The first section (16:19-26) tells the story of the anonymous rich man and Lazarus (one of the only named characters in all of Jesus’ parables), emphasizing the way in which the rich man ignored Lazarus during his lifetime, only to realize after death how much he needs him (16:24).  This section affirms God’s “preferential option for the poor” while at the time striking an ominous note for those who ignore the poor in their midst.  The second part of the passage emphasizes how Jesus’ teaching is not really new; it is simply a reiteration of the Law (i.e. Moses) and the Prophets (see for example Deut. 15 and Isaiah 58).  To those who would look for some other reason to care for the poor and to work for justice, Jesus would offer none.  New Testament scholar Richard Hays notes that “Abraham’s chilling answer [to the rich man] reveals much about Lukan theology and ethics: ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’  Even the resurrection – even Jesus’ own resurrection – remains futile, a mute apparition, for those who harden their hearts against Moses and the prophets.  On the other hand, those who heed Jesus will understand that the message of Scripture calls the community to precisely the sort of generous sharing that is exemplified by the Jerusalem church in the early chapters of Acts” (The Moral Vision of the New Testament, 1996, p. 124).

By Chris Liu-Beers, Program Associate, NC Council of Churches