25 - Chapter 25
CHAPTER XXV THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS
LUKE places this parable in the near neighbourhood of the Prodigal Son, and there are one or two curious points of comparison between the stories. The word used in Luk 16:19 for the daily enjoyment of Dives (euphrainomenos] occurs three times in the Prodigal Son in connection with the banquet prepared for the reception of the prodigal. Dives’ enjoyment was selfish and splendid feeding; the banquet of Luk 15:1-32 was a social expression of the loftiest kind of joy. In Hades Dives was anxious lest his brothers should share his awful fate; the elder brother felt no anxiety for his brother when he was absent, no joy when he returned. Lazarus longed for the crumbs from Dives’ table as the prodigal fed on the swine’s carob pods. As the story of the Syrophenician and the feeding of the five thousand remind us, our Lord’s interest in the fragments was characteristic. One’s sensitiveness to the waste of food in a world where millions go hungry may not be a decisive test of character; it is one test. Our Lord was vividly conscious of the moral effects of hunger and repletion. During the war, it was one of the great fears of statesmen that their nation might go hungry; hungry men are apt to develop a new code of morals, to do things and endure humiliations which in their days of plenty they would have scorned.
It was not altogether sympathy with the poor but, in part at least, fear of hungry men, that instituted what we contemptuously call the “ dole.” The guests who, when invited to the Great Feast, began to make excuses were all well-fed men; the hungry outcasts needed no second invitation. The prodigal had no thought of returning home till he knew the pangs of hunger. If Dives had ever known what it was to wonder where his next meal was to come from, he would not have been so unconscious of the existence of Lazarus. It was the fear of hunger and his unwillingness to face it that led the Squandering Steward to become a cheat. One of our Lord’s own temptations received its force from his hunger. This parable was formerly something of a puzzle. It is the only parable in which one of the actors is given a name; it is the only parable that draws a picture of the other world (unless we call the Judgment scene in Mat 25:1-46 a parable); and it employs Jewish imagery to an unusual extent. It is now 1 believed that Jesus
1 Since the publication of Gressmann’s Monograph “ Vom reichem Mann und armen Lazarus” (1918); see Easton, “ Gospel according to St. Luke,” adloc. based the first part of the parable on a familiar story (originating in Egypt) about the future reversal of human destiny, told by a seer who had been granted a visit to the other world. The theory is that Jesus disapproved of such stories, which only gratify idle curiosity, and so added the appendix.
There is no parable which more urgently requires to be read ’with the mind also.” It is generally recognized that it is not a guide to the manners and customs of life beyond the grave. No one imagines that it teaches that all rich people go to hell and all poor people to heaven. Nor is the main point that the inequalities of this life are redressed in the next, though something like that may be suggested. We call the story the parable of Dives and Lazarus; but the fact is that Lazarus plays practically no part in the tale except as a foil to Dives. The interest of the story centres in the life and fate of the Rich Man. In the preceding parables we have seen that the relation of the citizen to the King is bound up in the most intimate way with his relation to other men. One aspect of this relation is that it is unneighbourly for a prosperous man to ignore the needs of one with whom he is brought in contact, and that, whether he is conscious of the contact or not. In the scene at the Last Judgment (Mat 25:1-6) those on the left hand were quite unconscious of having neglected their Lord in his hour of need. When it was pointed out to them that their real transgression was their neglect of the King’s brethren in their hour of need, doubtless they were still unconscious of this neglect. They had never deliberately refused an opportunity of service.
They did not know that such opportunities had been put before them. In the parables thoughtlessness or carelessness is one of the major sins. Some thorns have got in among the wheat; we hardly notice them, but in the end there is no crop. Some bridesmaids, preparing for the wedding, have omitted the precaution of taking spare oil for their torches, in case of unexpected delay. They find the door of the festal chamber shut in their faces. Dives has often noticed Lazarus at his gate. It has never occurred to him that he has any relation to Lazarus. There is no suggestion that he was cruel or insulting to Lazarus, that he exploited him in any way, or took any unfair advantage of his poverty. He simply regarded Lazarus as a phenomenon outside the sphere of his existence. Yet they needed each other, the over-flow of Dives’ table would have made all the difference to Lazarus; it was only after his death that Dives discovered that Lazarus might be of use to him. Our Lord claimed to fulfil the prophecy of One who was to proclaim recovery of sight to the blind. Partly by the spread of the Christian outlook, partly by forcible surgery on the part of those we sought to ignore, we are learning to see. In our own country the Lazaruses we used to keep outside the door are no longer content to feed on the crumbs that fall from the tables of the rich. They have learned that if they knock, if they knock hard enough and persistently enough and threateningly enough, the door will gradually open and admit them to some share in the daily banquet. In connection with other countries, there is still much blindness and much myopia. There are still men, and plenty of them, who think of India as the brightest jewel in the Imperial crown, of China as a possible market for our trade, of Africa as a continent whose people may be induced to drink our rum. The prodigal put a physical gulf between himself and his home; the Pharisee saw a moral gulf between himself and the tax-collector; in Dives’ eyes there was a social gulf between himself and Lazarus. In each of the three cases the man who thought he was on the right side of the gulf was on the wrong side. Jesus is the bridge-builder; the people on both sides have each something to give the other. When Dives opens his eyes and sees Lazarus, whether he is of his own country or some other, he will find he is not just a beggar; find that he has a story to tell which is often pathetic but always full of interest. As his sympathies are drawn out, he will find that life has other and richer joys than wearing fine linen or its modern counterpart, and turning each meal into a banquet. The form of our temptation varies; the temptation itself remains. As in the Rich Fool, Death is presented as the great Revealer. Death taught Dives what life might have taught him had he opened his ears to hear. His punishment was that he had to abide by his own decision; what he had written, he had written. He had put Lazarus to such an immense distance from himself that when he needed him, there was no point of contact. Lazarus is one of those characters in the parables whose silence is eloquent. The father pleads with the elder son to give a gracious reception to the prodigal; the prodigal puts in no plea for himself. The Pharisee tells God what he thinks of the tax-collector; the taxcollector seems unconscious of the Pharisee’s presence. The Rich Fool expounds his plans for excluding his servants and his neighbours from any share of his prosperity; his servants and his neighbours do not appear in the story at all. The eleventh hour labourers made no claim for themselves. From beginning to end of this parable, Lazarus utters not one word.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. In the concluding part of the parable there are two striking sayings. Abraham refuses to send Lazarus to warn Dives’ brothers on the ground that “ they have Moses and the prophets.”
There were many in Jesus’ day, as there are many in our day, who did not regard Moses and the prophets as primarily teachers of social righteousness. Again, Abraham told Dives that if his brothers did not learn considerate treatment of the poor from the Old Testament, neither would they learn it though one rose from the dead. The seemingly miraculous has an extraordinary power of stirring interest and raising a momentary enthusiasm; but it is in the Bible that the Word of God is found. They who do not find God there, will not find him anywhere.