Getting Into The Heart Of It.

Luke 16: 19-31

‘There was a rich man who was 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 angels 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.” 

He said, “Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house— for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.” Abraham replied, “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.” He said, “No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” He said to him, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” ’

Just to back up a tad, Jesus was telling this parable to the Pharisees who were “lovers of money and were ridiculing him” after listening to his parable of the dishonest manager (verse 14). The interesting thing about this is that the Pharisees of all people should have been very familiar with God’s concern for the poor. One could pull out verse after verse from the Old Testament with messages like this one from Isaiah 58:

Is it not (the fast that I choose) to share your bread with the hungry,
  and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
   and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

Somehow, even with clear guidance like the above, the religious authorities had determined that wealth was an explicit indication of God’s blessing. If you were wealthy it meant you were a very righteous person and on your way to heaven and if you lived in poverty it was a sign that you were a sinner and maybe even that you were ‘unrighteous’ which would mean you were on your way to hell with no hope of salvation. 

In this parable, Jesus is not simply reaffirming that God has a heart for the poor and expects us to have the same heart; he is also being very pointed about the fact that the religious law of the day had moved very far from the original heart of the Law of Moses and the prophets. 

In the story, Lazarus, the poor man, went to heaven while the rich man went to Hades but Jesus didn’t say that Lazarus was not a sinner. He was not indicating that poverty always implies righteousness. What Jesus was saying was that the assumption that being wealthy plus being absolutely scrupulous about every little interpretation of the law, as the Pharisees generally were, was not a sign of righteousness and not a guarantee that they were pleasing to God.

We may not believe anymore that wealth is a sign of righteousness but I’m afraid we can still easily fall into the misconception that being scrupulous will win God’s blessing or at least keep us safe from his anger. Some of the priests, Pharisees and scribes were corrupt and power hungry but a huge number of them were simply totally convinced that the Romans were in power because the Israelites had somehow failed to keep God’s law to his satisfaction. Therefore, they thought that being absolutely scrupulous in being obedient to every last tenet of the Mosaic law as well as to the multitude of minor interpretations of those tenets would bring them back into God’s favor and on into freedom from the Romans.

Then along came Jesus telling them that the Law would not save them nor set them free and it could not guarantee their salvation. Can you imagine their consternation when Jesus said in his story that the sinner went to heaven while the rich man went to Hades? The truth is all of us should be filled with some of the same consternation because we all have a human tendency to place our trust in the wrong things. In endeavoring to adhere meticulously to the tenets of the law, the Pharisees completely forgot the heart of the law, which was, is and always will be love.

We, too, forget.

In last week’s Gospel Jesus said, “You can’t serve God and mammon too.” Everyone thinks ‘mammon’ just means money. Translated, mammon means, “That in which we trust.” Under that definition, even righteous works such as feeding the poor could be labeled ‘mammon’ if the person performing the works is depending on those works to make him or her righteous in God’s eyes. That’s not action born of love. That’s actually action that keeps God at a safe distance. I’ve mentioned before how all of us can fall into keeping little lists of all our righteous deeds, hoping that God is impressed and hoping that we’ve done enough to merit his approval. And very often when things aren’t going well we wonder if it’s because we haven’t been ‘good enough’. It's very subtle but one reason it's so difficult to let go of this merit based spirituality is because the false self gains a sense of control when it feels there are actions and deeds it can do to make itself right in God's eyes. The idea that there is nothing we can do to be right and that we can only be loved by God, love him back and then freely share that love with our brothers and sisters makes false self feel far too vulnerable and out of control.

Abraham said “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” Sure enough, not even Christ rising from the dead was enough to shift the inner perceptions of most of the Jewish religious authorities and sometimes, the fact that Christ died and rose from the dead is not enough to pull us out of our scrupulous fears and our dependence on our actions to assure ourselves that we deserve approval.

What is the greatest of the commandments? You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind - and the second greatest commandment is like it: love your neighbor as you love yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.  Jesus was saying to the Pharisees that if they never understood the true core of the law, not even the miracle of resurrected love would penetrate their hearts of stone.

Has your heart been penetrated?