Dear Luke,
I do not have much wisdom to offer
that you have not already uncovered. I
wish I could say something to ameliorate the place in which you find yourself,
a gulf between how you live and how Jesus says you should live, but the reality
is that money is a cruel master. It
takes over our hearts and our minds, makes us anxious to have more when we have
it, and we are anxious for it when we do not.
We can never have enough, and we can never sleep easy because of its
temptations. We attempt to purchase
security with it, and we admire the prestige it brings us. Money is a master, Luke, and Jesus knows just
how powerful it is, and so he warns us, time and time again, to be wary of
serving it, of desiring it, of loving it.
Jesus does not want us to lose God’s Kingdom in exchange for more money.
The Pharisees, as we know, loved
money. They loved having it and they
loved what it did for them in the community.
Their hearts pursued it, and the desire for more led them deeper into
the grips of this cruel mistress. When
Jesus tried to teach them, they refused to take his words seriously, choosing
instead to ridicule him. Humans often do
this to avoid having to examine their own positions—they lash out in
defensiveness against those who try and correct them. Jesus reminded them that God knows their
hearts and finds distasteful what humans often prize above all else. For the Pharisees, who loved their
reputations as well as their money, these words would have stung if they had
the ability to hear them with humility.
But these Pharisees, who loved to be exalted and to prove their worth,
probably deflected them with more anger.
Jesus refuses to bend to their
anger, however, and continues on in his teachings. He offers a nugget that would shatter the world
to which they cling—he tells them that the good news of the God’s kingdom, that
which was proclaimed by John the Baptist and fulfilled in Jesus Christ,
fulfills what the law and the prophets introduced. The problem is that we try and enter this
kingdom by our own strength and wisdom, rather than relying on God. Our own strength will never do, however, and
Jesus tells the Pharisees that the world may fade into history before the law
falls apart. Only by the grace of Christ
can one enter God’s kingdom, but the Pharisees and their love of the law have
such a hard time hearing this message.
Jesus goes on warning them, reminding them that remarriage after divorce
is adultery, as is marrying a woman who has been divorced. If they’re going to follow the Law, Jesus is
telling them, they need to follow every letter of it perfectly. Otherwise, they need to choose grace.
To illustrate the importance of
what he is teaching and the Pharisees need for God’s grace and mercy, Jesus
tells a story. I would imagine the
Pharisees, living in worldly comfort, would have shuddered upon hearing this,
and I can only hope that it led to some transformed lives. Who knows, Luke, what this story’s impact
was!?
Jesus tells the Pharisees of a man
of wealth. The purple linens in which he
dressed were illustrations of how wealthy he was, and he never lacked for fine
foods in his daily feasting. This was
not a man who missed any of the finer things in life.
But in the man’s life, wealth and
poverty collided. See, there was a man
named Lazarus (Notice, Luke, how only one man gets a name in Jesus’ story. I believe this is a clue about how different
values are in God’s Kingdom—wealth will not earn you a higher place in God’s
Kingdom.) who lay at his gate daily. He
was poor, and worse than that there were sores that covered his body. The poor man dreamed of sating his hunger
with the leftovers from the rich man’s legendary feasts, but this was destined
to be little more than a dream. The only
consolation Lazarus had was dogs who came to bathe his sores with their
tongues. It is a nasty image, but this
was more attention than the rich man gave this poor beggar.
In time, both men died. While the Pharisees might want the rich man
to go straight to heaven, he instead found himself tormented in Hell while
Lazarus was carried by angels to dwell with Abraham in heaven. To make the rich man’s torment worse, he
could look up and see Lazarus and Abraham.
In his distress he cried out to Abraham, begging him to send Lazarus to
alleviate his suffering by offering some cool water for his tongue, which was
suffering in the flames. Luke, I find it
ironic that the rich man finds himself begging to Jesus, and I’m sure the
Pharisees would have if they weren’t so horrified at the thought of finding
themselves in hell at the mercy of a wound-covered beggar.
Abraham, however, had no
affirmative reply for the rich man.
Abraham reminded him of all the wealth and good things the rich man
enjoyed in his life. I doubt that was
much comfort at the time to the rich man, for he was now in agony. Abraham also reminded him of the misery that
Lazarus had endured, and now he had found comfort. As if this wasn’t painful enough for the rich
man to hear, Abraham then informed the rich man that a yawning chasm existed
between heaven and hell, a chasm so wide that one who so desired could not pass
between the two.
The rich man, doubtlessly crushed
by this news, then turned his thoughts to others, perhaps for the first time in
his life. He cried out to Abraham to
send Lazarus to his five brothers in the hopes that they might heed the warning
and avoid an eternity of torture and torment.
To this, too, Abraham replied
negatively. He replied that Moses and
the prophets were the guide for them, and the brothers should hear their
witness and live by it.
The rich man cried out in a
desperate plea that they would repent at the witness of one from the dead, but
Abraham only offered that even hearts that would refuse the wisdom of Moses and
the prophets would fail to turn even at the truth of resurrection.
The story ends here, Luke, and yet
it is only a beginning. Much later in
this tale we will get to the resurrection to which Jesus alludes, and we will
wonder if the hearts of the Pharisees turned then, despite the fact that
ancient words calling them to faithfulness were apparently not enough for
them. I imagine the Pharisees believed
themselves to be righteous, but Jesus is teaching them that they are not—that
only through Jesus can they be truly righteous.
Their efforts are not enough, and their hearts are far from God, even
though they don’t realize it. Jesus is
trying to wake them up, but they resist and refuse, sadly.
I don’t pretend that it is easy to
change. It requires great humility and
the support of many. I like to imagine
that the Pharisees wised up and repented, but I believe that is wishful
thinking. I know that I cling to Christ,
for my own life, my thought and my actions, will never be enough to earn God’s
love.
I hope you do not hear this as bragging
on my part, Luke. I just want you to
know what I believe. Change is hard, and
the Pharisees resisted Jesus’ calls for it every step of the way. I do not believe you should convert out of
the threat of damnation to hell, but I do believe that you should understand
your life as far bigger than the portion that is lived here on earth. There are consequences to our decisions, and
only grace can lead us to the place we most desire to be, in full communion
with the God of love and mercy.
Sincerely,
Theophilus
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