Rich Man, Poor Man

 

Trinity 15 (Proper 21) Year C  25.ix.2022 Eucharist

Amos 6.1a,4-7; 1 Timothy 6.6-19; Luke 16.19-31.

There’s no doubt that the Church - and the Church of England in particular - has gained a lot of attention during the last couple of weeks, and we should acknowledge the privilege it has been for us to do so much in leading the Nation in its mourning for her late Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. Our bishops have themselves written to thank clergy and people of the churches in our diocese for all that we’ve been able to do with special services and prayers, with acts of commemoration and with Books of Condolence.

But now with the pageantry and ceremonial done - and let’s acknowledge just how much that was the meticulous work of royal households and the armed services - we continue to face the question, what do Christians have that they can say about things that are really important? What is really important - in the sense of important not simply on special occasions such as the death of a Sovereign after 70 years of devoted service, but important every day? What is at the heart of what we can all be doing every day which is at the heart of our Christian calling, and which makes a real difference to people where they are?

And before I get on to saying what today’s Gospel reading tells us about this, I think I want to say that at the heart of our calling as a Church is simply to be here for people in their need. To be ready to respond to people in sorrow: both our churches know real grief at this time through the loss of members and our feeling for their loved ones. And response doesn’t require that we are ordained or wear special clothes or have special permission to take particular services. It’s simply about being with people, knowing their need, being the people we are for them.

It's not first of all about being religious - though I think it is about our Christian response. Notice that in today’s Gospel, Jesus is speaking yet again to the Pharisees - the people who in first century Palestine did so much to generate the religious heat, who wanted to set the agenda, and basically to have things their way. To them Jesus says, “You’re missing the point.” And not just that but “You’re missing the person.” His parable is about two men, one rich and one poor, and you might ask, “What’s that got to do with me?” Ask most people whether they’re rich or poor, and I guess they’d say, “I’m comfortably off” - at least until recently, when nearly all of us started to feel the impact of rising energy prices and the cost of food in the shops. You might moan about the mortgage, you might worry about the state of your savings, but you knew you weren’t poor. At the same time few of us could call ourselves rich. So we’re neither rich nor poor.

But we shouldn’t avoid the message of the parable of the rich man and the poor man. Jesus tells parables to put the people who hear them on the spot. The parables are in the Gospels because they should put us on the spot. The question is, do we recognise ourselves somewhere in the story?

This parable has come to be called the story of Dives and Lazarus. In fact only the poor man, Lazarus, is given a name in the Gospel. The rich man became known later as Dives, but that is simply the Latin word for “rich.” He doesn’t get a name in the telling of the story. And this might seem surprising. Because if you look in the newspapers or magazines, it’s the rich celebrities whose names we know, while the poor are largely anonymous - the victims of floods, refugees, people in some developing country or another, unknown millions whose lives are torn by war and injustice, faces we glimpse fleetingly on a television screen, but whose names we don’t get or forget.

Some time ago in a piece of writing I’ve kept, John Pridmore, made the point that we should know the poor - and probably do. The rich man might think he doesn’t know any poor people - and simply fails to see Lazarus. But, writes this retired parish priest of no particular prosperity,

I knew Lazarus. He slept on our doorstep when we lived on the corner of Trafalgar Square. Our doorstep was narrow and steep, and he had to curl up awkwardly. He looked like a sack. I could have done more for him. I could have given him a blanket, or directed him to a night-shelter. Better still, I could have invited him in for a bath and a meal. But usually I just stepped over him.

Lazarus always had a dog with him, perhaps to lick his sores. When I had a great deal of shopping, I would ask him to move. Generally he did - though I recollect his once saying: “Why should I, you public-school dick-head [I’d probably better not say what he called him!]?” Lazarus certainly looked as if he could have done with a few of the crumbs which fell from the table at which I feasted sumptuously every day.

We need to ask ourselves, where do we know Lazarus? Is it that woman who still sells “The Big Issue” in Middle Street after all those years? - the one we hurry past? There’s plenty more people like that in Newcastle. Last week I walked past a man who was groaning on the ground outside a bank in Durham - and offered a prayer of thanks that someone else was crouched down to help him. And in two weeks’ time we’ll be asking you to bring harvest offerings to feed some of our many homeless people through the work of the People’s Kitchen. I’ve been struck by seeing some of the poor people who live on the streets of cities where I’ve stayed like Rome. There in the centre of the city - as we went back to our en suite accommodation near the Piazza Navona - we’d see in mid-evening homeless people who’d bundled themselves up with their possessions into the doorways of the narrow streets. And first thing each morning, the crippled man on his trolley setting up his begging pitch outside the Pantheon.  Opulence and poverty side by side, tourist and refugee, well-robed clerics and ragged vagrants.

 

In this morning’s parable it’s the poor man who has the name, Lazarus. That’s the sign of his real dignity. He’s known to God - as we are - as we recognise when we give someone a Christian name at Baptism. Although Lazarus gets ignored all his life, remains unseen and anonymous to the rich man at whose door he sits, it’s him who is taken after his death to sit at the side of Abraham. Now it’s the rich man who finds himself unknown - divided from being immersed in the love of God by “a great chasm.” That rich man - who has treated the poor as being anonymous, who simply hasn’t seen them in their need - (he) now finds out what it means to be “unknown.”

 

That rich man could be you - it could be me. Where do you put yourself in the picture? - where are you in this story of the response Jesus wants to be given to the needy?

 

On Tuesday of this week the Church commemorates St. Vincent de Paul, a French priest, who was active throughout the first half of the 17^th Century. He was an able intelligent man, ordained at the early age of 20, and he could have lived comfortably tickling the fancies of the faithful rich. But instead he came to recognise the needs of the poor and the underdog. He found himself working with prisoners who were going to be sent to the galleys where they would be chained to oars - to do hard labour by rowing the ships of the French Navy. And he recognised them as individuals. He founded a Congregation of priests who would join him in working with and for the poor, and they came to be known as Lazarists - specifically they went out to respond to the needs of “Lazarus” in the people amongst whom they lived. St. Vincent’s work flourished. He founded a religious order for women, the Sisters of Charity, the first religious sisters to be allowed out of the cloister, so that they could work with the poor. And millions of lay people have been inspired by his work. Today the Society of St. Vincent de Paul is, I think, the largest lay Roman Catholic organisation, and its members seek to put into practical effect the message St. Vincent preached - the message he found in today’s parable.

 

St. Vincent de Paul wrote these words,

 

We should not judge the poor by their clothes and their outward appearance nor by their mental capacity, since they are often ignorant and uncouth. On the contrary, if you consider the poor in the light of faith, then you will see that they take the place of God the Son, who chose to be poor. Indeed, in his passion, having lost even the appearance of man, foolishness to the Gentiles, and a scandal to the Jews, he showed he was to preach the Gospel to the poor in these words: ‘He has sent me to preach good news to the poor.’ Therefore we should be of the same mind and should imitate what Christ did, caring for the poor, consoling them, helping them and guiding them.

 

And we can start wherever there is need. The parable is about a rich man and a poor man - and we may think we’re neither. But the point is that to many  other people we are rich; when it comes to helping a needy person we can take the place of the rich man. And the poor are not only those who are materially destitute - it’s anyone whose need is there to be addressed. As for those who really are rich, do they really need tax cuts and the lifting of the cap on bankers’ bonuses? Perhaps members of our new Government could read this Gospel parable and think again?

 

Mother Teresa of Calcutta wrote once of a big conference on poverty which she’d attended, and how the people who talked so much about food and hunger would leave the conference venue in Bombay and ignore the beggars. Right outside the door she found a man who was dying, and took him to one of the homes she had set up - and where he died, while others talked:

 

I never look at the masses as my responsibility. I look at the individual. I can only love one person at a time. I can feed only one person at a time. I picked up one person. Maybe if I hadn’t picked up that one person I wouldn’t have picked up 42,000. The whole work is only a drop in the ocean. But if I didn’t put that drop in, the ocean would be one drop less. Same thing for you. Same thing in your family.