September 28, 2025
Luke 16: 19-31
Are you glad you’re not rich? All that responsibility for your various cars, boats and houses? People casually asking you for a few hundred bucks. The persistent temptation that you could give into your every whim.
But poverty is worse. The constant worry, the hunger, the lacks, the wants, scorn, humiliation and the guilt.
In today’s gospel there are two men who have experienced both sides. The rich man who dressed fashionably and feasted sumptuously and Lazarus, the poor suffering beggar. In the afterlife their situation is totally reversed.
Today we see that both extremes are despised. The rich, though envied by some, are disdained for their greed, stinginess and selfishness, and the poor are spurned and criminalized.
The two men only saw each other after they died. Lazarus, covered with sores kept his eyes averted and the rich man, completely indifferent, didn’t even glance at the beggar.
“Indifferent.” What a designation! Doesn’t your skin crawl just thinking that one of Julie’s daughters might be labeled ‘indifferent.’?
Probably we are not tempted by indifference – but what about ‘compliance.’
“What can I do?” “That’s the way it is.” “ You can only do so much”. “You can’t fight city hall.”
But we should fight city hall, or we could end up like the rich man. Having dressed very properly all his life, the afterlife finds him hopelessly out of style because of his conformity, compliance and caution.
Luke 16: 19-31
Jesus said to the Pharisees: “There was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and fine linen and dined sumptuously each day. And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table. Dogs even used to come and lick his sores. When the poor man died, he was carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham.
The rich man also died and was buried, and from the netherworld, where he was in torment, he raised his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he cried out, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am suffering torment in these flames.’
Abraham replied, ‘My child, remember that you received what was good during your lifetime while Lazarus likewise received what was bad; but now he is comforted here, whereas you are tormented. Moreover, between us and you a great chasm is established to prevent anyone from crossing who might wish to go from our side to yours or from your side to ours.’
He said, ‘Then I beg you, father, send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they too come to this place of torment.’
But Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them.’ He said, ‘Oh no, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ Then Abraham said, ‘If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.'”
The Gospel of the Lord