26th Sunday in Ordinary Time—Year C
Amos 6:1a, 4-7; 1Timothy 6:11-16; Luke 16:19-31
“God hates me,” laments a police detective played by Danny
Glover in the 1987 film Lethal Weapon—after
he is paired with a partner perceived as suicidal. “Hate him back,” says his
new partner, played by Mel Gibson, angrily exhaling cigarette smoke through his
nostrils. “It works for me.”
Gibson’s character is terribly distraught, lonely, and
bitter over the recent death of his wife in a traffic accident. Hating God back
for this injustice is definitely not
working for him; he is a man on the brink. What brings him back and restores
some semblance of balance to his life is the close relationship he develops with
Glover’s character and his family.
In any event, the exchange above from the beginning of the
film, unfortunately, reflects a common misconception—both in Jesus’ time and in
ours. Too often, material prosperity, personal well-being, and popular acclaim are
associated (even among the most “pious” of Christians, or believers within
other religious traditions) with divine blessing and favor. Those who have it
well, it seems, are being rewarded for their goodness. Meanwhile, material
adversity, ill-health and/or personal tragedy, and public disavowal are seen as
signs of God’s disapproval. Those who don’t have it so well, it seems, are
being punished for their wickedness.
Although such a flawed point of view persists in many subtle
forms throughout human history up to the present moment, it is not what Jesus
taught at all. This is abundantly clear, especially, in Luke’s Gospel. In Luke
13:1-5, Jesus refers to contemporary tragedies in making the point that the
awful things that sometimes happen in life don’t necessarily beset people
because they are morally deficient or have lost favor with God. His point is
that death awaits us all, good and bad, and we must strive to live in
anticipation of that moment of judgment, which will arrive regardless of the
particular circumstances.
In addition, Jesus promises an eventual and everlasting
reversal of fortune for the poor, the lowly, and the outcast in his “Beatitudes
and Woes” discourse (Luke 6:20-26; “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is
the Kingdom of God
Finally, uniting himself so closely with us that he
experiences the human sense of utter abandonment, pain, and futility (“My God,
my God, why have you forsaken me?” Mark 15:34), Jesus dies on a cross, and is
raised on the third day. Before ascending into heaven, he charges his disciples
(then and now) to continue the work he began, promising the assistance of the
Holy Spirit.
That is not a God who hates, but one who infinitely
loves—one who wishes to bring about the redemption and welfare of each and
every single human being he has created (cf. 1Timothy 2:4). God—who IS Love
(cf. 1John 4:16)—does not hate, mistreat, or abandon anyone. Human beings do
that—individually and collectively. As Jesus demonstrated on the cross, in our
pain and sorrow, we may sometimes feel
as though we have been abandoned, but God promises to redeem the human
condition and turn its ugliness into ultimate and everlasting good—something we
often can’t see as it’s occurring. By stripping himself of divine glory in
Jesus Christ, the Triune God promises to restore the dignity of the human
person to its proper place.
Ultimately, this is what Jesus is trying to get across in
today’s Gospel (Luke 16:19-31). Whether rich or poor, healthy or ill, with
status or without, all human beings
are made in the image and likeness of God. The rich man was not condemned
because he was wealthy, but because his deluded self-satisfaction (cf. Luke 12:15-34;
18:18-30), self-indulgence, and false sense of superiority during this life
blinded him to the human dignity of Lazarus, the poor man covered with sores lying
at his very door.
Lazarus suffered horribly due to the rich man’s excess and
indifference—not because God hated him. The rich man was being called as God’s
instrument of mercy to provide for Lazarus from his abundance, to recognize
their common human dignity. Since the rich man failed to do this, God’s love (fulfilling
the spirit of the Beatitudes) saw to it that when Lazarus died, he “was carried
away by the angels to the bosom of Abraham” and comforted. God also loved the
rich man, and he also died, but his refusal to recognize Lazarus’ God-given
human dignity condemned him to hell. His choice had been freely made during his
earthly life, and it was too late to change his mind afterward.
The rich man was the one who hated. During their lifetimes,
he stepped over (or upon!) Lazarus each day while on the way to his next
sumptuous feast without giving him so much as table scraps. After all, he might
have reasoned, “God favors me become I am so well-off; this man at my door has
brought down God’s punishment upon himself.” So, in the next life, their
fortunes are reversed—ironically, and tragically, for the rich man.
In the end, wealth, health, and influence in this life count
for nothing—except to the extent that they are utilized for doing God’s work of
restoring the dignity of the human person. The poor, the lowly, and the outcast
have the inside track to the Kingdom
of God
As Blessed Pope John Paul II said in a homily during a visit
to the United States
We cannot stand idly by, enjoying our own riches and freedom, if, in any place the Lazarus of [today] stands at our doors. In the light of the parable of Christ, riches and freedom mean a special responsibility. Riches and freedom create a special obligation. And so, in the name of the solidarity that binds us all together in a common humanity, I again proclaim the dignity of every human person: the rich man and Lazarus are both human beings, both of them equally created in the image and likeness of God, both of them equally redeemed by Christ, at a great price, the price of the ‘precious blood of Christ’ (1Peter 1:19).
So, if you are the “rich man” in today’s Gospel, who is the
“Lazarus” in your life, and how might you recognize in him or her your common
human dignity?
And, if you are Lazarus in today’s Gospel, may your lot be
relieved by those with the means. Whatever the case might be, “Blessed are you
who are poor, for yours is the Kingdom
of God
