It’s no secret that we live in an age where most people assume they’re good and automatically going to heaven. Misconceptions about heaven abound. This is particularly troubling from the perspective of the Gospel’s commands that the Kingdom of Heaven means life with and in God, participation in the divine life of the Holy Trinity, manifested outwardly in how we live out that faith in witness and in response to those around us. To be with God, you and I are admonished to desire that life above all else, to be rich toward God and others and poor toward the distractions and temptations of the world, its power and riches and callousness towards others.
God is rich in love and mercy. He gives us opportunities to love and to serve to His glory and our deification. He gives us the Scriptures and the divine services to teach us, form us, in the mind of the Church, in the mind of the Kingdom. God feeds us with the sacramental life of His Kingdom even now.
The big question isn’t what God does for us, but rather, how do we respond to that which He has entrusted to us. Do we avail ourselves of these God-given means of our growth in divine grace, of opportunities to love, serve, and witness? Unused tools are of little use to us.
We can as Orthodox run the risk of taking God, and His love and mercy, for granted: we remember that we will all stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ and give a response for how we have lived, for what has been our response to God’s gracious offer of life and love with Him. Orthodox Christianity firmly teaches us that Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead, and that there will be an accounting before Him at the Last Judgment.
Some of the Fathers say our judgment is based on how we know God now, how we love God now, how we say “Yes” to God now in this life, day to day. The Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man in today’s Gospel is an example of such judgment through self-examination and so, it’s an opportunity for conviction, growth, change.
The rich man treats Lazarus with scorn in this life. Even in the next life, he still sees Lazarus as merely his slave, existing solely for his need, saying, “Send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue.” In this life, this man’s wealth is his god; he lives for his own selfish pleasure. He has a ‘knowledge’ of God, but he does not know God, nor is he interested in having his pleasure-seeking altered by concern for those around him, i.e., concern about what God thinks about his actions—or inactions—as the case may be. We hear that Lazarus, “full of sores,” laid at his gate, and longed to eat the crumbs off the rich man’s table.
As the story goes, Lazarus dies and is taken up to God’s near presence, i.e. ‘the bosom of Abraham.’ The rich man also dies and is buried. Having been deprived of his needs in this life, Lazarus enjoys the heavenly banquet in the true and eternal life with God and all the Saints. Lazarus is in eternal and perpetual memory before God. God knows his name. The rich man, having lived only for himself and his own self-pleasure in this life, is deprived of God’s near presence and communion in eternal life. His name is not even remembered before God.
From God’s perspective, however, as St. John Chrysostom puts it, the rich man was already ‘buried’ in life by his “couches, rugs, furnishings, sweet oils, perfumes… wine, varieties of food, and flatterers” (see the comment in the Orthodox Study Bible, p. 1399) because these things surely were his ‘god’ and his ‘god’ is temporal—it’s all buried with him.
It’s tempting to see this story from an “us versus them” perspective. Oh, I’m not like that rich man. But I encourage us to examine ourselves for a moment in light of the rich man just as we do in the Triodion period before Lent when we examine ourselves in light of the Pharisee. All of us have been given ‘riches’ of one kind or multiple kinds or another. All of us will be asked what we have done with those riches entrusted to us at Christ’s awesome Second Coming.
This parable is not so much a story condemning wealth, but rather an illustration of what happens if we allow our soul to become cold-hearted, selfish and vain-glorious toward God and our fellow man and become ‘poor’ or stingy towards God and those around us. Already, the rich man is withering and dying to God in this life. Lazarus, on the other hand, can be seen in light of the opportunities we’re each given to be faithful with our means and our talents to be rich toward God and responsive to Him with the spiritual and material wealth He’s entrusted to us.
To this extent, St. John Chrysostom asks, “Do you see how by the place, by the things that waste there (in the rich man’s house), he draws men off from this desire that is here, and rivets them to Heaven… For if you transfer your wealth there where neither rust or moth corrupts, nor thieves break through and steal, you will both expel this disease and establish your soul in the greatest abundance” (Manley, The Bible and the Holy Fathers for Orthodox, p.m. 472). And so, we’re reminded of Christ’s words to us elsewhere in the Gospel: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matt. 6:21). And so, we each ask ourselves, Am I longing for heaven? Is my treasure in Christ God?
All of us need to be wary of this ‘disease,’ of wanting to have our ease, of using others, even God, for our own ends, of being cold toward Him and others at times. We conquer this disease by keeping our ‘vigil lamps’ lit, examining how we’re living our lives, how we’re loving, serving, and giving of ourselves. Are we ready to meet the Lord on that Day of Judgment, to give an account of our striving for faithfulness in our love and service to God and others? It can be helpful to all of us to periodically do an inventory of our riches—material and spiritual—to evaluate how we’re using them, whether for our own temporal pleasure or for the building up of the Kingdom, that is, our life with God, our salvation, and that of those around us.
St. Cyril of Alexandria puts it this way, “do not consider your riches as belonging to yourselves alone; open wide your hand to those who are in need.” And St. Paul urges us to have our abundance supply another’s lack that their abundance—in another area of need—may also supply our lack (paraphrased, II Cor. 8:14).
If we do strive to live in this way–as the Body of Christ, as the family of God—w e discover ‘riches’ we didn’t even know we had. We grow in our understanding of God as our Heavenly Father who loves us and calls us to live as His sons and daughters. We help each other and those to whom we witness the faith by giving them an opportunity to work out their own salvation even as they give us an opportunity to work out ours. In this way, our witness not only reaches out to them in love, but also continues to grow us in the knowledge and love of Christ as well.
And so, we come away from this parable reminded that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, that Christ is coming back again to judge the living and the dead. May we all prepare now so that we can hear those all-desired words of Christ, “Well done good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Master.”
Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
Sunday, Oct. 26, 2014
Epistle: Gal. 1:11-19
Gospel: Luke 16:19-31
