God is rich in love and mercy. He gives us and, indeed, entrusts to us, this growth in holiness and divine love through those around us. He gives us opportunities to come outside ourselves and serve and use our gifts, talents, and treasures 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 we respond to that which He has entrusted to us. Do we avail ourselves as we should 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. As it says in the Way of the Ascetics, ‘We must pick up ax and shovel if we are to free ourselves from the pit we find ourselves in.’
We can too easily take 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 in Holy Tradition that Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead, and that there will be an accounting before Him at the Judgment.
Some of the Fathers say our judgment is based on how we know God, how we love God, how we say “Yes” to God now in this life. The Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man in today’s Gospel is an example of such judgment through self-examination.
The rich man treats Lazarus with scorn in this present life. Even in the next, he still sees Lazarus as merely his slave, existing solely for his comfort, 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 and 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. We hear that Lazarus, full of sores, laid at his very gate, and longed to eat the crumbs off the rich man’s table.
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 in His near presence with all the Saints. Lazarus is in eternal and perpetual memory before God. The rich man, on the other hand, 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 the Lord.
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).
It’s tempting to see this story from an “us versus them” perspective. Oh, I’m not like that rich man. I encourage us to examine ourselves for a moment in light of the rich man. 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 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. 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/or material wealth He’s entrusted to us. And so, it’s an opportunity to examine our own lives.
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).
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 at times. We conquer this disease by keeping our ‘vigil lamps’ lit, examining moment by moment how we are living our lives, how we are loving, serving, and giving. 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 pleasure or for the building up of the Kingdom, that is, our life with God, our salvation and that of those around us.
What are you rich in? What are you poor in? Let’s help each other supply what the other is lacking. If you have means, share them with those in need, give generously to the work of His Church. If you are poor in resources but rich in spirit and in the desire to serve, give of yourself to others, helping those around you to likewise learn from you to be rich in God’s love and grace.
Christ admonishes us to make for ourselves “friends of the unrighteous mammon.” That is, as St. Cyril of Alexandria puts it, “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 your abundance supply another’s lack that their abundance—in another area of need—may also supply your lack (paraphrased, II Cor. 8:14). These are good words for us to strive to live by.
If we do strive to live in this way, as the Body of Christ, the family of God, we 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, as St. Paul reminds us today. We help each other and those to whom we witness the faith by giving them the opportunity to work out their own salvation even as they give us an opportunity to work out ours through serving them the Gospel, the salvific life in Christ. 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. We come away from this parable reminded that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand! May we all prepare now so 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 Mission
Sunday, Oct. 20, 2013
Epistle: 2 Corinthians 6:16-7:1
Gospel: Luke 16:19-31
