Last week, President Trump gave a speech at the opening of the UN meeting. One of his nonsensical statements perfectly revealed his own personality as a President. He declared, loud and clear: “Climate change is a great scam. I don’t believe it!”
This is a deeply concerning denial, especially when millions of people are being forced to leave their homes due to rising sea levels and warming ocean temperatures. Consider Dhaka, for example, the capital of Bangladesh. Dhaka is similar in size to Sydney, yet its population is a staggering 25 million! The one city, Dhaka’s population is similar to Australia’s total population.
For the past many years, over a million people move to Dhaka from coastal villages since the climate crisis made it impossible to carry on their lives as fishmen. This unfortunate phenomenon of ‘the poor becoming poorer’ on a global level is being caused by the climate crisis.
We can’t do much about it as individual believers, but we can still reflect on today’s Lukan passage as God’s children. To make the story of ‘Lazarus and a rich man’ come alive for us now, we need to raise three fundamental questions to begin with.
The first question: “Who was Lazarus in the story?”
The second question: “Who was the rich man?”
And the last: “Who is a Lazarus today?”
First, who was Lazarus? Verse 20 reads, “There was also a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who used to be brought to the rich man’s door.” Lazarus was poor, homeless, and also disabled because it says ‘someone else had to bring him to the rich man’s door to beg for food’. Because of this very ‘uncomfortable’ reason, we could say that Lazarus and the rich man were ‘accidental neighbours’ even if they didn’t see themselves that way.
One day, said Jesus, both men died. Death does not care about your social standing or even your achievements in life. When that happened, Lazarus was carried away by the angel unto heaven, while the rich man was buried and his soul was sent to hell.
This is where Jesus invites us to be part of the conversations between God in heaven and the rich man in hell. If we learn that lesson today, our Christian journeys will move closer to God’s kingdom life here on earth.
The parable is quite bothersome since it shows how God challenges and even reverses the world’s standards. For instance, notice that the rich man is never named. Only the poor, homeless beggar, Lazarus, has a name.
That is exactly the opposite of how the world does it. Such names like ‘Elon Musk’, ‘Donald Trump’ or ‘Gina Reinhart’, and their fancy lifestyles are the most frequent stories in the media.
But with the poor it is exactly the opposite. They are not usually named. We refer to them collectively as “the poor”, “the homeless,” “the third world,” “the welfare cases.”
Rich people also die rich. For instance, consider Mao Zedong who died n 1976, and his body is still kept in a crystal coffin, which costs a great fortune just to maintain every year. This is very common to many rich people across the world. Millions of dollars are spent for their funerals, let alone their luxurious tombs that are worth over millions of dollars.
At the same time, you may have heard of Potter’s Fields in many countries. These are cemeteries where the unknown or extremely poor are buried for almost nothing. Interestingly, one rule for these fields is that no markers are allowed—only small numbers identify each grave. No their names, only their numbers.
But, for God, it is always the reverse. God knows, and will always know, the name of every poor, suffering person who ever walked this earth. There is a very special place in God’s heart for them.
Many of us are not extremely rich, but we are not exactly poor either. Some of us may struggle financially in the eyes of the world. However, compared to those suffering worldwide, we are still ‘wealthy’ as Australians.
One thing we should note in this parable is that the rich man was not necessarily a cruel person. In fact, he never mistreated Lazarus; he never kicked him or chased him away. Then, why? What on earth did the rich man do or did not do, ending such a terrible fate in heaven?
Maybe, the rich man was a very hard-working family man, providing more than enough for his own family. But in the eyes of God, there was no place for the poor Lazarus in the rich man’s heart. He was indifferent to Lazarus and his suffering though he saw him at his gate almost every day.
This contradicts the very core of our Christianity. If you don’t have a deep concern for others—if you do not feel compassion for the poor, the lonely, or the sick, if you do not love your neighbour as yourself, you are still taking baby steps in your faith journey.
God calls us to go and make friends with the neighbours we haven’t met yet. There are many “Lazaruses” around us: in our communities, at work, and even here in our church.
Share their pain and suffering as if it were your own. Share your blessings and privileges with them by any means. Why? Because each one of them is known by God by their names. Because each one of them holds a very special place in God’s heart. Because you’re helping God by helping them.
Amen.