Year C
Season after Pentecost
Proper 21 (26)
What I Am Learning
Jesus tells a story about a rich man and a poor man named Lazarus. The rich man feasts every day, dressed in fine clothes, while Lazarus lies at his gate, covered with sores, longing for scraps of food. When they both die, Lazarus is carried by angels to rest in Abraham’s care, while the rich man suffers torment. The roles are suddenly reversed. The rich man was actually poor.
Within the Jewish Tradition
This parable draws from a familiar theme in Israel’s Scriptures: God cares deeply for the poor and warns those who ignore them. The prophets thundered against those who “trample on the needy” (Amos 8:4) or hoard wealth while others starve. Jesus is not inventing something new here—he is standing firmly within his Jewish tradition, sharpening the urgency of its message.
Hades is a Greek term for the waiting room of the dead. Here it is used for the Hebrew term “sheol”, a waiting room of the dead until the resurrection. It is not a term for the middle ages concept of hell. In my book, Go and Do Likewise, I engage the issue of accountability to the divine for how we do or do not love our neighbor and care for the creation.
The Challenge Then
The challenge then was that people believed wealth was a sign of God’s blessing. But Jesus disrupts that idea. He insists that God’s blessing is not measured by riches, and that ignoring the suffering at our doorstep has eternal consequences.
The Challenge Now
Wealth and poverty still live side by side, often unacknowledged. Christian Nationalism reinforces the illusion that prosperity equals God’s favor. But progressive Christians can also fall short, reducing justice to abstract analysis while failing to see the Lazarus at our own gates. Jesus confronts us all: faith without compassion for the suffering is empty.
We are as divided by wealth as by any other factor in the United States. Many very wealthy people are able to live completely sequestered from people in other economic groups. Check out the Gozzer Ranch for instance.
Implications for Leaders & Communities
Ancient audiences would have heard this as a warning to communities that tolerated vast inequality at their very gates. Leaders bore responsibility for whether the poor were cared for or ignored. Today, we must ask: who lies at the gates of our neighborhoods, our congregations, and our nation? Communities that pass by the suffering will find themselves under judgment; communities that see and respond reflect God’s justice.
What I Am Learning is that discipleship is not measured by belief alone, but by attention—by noticing who is lying at the gate and how I respond. It is not enough to enjoy abundance if I fail to see the neighbor in need.
The question I’m sitting with:
Who is lying at my gate right now—and how might I respond in a way that honors God’s vision of justice and mercy?
