Two men die on the same night. One is a rich man wearing purple clothes. The other is Lazarus, a beggar whose wounds are licked by a dog. Death reverses their fate. The beggar is brought to Abraham’s side. The rich will suffer.
Across the fixed ditch, the rich man begs for a drop of water and for someone to warn his brothers. Abraham finally answers. “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, even one who returns from the dead will not change their mind.”
Lazarus is the only person mentioned by name in Jesus’ parables. Others remain anonymous, including the Good Samaritan, the Pharisee, the father, and the eldest son. He wasn’t a drought-stricken farmer or a woman looking for coins. He was the ignored man at the gate, his name meaning “God help,” and his presence became a reproach.
Parables defy clear definition. They lead us to answers, but then a trap door opens and we fall into a deeper mystery. Humorist Calvin Trillin said he failed a test because his teacher couldn’t understand that many of his answers were sarcastic. The disciples kept asking why Jesus spoke this way. Jesus was unable to fool the authorities, who understood what he was saying and executed him as a political subversive.
We often tell this parable as a morality play. “The rich are cursed and the poor are saved.” But Jesus’ story is stranger and more poignant. It does not justify poverty or demonize wealth. It’s a breed of comfort that exposes blindness. The rich man saw Lazarus at the gate, bruised and starving, but he chose not to care, or to feel only guilt. His sin was not ignorance, but inertia.
As Max Weber stated in his essay “The Social Psychology of World Religions,” the tolerance for such blindness is due to psychological necessity rather than logic. “Lucky people are rarely satisfied with the fact that they are lucky,” he writes. “He needs to know that he is entitled to good fortune. He needs to know that he is entitled to good fortune and, above all, that he deserves good fortune in comparison to others. He therefore hopes that good fortune is legitimate good fortune.”
The reversal after death was not a punishment, but a visualization of the truth. Robert Frost said, “There is something that doesn’t like walls,” yet somehow keeps the gates closed. Each of us stands near that gate. You may end up overstepping or building too high without realizing it.
Stories survive because no one is left behind. Poverty and wealth are issues of awareness and compassion, not just politics. The rich man will be saved – “Nothing is impossible with God.” When pain turns love to ashes, the poor can become lost.
No one has a monopoly on virtue or vice. Ultimately, all will be judged by love. “For God makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.” Grace is free to everyone, but it’s not cheap. It burns like a smelter’s fire and consumes all negation of love until only love remains.
Stock prices broke records this week. But optimism is limited to a few. The joy of the market is a pale counterbalance to conflict, inflation, AI-induced job losses, and poverty—a system that simultaneously produces record wealth and instability.
What can we do about this injustice? The rich man’s sin was not wealth or greed, but inertia, a paralysis of indifference disguised as comfort. Justice is not just a cause, not just politics and planning, or prison reform and fair housing. It’s a glass of cold water and a visit to the inmate.
We live by bread, not just bread. Loving your “neighbor” has become more abstract, systemic, and more important than the person next to you. The need for humane food laws is urgent, but it’s the same as bringing Thanksgiving dinner to a family living on hot dogs and potato chips.
Jesus told another story of a man who was hungry and gave food, and a man who was thirsty and gave drink, and said, “Whatever you did for one of the least of my brothers and sisters, you did it for me.” His parables were never about problems. They are about people and that is where justice begins.
We don’t need a miracle to know that the poor are with us, and we don’t need the threat of pain to touch our hearts. If on the street, in the appeals that cross the screen, we do not see the person at the gate, we are already lost.
What the rich man asked Lazarus to do, which is to warn his brothers, is a parable in itself that helps the reader. Questions remain. Will our brothers follow the prophet’s call to love our neighbors and strangers? We don’t know.
Will it happen? The call is already here for those who will listen. It means seeing where we are, answering, and calling our name.
notes and reading
“The Rich Man and Lazarus” – Luke 16:19-31
References: Matthew 5:45, Luke 18:27, cf. Luke 8:13, Matthew 25:31-46.
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parables of the kingdom — C.H. Dodd (1961). Dodd is a prominent New Testament scholar best known for his “realized eschatology,” or the view that God’s kingdom is already at work in the present and “what God has done and is doing in Christ.” Later scholars did not uncritically adopt Dodd’s framework, instead emphasizing that the gospel includes both the “now” and the “not yet.”
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Short Stories of Jesus — Amy Jill Levine (2014). Levin, a Jewish New Testament scholar, strips away sentimental or allegorical interpretations and reads the parables in their first-century Jewish context. She emphasizes the humor, provocation, and social edge of her stories. These stories are not meant to comfort, but to challenge listeners to see things differently.
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Max Weber: Essays in Sociologyedited and translated by H. H. Garth and C. Wright Mills (1946). “The Social Psychology of World Religions” is one of the major essays.
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Robert Frost — “Repair Wall” north of boston (1914). The line “There are things that don’t love walls” is the beginning of the poem and reappears near the end of the poem, framing the narrator’s dialogue with a neighbor who claims that “good fences make good neighbors.”
richness of presence
last play
Approximately 2+2=5
Source: 2 + 2 = 5 – williamgreen.substack.com
