Luke 16:19-31 (I); The Power of Passivity (I)

"There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. 20 And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, 21 who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. 22 The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. 24 He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.’ 25 But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. 26 Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’ 27 He said, ‘Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house— 28 for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.’ 29 Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’ 30 He said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ 31 He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

Introduction

This familiar parable bristles with interesting problems and scenic byways, even though the central message is probably clear: mercy towards outsiders (this time a poor, sickly man) is the heart of Jesus' Gospel. Here, however, an added incitement to merciful action is provided: to wit, if you don't act with mercy towards outsiders you run the risk of torment in the afterlife. Even though a "quick read" of the passage might see it confirming the message of Jesus in Luke 6 or 14 or 15, closer attention to the language and images of the story presents interesting angles on the "activism" of the rich, the "passivity" of the poor, the "gulf" between the rich and poor, the presumptuousness of the rich even beyond this life, and the deafness of God to cries for merciful treatment.

As I do in many of my Gospel expositions, I will try to create a rich textual understanding of the story in these two essays by patient reading of the Greek text. I hope you can glean from my comments and your own thinking on the text enough to stimulate you for many, many minutes.

I. The Initial Contrast (16:19-20)

The first thing to notice about the parable is who is named and who is not. Lazarus, the poor man, seems to be known by everyone in the parable, but the rich man has no name. Lazarus is known by the narrator (v. 20), by the rich man himself (v. 24) and by Father Abraham (v. 25). But no one knows the rich man's name. We have a saying in the 21st century--the "nameless poor," but it isn't that way in this story. If a name in the ancient world gave one power, then the subtle message of Luke in this story is that Lazarus, the one apparently powerless, is really the one with the power in the story.

But Lazarus' power is expressed in an interesting way in vv. 19-20. He is completely passive. He has the name, but he is always spoken of in the passive voice. In contrast, the rich man, without a name, is the activist. Let's look at the text and see how this works. Jesus begins by telling about a "certain man," a man who was "rich." He is part of the "nameless rich" of Luke's theology, just another rich guy who feasts in the apparent security of his gated community. They not only fill Newport Beach and Scottsdale but also apparently portions of ancient Israel.

Three descriptors in vv. 19-20 give us a glimpse into this nameless rich person's world. He wore "purple" and "fine linen," he feasted sumptuously every day and his home was gated. Lazarus sat outside the gate hoping for some food. The words purple and fine linen are a sort of hendiadys (a rhetorical device where one concept is expressed with two words..."he came despite the wind and weather," instead of the "windy weather"), which means that the two descriptors are used to express the one concept of extreme wealth. We don't have to know precisely how wool was first "fulled" in a costly process to make it white before being dyed with the distinctive purple of Asia Minor to know that the nameless rich guy was decked out with all the accoutrements of wealth and position. We note that the word for feasting is used here as well as in the parable of the prodigal son--15:24--but in Luke 15 the feasting is a one time extravaganza while here it is a daily occurrence. This adds to our perspective on the man. His life was one of constant feasting. The text doesn't say if his daily feasts were with tons of people or not. We know from later in the story that he had five brothers. Perhaps his was like a "Job's family" in Job 1--they shared food each day with each other at their respective houses. They may even have blessed God in the process.

Even though we have the rich man here, we know that he is nameless. Why would Jesus have neglected to name him? It would have been easy to add two more words to the text to tell us that the man had a name, but Jesus doesn't do this. Thus, our eyes, as it were, are immediately drawn to the second person of the drama, Lazarus. Instead of saying "there was a certain man, who was poor," in order to maintain the parallelism with v. 19, Jesus just says, "There was a poor man, Lazarus by name..."

Luke understands how important is the name of a person to the person's identity. Recall the naming of John the Baptist in 1:59ff. People in the community wanted to name him Zechariah after his father. But his mother said his name was John, and his father wrote the same on a tablet. Once the name was given, discussion ends. We have a real person here; we have the power of personhood entering him. Thus, in our story, the rich man is just a guy; Lazarus is the name of the poor man.

But everything happens to Lazarus rather than Lazarus "taking charge" of his life. The first verb used to describe him is in the extremely rare pluperfect passive (bet you never have run into one of them!) and is best translated, "he had been dumped off." The NRSV and most Biblical translations "prettify" the word and translated it as "lay" or something like that. Indeed, the verb "lay" gives us exactly the wrong impression. We tend to see a cherubic Christ-like figure laid in the manger. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Greek verb is ballo, which means "to cast" or "to throw." Lazarus was a man who had just been dumped off at the gate of the rich guy. The verb emphasizes his passivity and the indignity of his situation.

Lazarus' passivity continues in the following verses, but it is supplemented by something that the most prescient students of wealth and poverty recognize today--the tremendous "gap" between the rich and the poor. Let's move to that, in the next essay.

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