The Rich Man and Lazarus
“If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.”
This week’s parable offers us a lot of details to digest. In a cruel inverse of the heavenly banquet, the poor man Lazarus, who hungered to feast off of the excess cast down from the rich man’s table, is instead himself cast down in the gutter, where the dogs feast on his sores. But then in death comes the reversal, wherein Lazarus is lifted up and comforted in the bosom of Abraham, and the rich man cast down into the fires of trial and torment, across a chasm that no man can cross. That drama, in this icon, is embodied in a staircase: a pathway connecting the fool’s banquet with the fires of recompense. There is, conversely, no obvious connection between Lazarus’s lowly station on the earth and his reception in heaven: quite to the contrary, the axis connecting his earthly life and his heavenly reward is completely unconnected, and transects the Rich Man’s stairway between feast and torment. The icon, like the parable, invites us to meditate on the unresolved paradoxes of grace and judgement, without leaving us any clear answers.
As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.
— 1 Timothy 6:17-19
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Texts for This Week
Prayer
O merciful Lord, grant to your faithful people pardon and peace, that we may be cleansed from all our sins and serve you with a quiet mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Lord, whose love in humble service
Albert Bayly’s orientation towards the social mission of the Church — which stands behind this hymn — was formed by his adult experience of the Great Depression. He penned these words in the early 1960s in response to a search by the Hymn Society of America for new hymns on social welfare, and it thence became a modest hit (as modern hymns go) in the hymnals of the 70s and 80s.
It is, by any measure, a robust hymn: Bayly takes us from the Cross — the redeeming pinnacle of God’s love expressed in the service of Christ — to worship, and offers the plea that our vision would be so shaped by worshipping the God who redeemed us in Christ that we would not end up — like the Rich Man avoiding Lazarus — with hearts closed to the needs of this world, but that we would, like Christ, be carried by the Spirit of God with power and compassion to love and care for our neighbors.
This “virtual choir edition” from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Boulder, CO may not be the highest production value recording of the hymn — and there are many from COVIDtide — but the intensity of the Welsh tune BLAENHAFREN is an excellent fit for the seriousness of the lyrics. Matching the heaviness of Bayly’s lyrics, we should be made feel the unresolved weight of Christ’s sacrifice for our sins, as well the brokenness of our world. The rumbling G-Minor harmonies of this tune underscore that perfectly, whereas the innocent BEACHSPRING (with which these words are more often paired) misses it almost entirely.
