Twenty Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

We were all deeply upset by the sight of starving children in Gaza in recent months. The sight of the awful effects of famine, especially on children, is made more upsetting by the awareness that there are lorry loads of food at the border waiting for clearance. The Irish Government had financed a fleet of trucks which were waiting in Jordan. We all feel that the proximity of famine conditions and an abundance of food is scandalous. Our own experience as a people of the great famine in the mid nineteenth century makes us especially sensitive to such a situation. On that occasion too terrible famine happened in close proximity to plenty of food.

We have the same situation depicted in today’s gospel reading only this time on an individual scale. Jesus told this parable to the Pharisees who had just been described as ‘lovers of money’. The rich man in the parable was clearly a lover of money. He was a member of that tiny elite in the time of Jesus who were extremely wealthy. He was dressed in purple and fine linen, the most expensive cloth of the day. He feasted magnificently every day. The vast bulk of the population never feasted magnificently. They ate very basic food, if they were fortunate. There were many who were never sure of food and were completely dependent on the generosity of others to survive. Lazarus in the parable is such a person. Those who don’t eat are prone to illness as they have no bodily resources to fight infection or disease. We are told that Lazarus was covered in sores, which the scavenging dogs licked. He desperately needed nourishing food, but what he wanted was very modest indeed, ‘he longed to fill himself with the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table’. The very rich at that time, having eaten with their hands, used to wipe their hands on scraps of bread to clean them, and the scraps were thrown to the dogs. This is all Lazarus longed for, dog food, but enough to ease the pangs of hunger and keep him alive a little longer.

Why did Jesus tell this story to the lovers of money? He was showing them how the selfish pursuit of wealth can make people blind and deaf to the cry of the most vulnerable, to the cry of the Lord who speaks to us not only through the Scriptures but through one another, especially through those who are frail and often dependent on others for survival. The rich man in the parable was aware of Lazarus at his gate because he recognized Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham in life beyond death. Sometimes when people are asked why they didn’t respond to a dreadful situation, like famine, they say that they weren’t aware it was happening. This man was aware of Lazarus, but he chose to ignore him. He went about his extravagant, self-indulgent, lifestyle as if Lazarus wasn’t there. As a result, Lazarus’ basic longings went unanswered. In the parable of the prodigal son, when the younger son ended up destitute, he longed to fill himself with the pods that the pigs were eating, and no one gave him anything. However, once he headed for home, his hunger for food was more than satisfied, as his father prepared a great feast for him. His hunger for forgiveness, for acceptance, for the company of loved ones was also satisfied. Lazarus had no home to go to. His longing for food, and his deeper hunger for acceptance, for the company of loved ones, was only satisfied beyond death. There he found himself at the place of honour at the banquet of life, at which Abraham was the host.

Jesus is saying through this parable that Lazarus should not have had to wait that long. His basic and deeper longings could have been satisfied in this life, if the rich man was even slightly attentive to his fellow human being at his gate. In the next life, the rich man addressed Abraham as ‘Father’; he recognized himself as a child of Abraham. However, in his life time, he had failed to recognize Lazarus as a child of Abraham, as his brother in the Lord. In this parable, Jesus was railing against the sin of indifference, our failure to allow ourselves to be moved by the plight of others. In the parable of the prodigal son, when the father saw his broken, starving, son, he had compassion for him, and it was his compassion that brought his son from death to life. When the Samaritan saw the broken, half-dead, stranger by the roadside, it was his compassion that brought this man from death to life. Even a little compassion on the part of the rich man could have brought Lazarus from death to life. We are very dependent on one another. Sometimes we need the compassionate response of others if we are to keep going, to stay well and alive. At other times someone, somewhere, needs our compassionate response if they are to move out of the realm of death towards the light of life. It is above all by our compassion that we reveal the Lord to one another. I was very taken by a Chinese proverb recently, ‘It is better to have a tender heart at home than to burn incense at a distant shrine’.