Given recent awareness of the increasing gap between the über wealthy and the rest of us, and the related power inequity too, a reflection on real-time conversations our nation is having about wealth inequity, with an assist from brother Lazarus and the nameless rich guy in Luke.

This is a requested re-up of a sermon I preached last September when the passage came up in the RCL, but it references two pieces that might be timely for the third Sunday in Advent: the Magnificat, and Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, so I offer it again now.

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So when I was in late elementary school, my mama bought a hot air balloon. On our fridge, we have a picture of her positively giddy, sitting on the hood of our family’s squash-colored Buick Skylark, right after her first solo flight, a mix-of-blues thermos filled with what we were told was celebratory coffee but I have reason to be suspicious.

My father had gifted my mother a ride in a balloon for her birthday, and as soon as that balloon started to fill up with air she was hooked. Her thrill was so obvious that just a week or two after her flight, the pilot—I still remember his name, Jeff Wingad—rang her up because a cheap one had just gone up for sale. It flew and all, he assured her, but some of the skirt was a bit singed, and one of the helmets was melted on the top: apparently the former owner had been super tall, and his head got a bit too close to the burner.

Would she be interested?

There was a lot behind that purchase: it didn’t cost much, but had been paid for by the inheritance she’d received from her own mother.

And I wonder whether she could foresee certain Sundays when the wind was just right—sometimes my mom got a little tired of the tired expectations of pastors’ wives, and so when she couldn’t take it anymore, she was known to lick her finger early on Sunday morning, put it in the air to test the wind, and turn to my father and say, “It’s a good day for a balloon ride, George.”

So I grew up with a hot air balloon in a trailer in our driveway, my mother occasionally in the air, and therefore a CB radio in the gondola and in that same squash colored Buick Skylark: it became known as the “Chase Vehicle,” because, well, balloonists need people to chase them, and sometimes you can’t be sure where they are when they go out of sight. You want a way to get them back to where they belong.

Naturally, Mom had a CB handle: Balloonatic.

My Dad, who was a preacher, had a handle too: Hot Air.

It’s the “handle” part of the story, though, that came to mind as I was preparing the sermon for this morning.

Isn’t it curious that one’s radio name is called “a handle?”

Like, to reach someone, you have to have a handle, something to grab them by: that’s essentially the purpose of a name.

Bellering out “Hey You!” in a crowd isn’t useful, but calling out “Hey Englebert!” narrows the options considerably.

As you’re floating off into the great unknown, perhaps into some treacherous spaces, and people who love you can’t see you anymore, they need a handle to grab you back.

They need to know your name.

In Luke, we hear a story of a poor man who has a name: Lazarus, which, as an aside, means in Hebrew, “God helps.”

Interestingly, Lazarus is the only named character in any parable told by Jesus anywhere, apart from him naming Abraham in this same parable.

A name is not just a handle, of course: it’s a sign, a symbol that someone has worth, has dignity, deserves respect, exists.

Wealthy people, see, we tend to know their names: Musk, Bezos, Cook, Gates, Trump—they have made a name for themselves.

But in this story from Luke, it’s Lazarus, the poor guy, who gets a name in this tale.Even the rich guy knew his name: apparently Lazarus regularly sat on a bench outside the wealthy man’s home—benches like these were common beside the gates of the wealthy, who would help (and with some fanfare, so that they’d get recognition) the destitute who sat on them, but it seems that our rich guy had not gotten that memo.

In fact, the wealthy dude knew his name so well that, once the both of them had died, and landed in their respective eternal spots, he even called out to Abraham—ABRAHAM! The father of Israel, as if Abraham were his servant—to have Lazarus—as if he were also his servant—to wet his lips.

In the back and forth, Abraham had an opportunity to use the wealthy man’s name, but get this: he didn’t, beeeecause the rich guy never gets a name.

Instead, Abraham merely called him “Child.”

Oh the dripping condescension of it all: as if the rich man weren’t already sizzling in his present digs, what a sick burn.

“Child,” said the father of Israel to the man accustomed to enjoying power, authority, privilege, and wielding it.

“Child, remember,” said Abraham, because I sure do, “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.”

Now, see, here is where preaching this text gets tricky.

It’s been kinda fun up until now.

This text in any day and age is tricky, but especially these days, and especially if you’re Lutheran.

We love grace, and we love talking about forgiveness, and this text does not provide much of either to the one character in the story who resembles a good lot of us, and who is of the ilk toward whom respect tends to go, our society and culture reveres, and for whom even our national policies are designed: not for the Lazarus’ of the day, but for the rich. Just look at the recent “Big Beautiful Bill” that was passed in Congress and tell me I’m wrong.

See, if you aren’t feeling uncomfortable not only about this text from Luke, but from the regular cadence of disparagement about the wealthy and the hoarding of riches that thrums throughout Scripture, than either you aren’t paying attention or you yourself are poor, and are rejoicing in the word that you are promised the very balm that Lazarus himself received.

The rest of texts assigned for this Sunday are no exception:

Amos, not just here in Amos 6:1a, 4-7, but pretty much through his entire book declares woe to the wealthy. Like, it is not not good to be rich and within Amos’ earshot: For example, that passage in which he calls rich women who ignore the poor “cows of Bashaan?” I’m pretty sure that never shows up in a Sunday morning reading, and that is probably not by accident.

And Psalm 146? Yeah, it sings of hope not to the rich, but to those oppressed by them.

And 1 Timothy 6:6-19 refuses to allow wealthy and powerful people to live under any illusion that they are anything but constantly within the grasp of temptation, dancing with the evil that comes from private security, unless the wealthy are radically generous with their riches, and, in fact, are wealthy only in good works.

But Luke is known for his concern for the poor…and also for his concern for the rich. New Testament scholar Dr. Mark Allan Powell has said that Luke’s main message is this: just as the poor need to be redeemed from their poverty, so too do the rich need to be redeemed from their wealth.

As we are preparing to hear the words in the Magnificat for the third Sunday in Advent, recall the words that Luke places in the mouth of the very mother of Jesus, right out of the chute of his Gospel:

“…indeed, his mercy is for those who fear him

from generation to generation.

He has shown strength with his arm;

he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones

and lifted up the lowly;

he has filled the hungry with good things

and sent the rich away empty.”

Like there’s no equivocation here, no grey, no both sides-ing it.

Instead, wallop after wallop after wallop throughout Scripture—I didn’t even get to Exodus, Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Micah, and so on—it’s seriously unrelenting.

Our texts from today about wealth aren’t outlier messages, no they are not.

Economic injustice, the likes of which we see revealed in our passages today, are mentioned in Scripture more often and are more offensive to God than any other abomination, and you know what?

I’m betting you don’t know that, because we, namely leaders in the church, have a pretty spotty record of naming that.

We don’t want to handle it, in part because we don’t want to handle what will come after we do!

The structure and systems of the Church that makes it all too easy to avoid naming that God is realllllllly angry at wealth inequity. Like, the word I want to use here instead of ‘angry’ shouldn’t be said from the pulpit.

That we don’t have a habit of calling wealth and wealth inequity sinful reveals precisely why economic inequity is named more than any other offense to God: Wealth = power, and we trust the power of wealth and wealthy people more than we trust the power of God.

Trouble is, unshared wealth, poverty, economic inequity not only displeases God, it infuriates God, and people will be in a mess of trouble with God until it’s all sorted out, and someone has to tell them that wealth ticks God off, and you will be judged for unshared wealth, and for not noticing that poverty is sin, and for not taking seriously that the poor have worth, and for willingly participating in an economic system that oppresses the poor, and for not appreciating that economic injustice harms not only the poor but also the rich.

I just can’t nuance this biblical, faithful truth, though don’t think I haven’t spent significant time trying to do just that.

I can’t nuance it because the Bible and pretty much Jesus reveals this to be God’s word time and again, and we are freed by the cross and the resurrection to, as Luther said, “Call A Thing What It Is.”

Luther believed that once one is steeped in the theology of the cross—a belief that where there is death God brings about life, freeing us to see death so that we can be courageous enough to name death as such, and to transform it—we are thereby also freed to, as he said, “Call A Thing What It Is.”

Counter-intuitive as it is, it’s ignoring or rationalizing the uncomfortable things that keep us in places of death, of places that are not of God, not the naming of them, allowing us to get a handle on them.

Too late, the rich guy gets it, in that last part of the text when the rich man begs Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his five brothers about their impending fate, to name the spiritual risks of wealth, to chase them as they stray away—it’s nothing short of tragic.

It can even smack as callous when Abraham says no, but he says no because, he explains, they’ve already been told, from Moses and the prophets, and they still live gluttonous and selfish lives.

And then the kicker: “If they don’t listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”

Now, back when Luke’s words were beginning to be spread about, the recipients of this book, like we, they knew the end of the Jesus story.

They knew that he was going to be killed and then would rise from the dead.

So they could hear Abraham’s words in Jesus’ parable and say, “Yeah, so I see what you’re doing there, Jesus, I’m following the bouncing ball.”

What, in other words, prod Abraham, and Jesus, and Luke, would it take for rich people to change course, to hear the Word of God and repent?

Luke’s parable seems to say, “Demonstrably, not a thing, not even a resurrected Jesus,” because we love privilege too much.

The story is so jarring, of course, because there is not only no happy ending for the rich man in our story, but there seems to be a suggestion that there is no happy ending for any rich people.

Now, here’s where we note that some scholars believe that this story was taken from the tradition of apocryphal writings, the vivid, almost psychedelic writings the likes of which we see in the books of Daniel and Revelation.

The point to texts like these isn’t a literal truth, no.

The point is to serve as a warning: think, say, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. If you don’t change your ways, Scrooge, you too will end up like brother Marley.

Or think of scientists who tell us about climate change, and how we can change the dire trajectory, if we listen to them.

So what will it take for us to believe that of all the sins that God gets particularly hung up on, it’s unjust economic systems and rich people?

Well, first, the Church must be honest and call a thing what it is.

We gotta name the truth that wealth gets in the way of God. Policies which benefit the rich to the detriment of the poor really super duper torque God off. When we ignore the cries of the poor so that we can keep our privileges we harm the very children of God: the poor, and the rich who are engaging in sin and causing woe not just to the poor but to their very own souls.

God’s got opinions about wealth, and they are not favorable, but you can’t be held responsible if you haven’t been told.

Second, receive the word.

Sit with it.

Observe your reaction: your body’s posture or tightness within it, your blood pressure, constriction in your heart, even anger.

Notice if you find yourself justifying your wealth, the way society is structured, the reality of the poor, or the votes you’ve made which secure privilege for a few at the expense of the poor.

Consider whether you are feeling compelled to protect your status.

Reflect on your feelings about the poor.

Ponder what that might say about what you most value, and whether it’s possible that the God in whom you think you believe might, instead, be wealth.

Take stock of how much energy you take to maintain a standard of living, to protect your belongings, and whether you have a handle on your monies or whether they have a handle on you.

Third, recall that you are baptized, and you were baptized by your name, and in God’s name: in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Remember that we know that we are baptized into the news that death does not win, even the death of our privilege or our poverty.

Remember that now that we know that death doesn’t win, there’s more to do with our lives than preserve them.

Texts like these, they are a chase vehicle of sorts: when we fly off too far, or into dangerous territory, not only do these hard words chase us down, but so does the gospel.

Sometimes, Gospel sounds like Law, but if the word ultimately leads you back home, then Gospel it is.

Beloved, you are known by name.

Hear again God calling to you via 1 Timothy: “…in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains…but do not be haughty or to set hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather set them on God, do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, to take hold of the life that really is life.”

Amen

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