Patrick Comerford
We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and tomorrow is the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XV, 28 September). Later this morning, I hope to be at the Parish Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford.
Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, reading today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Bonifacio Veronese, Dives and Lazarus, 1540-50. Oil on canvas (Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice)Luke 16: 19-31 (NRSVA):
[Jesus told this parable:] 19 ‘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”.’
The Rich Man and Lazarus … a stained glass window in Saint Mary’s Church, Banbury, OxfordToday’s Reflections:
The Gospel reading today (Luke 16: 19-31) is a popular Bible story. We usually know this as the story of Dives and Lazarus, and it is almost as well-known a story as the parables of the Good Samaritan or the Prodigal Son.
But there are some unique and distinctive aspects to this story.
For example, this story is found only in Saint Luke’s Gospel.
Surprisingly, God is not named in this story. But, of course, as in the Book of Esther, God is seldom named in the Gospel parables either. Instead, the parables challenge us to think who is God for us by asking us to see who is most God-like, who acts like God would act.
The poor man at the gate is named, but the name Lazarus could be confusing, because this is also the name of the brother of Mary and Martha, the dead friend Jesus raised to life in Bethany.
The name Lazarus, or in Hebrew Eleazar, which means ‘the Lord is my help,’ is an interesting name for those who first heard Jesus tell this story, for the rich man in his castle certainly is of no help to the poor man at his gate.
Abraham is named. And Moses is named. Both are key figures in this story, for all the descendants of Abraham are promised that they are going to be children of the covenant with God. And it is Moses who receives that covenant in the wilderness on Mount Sinai. The man at the gate, who is being ignored by a leading religious figure of the day, must have been made to feel hopeless, outside the scope of the covenant, abandoned, in a wilderness, impoverished, exiled outside the community.
But there are six other characters in the story – and not one of them is named.
The Rich Man, who is at the centre of the story, is sometimes called ‘Dives.; But the name Dives is one he does not have in the Gospel story, in the parable as Jesus tells it. Tradition has given him the name Dives, but the rich man is anonymous and he has no name. The name Dives derives simply from a misreading of an early Latin translation of the Bible.
The rich man has five brothers, but not one of these is named either.
I like to think this man is anyone who claims to be religious but who falls in love with riches. It is not his wealth that is his downfall, but his love of wealth and how he uses it.
The Apostle Paul is often misquoted as saying money is the root of all evil. But what he actually tells Timothy is that ‘the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil,’ and that, ‘in their eagerness to be rich, some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.’
It is possible to be religious and rich at one and the same time. But if I appear to be religious, I need to be careful that my religious practices are not a contradiction of, a denial of, the way I live my life in the world, and respond to the needs of others.
God’s covenant is only meaningful when it is lived as a covenant of love. The rich man loves himself first, and, perhaps, his family, his own inner circle second. But that is as far as his religion goes. It does not go beyond his own front door.
I like to think Jesus is playing a little game with those who are religious and listening. The Samaritan woman at the well (John 4) is told that she is wed to five husbands but has no true marriage at all.
The five husbands could represent the first five books of the Bible – the Torah. The Samaritans would not accept any other writings as Holy Scripture, and there was a joke among Jews at the time that the Samaritans were so insistent on these five books alone that it was like being wedded to them. They were the Biblical fundamentalists of their day. She is being told that you cannot be wed to Holy Scripture and have a covenantal relationship with God without love. She realises that just as being wed but without love is no marriage, so being religious without love is no religion at all.
Love is the active ingredient of true religion. And when that dawns on her, she becomes one of the greatest missionaries in the Gospels.
Similarly, Jesus may be playing a game with those who are listening to today’s parable. If the rich man, as it appears, is a priest of the Temple, then he too is a religious figure. But the priestly caste of the day were Sadducees, not Pharisees. And so the Pharisees who were listening to this story (verse 14) would have known that the Sadducees too refused to accept as part of the Bible any books other than the first five – when it came to Holy Scripture they only admitted those five into the family of faith.
The rich man realises that being wed to the Torah without love is no covenant. But unlike, the Samaritan woman, it is too late for him when this truth dawns on him.
There is no covenant without love, and this is true for marriage and for religion.
There is no true religion without love … not self-interest, but love for God and love for others.
Of course, there is one other character in this story who is not named. This is not a human character, but an animal – the dog.
There is a 1996 film produced at the Sullivan Bluth studios in Dublin, All Dogs go to Heaven, with a voice over by Burt Reynolds. But, while we think of dogs today as faithful pets, there was a religious tradition in the time of Jesus that dogs did not get into heaven.
Lazarus is hungry and covered with sores, and sits outside the gate of what must have looked like a Heavenly City inside. He is in such a condition and in a place that even the dogs come and lick his sores (verse 21). For its time, this is a description of abject living, so abhorrent that this man is totally outside normal, good clean company. He is in the wilderness, in exile, and at a point where only God can redeem him.
Dives is not a single identifiable rich man. He is each and every one of us. Who among us, on first hearing this story, as it opened, as the first part of it began to be told, would not have delighted in the lifestyle of the rich man. After all, how often do I find myself saying, quite rightly, all I want is for me and those I love to have somewhere decent to live, decent clothes and decent food?
But that decency turns to indecency when these things soon become all we want in life … and want nothing for others, have no place for meeting the needs of others.
I heard a comedian once complaining about the size of a pizza slice he was served in a café – if you had a pie chart for what you would do if you a won a million in the lotto, this was the size of the slice for what I would give to charity, he said.
Having lost his compassion for others, especially the needy on his doorstep, Dives loses his religion, for without love there can be no true religion; and Dives loses his humanity, for I am only human in so far as I am like God and love others.
The loss of Dives’ humanity is symbolised by his loss of a personal name. I am baptised with a personal name, and so incorporated into the Body of Christ; that name is how I am known to God and to others – God calls me and you recognise me by my name. Without a name, can Dives remain in the image of God? Can he be called on by others as a fellow human being?
On the other hand, the name Lazarus means ‘God helps’ – the Greek Λάζαρος (Lazaros) is derived from the Hebrew Eleazar (אֶלְעָזָר, Elʿazar), ‘God’s assistance,’ or: ‘God has helped.’ Eleazar was a nephew of Moses and the second High Priest, succeeding his father Aaron after he died. So, as this story unfolds, our expectations of God’s actions, of God’s deliverance, are raised incrementally, but we are also expecting a conflict between two priests about who are the true heirs to Abraham and Moses, and a conflict about the teachings on and expectations of eternal justice and eternal life.
The coming of Christ turns all our skewed values upside down: those we think are most outside God’s compassion and outside the Kingdom of Heaven may well be those most likely to be signs of what the Kingdom of God is, and to be reminders of kingdom values.
Lazarus who is an outsider becomes the true insider; Lazarus who is totally poor becomes rich in the one way that really matters; Lazarus who is at death’s door finds eternal life.
The dogs too play an important role – like the woman who mops the brow of Jesus on his way to Calvary, and the women who weep with him above the city … they do not take away his suffering, but they tell him that his suffering is shared in creation.
So, who is most like God, most like Christ, in this Gospel story?
Those who first heard this story, would initially have expected the person to be most like God to be the religious leader, the one who can cite the Bible, who calls out to Abraham and Moses. And those who first heard this story would initially have expected that the person to be least like God is going to be the beggar at the gates, the man outside among the dogs.
But is that not what Christ is like? He gives up everything to identify with our humanity in his incarnation, life and death; he is rejected, suffers and dies outside the city walls.
You may not want to be like Lazarus, but Christ wants us to be like him. And we are most like him not when we hope for riches and pleasures beyond our reach, but when we love God and when we love one another. God calls each and every one of us to be like him, to love like him, and when he calls us he calls us by name.
When the poor man dies, he is carried away by the angels to be with Abraham (verse 22). When the rich man dies and finds himself in Hades he calls out to Abraham as ‘father’ or ‘Father Abraham’ (verse 24), and he in turn is addressed by Abraham as ‘Child’ (verse 25).
These are not mere terms of affection but in a profound way they open one other possibility in this story, a perspective that is not offered by commentators, perhaps because many are not familiar with customs within Judaism, yet one that I believe may be possible and perhaps even profound.
Jewish law or halakhah considers converts to Judaism as spiritually adopted into the lineage of Abraham, the first Jewish patriarch. Male converts are often called ‘ben Avraham Avinu’ (son of Abraham, our father) during liturgical ceremonies such as being called up to Torah readings in the synagogue.
This custom serves to emphasise their connection to these foundational figures and signifies that converts are spiritually adopted into the Jewish lineage, becoming part of the covenant established with Abraham and Sarah. This practice is a way to acknowledge their entry into the Jewish people and their spiritual connection to the foundational figures of Judaism.
The custom of referring to a man who is a convert to Judaism as ‘ben Avraham Avinu’ is connected with the prohibition in Jewish law of mistreating proselytes, including reminding them that they were once not a Jew.
There is a possibility here that Lazarus was a convert to Judaism, but that he was constantly reminded of this by Dives, metaphorically left outside the gates, outside what he defined as the community of faith, denied his place as a true child of Abraham, as though he had been thrown to the dogs.
We are told that when the poor man in the Gospel reading died, he ‘was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham.’ In calling him ‘child’, Abraham restores the outsider to his proper place as an insider within the community of faith, restores him to him to his rightful place in the community, an eternal justice that he had been denied in mortal life.
Jesus uses a similar phrase in a Gospel reading last month (Luke 10: 13-17, Sunday 24 August 2024, Trinity X), when he seess a woman who has endured suffering for 18 years, calls her into the centre of the synagogue, heals her and refers to her as a daughter of Abraham. Was she too a convert to Judaism, or the widow of a convert, denied her rightful place in the community of faith, marginalised and never fully accepted, bent over for 18 years by the demands and expectations that had been laid on her shoulders?
Who is Lazarus to me today?
Who do I exclude, who do I make a stranger at the gate?
The story of Dives and Lazarus has inspired great artists, and composers like Vaughan Williams
Today’s Prayers:
Today’s Prayers (Sunday 28 September 2025, Trinity XV):
The theme this week (28 September to 4 October) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘One Faith: Many Voices’ (pp 42-43). This theme is introduced today with Reflections from Rachel Weller, Communications Officer, USPG:
To mark the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, USPG created a unique video showcasing Christians from around the world reciting the Nicene Creed in their own languages. The compilation features speakers of Twi, Bengali, Portuguese, Welsh, and various forms of English spoken by believers from the Middle East, Zambia and the Solomon Islands.
Interestingly, the project revealed some similarities concealed within the different languages we speak. For instance, the Arabic term for Holy Spirit, ar-rūh al-qudus (رلاُّحو لاْقُدُس), closely resembles Roh Kudus in Iban, an Indigenous language of Malaysia, due to the influence of Islam. Likewise, Biblical Hebrew rúakh hakódesh (ורּחַ הַקֹּדֶשׁ) shares a striking similarity – a clear sign of the legacy of Abrahamic religions and their languages. In the Philippines, espíritu santo in Tagalog reflects the same expression in Spanish, highlighting the enduring legacy of Spanish colonial influence.
And so, whilst history, culture, and even colonial legacies have shaped the languages we speak, they have not divided the essence of our faith. Although we sound different, the central message remains the same. It is a beautiful thing to affirm together that ‘we believe in one God, one faith, and one baptism’.
Watch now and hear the Nicene Creed as you’ve never heard it before. Available on YouTube @USPGglobal.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Sunday 28 September 2025, Trinity XV) invites us to pray by reading and meditating on Luke 16: 19-31.
The Collect:
God, who in generous mercy sent the Holy Spirit
upon your Church in the burning fire of your love:
grant that your people may be fervent
in the fellowship of the gospel
that, always abiding in you,
they may be found steadfast in faith and active in service;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Keep, O Lord, your Church, with your perpetual mercy;
and, because without you our human frailty cannot but fall,
keep us ever by your help from all things hurtful,
and lead us to all things profitable to our salvation;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Lord God,
defend your Church from all false teaching
and give to your people knowledge of your truth,
that we may enjoy eternal life
in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Collect on the Eve of Saint Michael and All Angels:
Everlasting God,
you have ordained and constituted
the ministries of angels and mortals in a wonderful order:
grant that as your holy angels always serve you in heaven,
so, at your command,
they may help and defend us on earth;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Yesterday’s Reflections
Continued Tomorrow
Maddy Prior’s live performance of ‘Dives and Lazarus’ at the Nettlebed Folk Club on the ‘Seven For Old England’ tour. The song is on the album of the same name ‘Seven For Old England’
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