The
Parable of The Rich Man and Lazarus doesn't directly conjure up a fear of living in hell for me, rather it is about recognizing
the responsibility
to transform the world through love, justice, and solidarity with the
oppressed, Precisely the "woke" ideology many are decrying today.
The rich man is not so much condemned for being wealthy but
for
ignoring the
suffering of Lazarus was at his gate. His indifference mirrors how the
privileged can be blind to the struggles of the marginalized today. Hell
then becomes a consequence, not a punishment for how this man lived. There are news stories about arrests and attacks today going on in the United States that remind me of the chasm Abraham speaks of in this parable to the rich man, " 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."
This chasm is a symbol that calls on Christians to be actively involved in helping the oppressed, rather than living in comfort while others suffer..So the
story challenges economic inequality, racial injustice, and the neglect
of the poor.
Lazarus, the powerless beggar, is elevated to
Abraham’s side, while the rich man, once powerful, is now helpless. This aligns with Jesus’ repeated theme of the
“great reversal” (
Luke 1:52—Mary’s Magnificat: “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly”).
Instead of focusing on eternal damnation, this parable serves as a warning, a wake-up call for the living. The "great chasm" isn't just in the afterlife—it exists right now in our world between the rich and the poor, the privileged and the oppressed.
The rich man never speaks to Lazarus. He asks Abraham to direct Lazarus as to what the rich man wants to have done. Oddly when the rich man wants to warn his five brothers, he asks Abraham to send Lazarus to go. The brothers would likely not even recognize that Lazarus died or had come back from the dead. The rich man simply demonstrates in how he treats Lazarus that the chasm here is the one that he had created in life.
In the parable Lazarus is neither spoken to nor does he speak. His most powerful presence in the parable precisely because he is named. He is the only named character that appears in a parable and it gives him power. The rich man is so self-absorbed he makes no attempt to speak to, much less apologize to, Lazarus for their respective life circumstances..
Those of us who are rich in this life can heed the clear warning.
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