READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Deuteronomy 6:4-13
1 John 4:8-21
- St. Luke 16:19-31
Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our
Savior. (Titus 1:4)
Who speaks to you today, saying:
“Then I beg you,
father, to send him to my father's house”
For as little as we talk about the Holy Ghost, we speak only
a bit more of the First Person of the Trinity: the Father. Who is He? What does
He do? Usually in Church art, He is pictured as the Old Man with Santa Claus
vibes. In the parable today, Jesus brings up the Father, putting that word on
the lips of the Rich Man four times and that father appears to not be doing a
good job.
For he has a dishonorable and hypocritical son. The Rich Man
takes his father’s name in vain, by not doing as his words told him. And at the
most successful point in the Rich man’s life, who wouldn’t? Whoever was his
father spoiled him. He was careless and haphazard with his father’s house, and
yet was set up and acted as the son, for all the world to see.
The Father is of Whom Jesus said, “Then the King will say
to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the
kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Mt 25:36).
Indeed, the rich man looked blessed in this way, by all accounts.
This is because this is how the Father operates. He makes no
distinctions in His creation and gives life and daily bread to all, even to all
evil people. And there is the catch for this rich man. He is posing as the son
of his heavenly father, wrapped in purple and fine linen, but is he a true son
or a false one?
Being known mainly as the creator of all things, the Father
is going to sustain life regardless of who you are. It is His nature and it is
part of His glory that all things He creates continue to work as He demands, no
matter what His creations do with it. “Upright and breathing” is the status
quo.
In this light, it is now unclear what the Father actually
thinks of this rich man or even Lazarus for that matter, since they are both
being cared for in the same way. The Father is not partial and the things of
this world do not concern Him. Riches, poverty, health, sickness. All will be
made of use in His grand plan, because He says so.
The parable should have ended with those first few lines in
the gospel, but it didn’t. And that’s the concern for us, because we dress
pretty well, are fed satisfactorily, and live pretty comfortably with poor
people around, living worse than us, too.
However, caring for the poor is only the second part of this
parable, which we should do. The first part is the Father. Who He is, what He
says, and what He does. As far as we’re concerned, the rich man was modeling
this behavior accurately. The Father is rich, the Father is unconcerned, and He
is satisfied eternally. The problem we run into is the word “Father”.
You see “father” is not a name of essence. It doesn’t
describe what God is made of, as if we can mimic that behavior and everything
be fine for eternity. Instead, it is a name of relation, as in, Who He is in
relation to someone else. What the word “father” says about God is how He
relates to the son. To be specific, how He chooses to relate.
The rich man was denying this Name of God: Father. He was
denying the care and concern promised to creation, not in God’s almightiness or
perfection, but in His love for His only-begotten Son. God turned His fatherly
heart to His creation by saying to His beloved Son, “it’s time to have
compassion.”
Before caring for the poor, is the caring heart needed to do
it in the first place. The rich man’s sin was not being rich, it was taking the
Lord’s Name in vain, by denying this heart. The Father is handing out this new
heart for free, and he rejects it. He was denying physical care and spiritual
care for Lazarus. For, the Name of God is given that we might call upon it in
every trouble, pray in it, give praise to it, and give thanks.
Listen to Malachi teach this:
“A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If
then I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is my fear?
says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests, who despise my name. But you say,
‘How have we despised your name?’ By offering polluted food
upon my altar. But you say, ‘How have we polluted you?’ By saying that the
Lord's table may be despised. When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, is
that not evil? And when you offer those that are lame or sick, is that not evil?
Present that to your governor; will he accept you or show you favor?” (Mal
1:6-8)
The priests were offering blind, polluted animals as
sacrifices and calling it God’s Will, revealed in His Word. They created a
false father and set themselves up as false sons following false words. Their
words were not His Word, thus they were not His sons.
The Lord says, “the lips of a priest should guard
knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the
messenger of the Lord of hosts. But you have turned aside
from the way. You have caused many to stumble by your doctrine” (Mal 2:7-8)
This is the rich man’s sin. Not being rich, not even
ignoring Lazarus, but saying that God would do such things. Saying that God in
His rich house, with His lavish table, and in His royal clothes would deny
mercy to those who need mercy.
This is also the tragedy of our sin. As representatives of
Jesus on earth, each time we sin we are telling the world this is what Christ
would do, because we are Christians, we bear His Name. Just as the Son bears
the Fathers Name, we too are adopted and thus we act, thus we teach.
For example, the Lord puts His Table in front of us, as
Malachi said. We do not practice Communion for fun. It is not a game for us to
change the pieces at will. If Jesus says bread, there’s going to be bread. Not
crackers, not pizza, not oysters. If Jesus says wine, there’s going to be wine.
Not juice or any man-made, “close enough” iteration. For if we are going to
find forgiveness in it, as promised, then it will be at the Lord’s Word, not
ours.
In this way, we do not know the Father except through the
Son.
Who is the Son? The Magnificat says, “He has filled the
hungry with good things, but has sent the rich away empty” (Lk 1:53). As
in, the rich Son, as He should be, being from the Father, is emptied. Stripped
of all He has, the Son goes to the cross. We peg Him as a “Lazarus”, sent away
to suffer and die for sinners.
Drawing near to the Father means drawing near to the Son. “The
Father has sent me”, Jesus says in John 20:21. And Proverbs 30:4, “Who
has ascended to heaven and come down? Who has gathered the wind in His hands?
Who has bound up the waters in His cloak? Who has established all the ends of
the earth? What is His name, and what is the name of His Son—surely you know!”
Jesus is His Name, sent in the Name of the Father, and of
the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Jesus Who in the beginning, created all things
from His infinite wealth. Jesus, Who steps out of His wealth, into the poverty
of flesh and blood. Jesus, Who though dressed in purple and fine linen, was
crowned with thorns.
Jesus, Who gave the thoughts and words to Moses and the
prophets, says that they wrote about Him. He Who is beloved of the Father. He
Who is chosen by the Father. He Who is vindicated by the Father, raising Him
from the dead.
The robes of purple and fine linen the Rich man should have
been wearing, are stained with blood. The robe that Lazarus was wearing was
blood and sores, the blood and sores of the sin of this world. Since the rich
man was clean, he needed no Savior. Since Lazarus was a beggar, empty of all,
the Lord gave Him everything.
Jesus begged for Lazarus’s life, with His own life. Jesus
begs for the Rich Man as well, but the Rich man doesn’t need handouts. There
can only be one son in the house and He is the Crucified. Abraham and Lazarus
are there, because they have drawn near to the Father, in the Son.
Drawing near to the Father is following the Son. And the Son
says, “Hear and believe”, “be baptized and be saved”, and “eat and drink for
the forgiveness of sins”. The Father is made of none, neither created, nor
begotten (Athanasian Creed). And there is only one Son. Only-begotten.
Unique.
“There is one body and one Spirit”, says Ephesians
4:4-7, “just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—
one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all
and through all and in all. But grace was given to each one of us according to
the measure of Christ’s gift”. “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one
body” (1 Corinthians 12:13).
As the Father baptized the Son, Jesus, in the Jordan river,
we too are baptized into His Son so that He sees us in Jesus and we see Him in
Jesus. The blessings from the Father are sent through the Son only, which is
how we know they are blessings and gifts, and not a pay check we earned.
We do not gain, keep, and maintain our status as children of
God. It is given to us. It is given to us only through Jesus, the True Son. Any
other way is another god, a false one. The Rich man can appeal to Abraham all
he wants, and even call him “father”.
But if he truly saw Abraham as father, he would believe what
Abraham said. And Abraham said Jesus is the Christ, the only-begotten Son of
God, Who was born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was
crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell. On the third day He
rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sits at the Right Hand of
God the Father Almighty, from thence He shall come to judge both the living and
the dead.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment