Trinity 1 The Sunday of Lazarus and the Rich Man June 18, 2017

Trinity 1
Luke 16:19-31 & 1 John 4:16-21
June 18, 2017

“A Poor Man with Faith and Love in his Heart”

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

I’ve seen these magnets and bumper stickers around, you know, in little gift shops and so forth, that say, “Lord, help me to be the kind of person my dog thinks I am.” Have you seen those? Maybe some of you have one of those.  I’ve always thought that was kinda clever.  Then I googled it this week and find out there’s actually a country western song from about ten years ago with that exact refrain.  He prays in the song that God would bring his dog Jake to heaven and give him a pair of wings.  Kinda crazy.  I wasn’t expecting that…

Yet at any rate, this catchy little phrase hits on something pretty significant.  We’re hypocrites.  Even to our dogs—we’re hypocrites.  Isn’t that terrible? Our dogs are better than we are!  Our dogs are more faithful and loving than we make ourselves out to be.

And we see a little bit of that in the Gospel reading today.  No one is there to help poor ‘ol Lazarus who’s covered in sores and sitting at the gate begging for food—except who?  Who has compassion on poor Lazarus?  The dogs.  The dogs—they come and lick on his wounds.  Cleaning him up.  Showing love to this poor man.

The dogs put us to shame.  And Jesus tells this story to do just that.  To put us to shame.  To show us what’s really in our hearts—behind the façade that we show to others.  This story of Lazarus and the rich man is about what’s in the heart of man.  What’s in our hearts.  Because Jesus can see right into your heart and my heart—and it’s not always good.

The problem is that we can’t see into people’s hearts and we only see the outside—so that’s what we judge by.  The rich man probably looked like a really good upstanding guy.  He probably made sure to be at Synagogue every Saturday.  Probably hung out with all the good, religious types.  Probably threw his money around in front of everybody to look generous.  And everybody probably assumed he was a shoe-in for the pearly gates.  No problem.  Surely he would get into heaven.

But then there’s this poor beggar Lazarus.  Looked like a real bum.  A lazy bum.  Sitting around doing nothing all the time.  He was an annoyance—bothering everybody for food and money.  And he’s dirty.  Doesn’t take care of himself.  He’s covered with these sores.  Would God ever want somebody like that coming through the pearly gates?

Now that’s how we judge from the outside.  We do this kind of thing all the time.  We make judgments about people by how they’re dressed, by how healthy or unhealthy they are, by how clean or dirty they are, by who their friends are and who they hang out with—you name it.  But still none of that is really why Jesus tells this story.  He tells it because we judge ourselves the very same way.  We think that we can make our outside look good and ignore the problems in our heart.  But Jesus sees them.

Imagine you could do an X-ray of both this rich man and Lazarus and be able to see in their hearts.  (I know an x-ray wouldn’t even show that but just play along with me.)  If you could x-ray each of their hearts, what would you find in there?  In the rich man, you would find only one thing in his heart—himself.  The rich man didn’t love and didn’t trust anyone more than himself.  You’d also find something else in there if you could dig deep enough—you’d find the Devil. Because the devil is always the one who wants us to love only ourselves.  The rich man, Dives as we call him, is all about filling himself with the finest of things.  Now, in a point of fact, he does actually have faith and love in his heart.  Problem is—his faith is in himself and his love is for himself.  He doesn’t have true faith or true love.

But what about poor Lazarus?  If you could x-ray his heart, what would you find in there?  Think about it a minute.  It’s not empty as we might think it is.  His heart is full.  It’s full of God.  His heart is full of faith in God.  Faith in the promises of God.  And, because of that, his heart is also full of love.  Love for God and love for his neighbor.  Now on the outside you may not have known it.  But that’s because he was suffering.  But it was there all the same.  His heart was full of true faith and love.

So when the rich man dies, he goes to where his heart is—with the devil.  And even in death, the rich man Dives cares only for himself.  Telling Abraham to send Lazarus down to him to comfort him.  Then telling him to send Lazarus to his brothers.  His heart is only with himself.

Lazarus, on the other hand, goes to where his heart is—with God.  He goes to the side of Abraham, another great man of faith, and there he is comforted.  No more anguish.  No more pain.  No more sorrow or suffering.  He is comforted.

Now think about Jesus.  X-ray the heart of Jesus.  And what’s in there?  On the outside, Jesus sure didn’t look like much.  A poor Galilean from Nazareth who just wandered around and eventually ends up on a cross.  But in His heart is all the love of God in heaven.  I started talking about dogs and their love.  You know, we call them “man’s best friend”.  And they put us sinners to shame.

But there is one, just one, whose love far surpasses those loyal canines.  He is the true “man’s best friend”.  He is Jesus, with a heart of pure gold.  A heart of pure love.  Who suffered outside the gates of Jerusalem (just like poor Lazarus at the gate).  He begged for our forgiveness from His Father in heaven.  He licked our wounds clean and made us whole with His very blood and life.  And God raised Him up from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in glory.

So now we’ll change that prayer I brought up at the beginning. Instead of, “Lord, help me to be the kind of person my dog thinks I am,” we will pray, “Lord, help me to be the kind of person my Savior is.”  In the Epistle today, John calls us not to be hypocrites.  He says, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”  We love because He first loved us.

Friends in Christ, you have everything you need right now to have a heart full of faith and love.  Everything you need.  You have the Word of God which will never let you down.  So your faith is good.  Have confidence.  You don’t need anything more than God’s Word.

Remember that the rich man thought we need more than God’s Word.  He wanted someone to go back from the dead to his brothers.  He was convinced that if someone were to rise from the dead and talk to them, then they would surely believe.  But the truth is—they still wouldn’t.  Abraham says, “If they don’t believe Moses and the prophets, they won’t believe anyone else.”

If you and I won’t believe the Word of God, then what will we believe?  The Word of God is true.  You’ve got the eyewitnesses who were with Jesus.  Who saw Him risen from the dead.  You’ve got Moses and the prophets who spoke to God.  You’ve got King David and his Psalms.  What more do we need, friends?  It was good enough for poor Lazarus.  It’s good enough for us.

So fill your heart with faith through the Word of God.  You don’t need anything else.  And then—fill your heart with the love of Jesus.  Again—you have everything you need right now to love your neighbor.  Sometimes we think, “Oh, someday when I have more time and more money—then I’ll spend more time helping and loving others.”  That’s just an excuse.  Right now we can love.

We have everything we need.  We have time.  We can give our time to our neighbor to listen.  To lend a hand.  We have our words.  We can encourage our neighbor, build them up.  We can speak kind words of acceptance and forgiveness.  We have our church—a church that is full of resources to help those in need and to love them.

Hell is a place of anguish and torment.  We don’t want to go there.  And we don’t want anyone to else to go there either.  So we take our cue from the poor man Lazarus and turn to Jesus.  We fill our hearts with faith and love.  Faith in God which comes through His Word.  And love for our neighbor which comes from the love of Jesus in His forgiveness for our sin.

This is a heart even better than the heart of our loyal dogs.  A heart full of faith in God and love for one another.  God grant us all such hearts—the heart of Jesus.  In His’ name. Amen.