Delivered on Sunday 26 April 2009 in St George's Chapel

Luke 16:19-31

Preached on Scout Sunday

Paddy the Englishman, Paddy the Scotsman and Paddy the Irishman walk into a bar. The barman turns around and says, "What is this, some kind of joke?"

If this is, in itself, a kind of joke it works only because we all know that when Paddy the Englishman, Paddy the Scotsman and Paddy the Irishman get together, they do so in the context of a joke. The three Paddy's are part of local culture, part of our shared story telling. Now much the same kind of thing could be said about the parable we heard today. That story of the reversal of fortune was very well known in the ancient world. It would appear that it began life a long time ago in Egypt. That particular version ended with the words: "He who has been good on earth, will be blessed in the kingdom of the dead, and he who has been evil on earth, will suffer in the kingdom of the dead". The version doing the rounds in first century Palestine involved two specific characters: a poor scholar and a rich tax-collector. And here Jesus gives us his take on the same shared story. We have named his version: the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus.

So there's this rich chap. And he's very rich. If you wanted to show off your wealth in the ancient world, you couldn't pop out and buy a big Mercedes or a Rolls Royce but you could get yourself down to the market and purchase the very latest clothes, making sure they were purple. Purple meant expensive. Similarly this man didn't just have the occasional feast, the text tells us that he feasted sumptuously every day. By contrast, there was a very poor man whose pitch was outside the gates of the rich man's mansion. This was man was so poor that he would have been delighted to eat the bread thrown away by the rich man's guests. So there you have the situation, as Cecil Frances Alexander wrote in her hymn 'All things bright and beautiful': The rich man in his castle / The poor man at his gate / God made them, high or lowly / and order'd their estate.

But then both men die. The poor man, being poor, was not buried but he was carried away to be with Abraham. The rich man, rich even in death, was indeed buried but he ended up in the other place. And he sat there in great torment in the midst of a great fire. He cried out to Father Abraham: Is there any chance you could get that fellow Lazarus - you know him, he's the man who sat at the end of my drive - can you send him down here with drop of water. Even in his torment, this rich man knew the value of having a servant! And Abraham said, basically, Nothing doing. And there you have the classic Egyptian story of role reversal retold and repackaged by Jesus.

Now so far the audience will have known the story; they will have known what came next; so far, there will have been no surprises. In fact they may well have thought the story was over - and a bit like my experience with some Choral music - they will have been surprised when they discovered that there was yet more. For Jesus had not finished his story. The rich man, now realising just how bad his situation really is, says to Father Abraham: 'I beg you to send Lazarus to my five brothers, to warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment'. 'But they've got Moses and the prophets' replied Abraham, 'they should listen to them'. 'No,' reasoned the rich man, 'you see, if someone from the dead goes to them, they will surely repent'. Will they indeed? Abraham doesn't think so: "if they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead."

So why does Jesus take an old favourite and give it an extra ending? I think there are at least two answers to that question. First, that ancient story painted a picture of life after death; it also spoke about a specific kind of social relationship - that between the rich and the poor. Jesus' story is much broader. He took an old story and made it new by giving it a far greater application. His point is not so much to tell us about life after death as it is to explain what is involved in life itself. And what is involved in life itself? Learning to listen to the word of God. To the rich man, Abraham, says 'Your brothers should listen to Moses and the prophets'. They should listen to the word of God, for if they did that they would understand what is expected of them. Now their ears are closed to Moses and the prophets, so they chase after money; they create their own idols, they have forgotten that 'Thou shalt have no other gods but me'. Living in splendour surrounded by idols of their own creation they have forgotten that God desires 'mercy not sacrifice'. The parable is a call to listen to the word of God.

But there is a second point. The old story was really a story about the Rich Man and how he related to Lazarus. I suppose that's why we call this parable, The Rich Man and Lazarus. But in truth this is a bad name for the parable, it should really be called The Parable of the Six Brothers. How have these brothers behaved? How should these brothers behave? And here comes the crunch: who are these brothers? Notice, the poor man is given a name: Lazarus, meaning quite literally God helps. The rich man is not given a name; the other brothers are not given names. Why, because the parable is not about specific people in the ancient world. The parable is about us. We are the ones being asked the questions. We're the ones who are being asked if we listen to Moses and the prophets. We're the ones who do in fact know that there has been a resurrection. We're the ones who are being asked if we are convinced by that resurrection. Have we listened to the word of God? Do we take time to hear? Are we learning to have no other Gods but the one who raised Jesus from the dead? Are we training ourselves away from idolatry? In fact - given the Sunday it is - we could summarize the message of the parable of the six brothers rather succinctly: Be prepared!