A sermon on Luke 16:19-31 for the First Sunday after Trinity. Delivered by Pastor Caleb Strutz.

Let’s say you’re out and about, running some errands, and you run into someone that you haven’t seen in forever. So you try to quickly catch up, fill in those past few years, you ask, “How are you doing? How are things going?” And your friend responds, “Man, I’ve been blessed.” What types of things do you expect to come after that statement, “I’ve been blessed?” “Things are going great, I just got a promotion, I’m set to retire a few years early, things are going well.” You don’t expect him to say something like, “Man, I’ve been blessed. I’m starving to death and every once in a while some dogs come to lick my wounds.”

It’s become so normalized to associate wealth and prosperity with blessings from God. But in the account of the rich man and poor Lazarus, Jesus challenges those assumptions. He raises the questions, “What does it really mean to be blessed? What does it really mean to be rich?” Jesus reshapes our thinking as we look at our lot in life, as He directs us not towards earthly riches, but heavenly riches.

I. Earthly Riches

Now, from the start, we have to be explicitly clear, it’s not that being rich is necessarily a sinful thing. The rich man is sent to hell not because of his wealth but because of his lack of faith, which he makes explicitly clear when he rejects the power of the Scriptures.

Abraham was rich, so were David and Solomon and Job, it’s not that being wealthy is wrong. And even the things that this guy is doing: there’s nothing inherently wrong with wearing purple or fine linen—God commanded it for vestments for the tabernacle—and feasting can be appropriate—when there’s a wedding banquet, Jesus gives them over 100 gallons of wine.

But these things, which can be good, were used in excess. He wasn’t just wearing his best clothes for the Sabbath, but living in luxury. He wasn’t only feasting when appropriate, but every day. And in this extravagant, wasteful use of wealth, he overlooked the needs of the poor beggar at his gate when he easily could have provided for him. His problem wasn’t the wealth but how he viewed it and how he used it. Wealth can be a very real danger. But we still rely on it and crave it.

One of the questions this account asks is “Who would you rather be?” Now, we know the right answer. It’s better to be Lazarus than the rich man, far better to be in heaven than hell. Right, it’s a no brainer, an easy choice.

But I think if we had our way, “Well, yeah, I want to be like Lazarus in the next life, but it’d be nice if I could be like the rich man in this life, too.” We think of wealth as an inherent blessing so it’s hard to see how a pitiful existence as a beggar can really be a blessed life.

We continually long for wealth because we think that it will make our lives better. “If I had X amount of money, I could do this and this and that,” but then there’s always something else, something more. And we can see how the rich man in the story was messing up, but we never want to classify ourselves as rich. “Whoever makes more than I do, has more than I do, well they’re rich,” as if that absolves me of the responsibility of the wealth that God has entrusted to me.

And if you’re really not that wealthy, if you are struggling to make ends meet and not just to maintain a certain lifestyle, well, what does that mean? Does that mean that God isn’t blessing you? That you’re struggling because you’re not faithful enough?

We wrap so many things up with earthly wealth that lead us in a ditch one way or another. In any case, we’re counting the wrong things. We’re taking the wrong inventory. We’re not seeing where Jesus would have us look as the true source of our riches.

II. Heavenly Riches

In this account, who is really rich? Who is really blessed? It’s Lazarus, the beggar, who is brought to riches of heaven. Earthly wealth doesn’t matter on the other side of this divide. Lazarus trusted in God, that’s what his name means, “God is my help,” to carry him through and grant him his reward.

In a spiritual sense, we are all beggars before God. Regardless of our standing in this life, dependent on His grace and mercy. And Jesus gives His wealth to you.

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 8, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich” (v. 9). Jesus left His throne in heaven, voluntarily left paradise to save you. He surrendered the full use of His power and was born in humility that He might suffer and die to make you rich.

“He Himself took our infirmities And bore our sicknesses” (Mt 8:17), He carried our sin, that terrible disease which left us helpless and ridden with sores, so that we might receive healing in His wounds. He was clothed in purple only in His Passion and was wrapped in fine linen only when He was laid in the tomb, but He has clothed you with His righteousness, cleansed you and purified you and made you a son of the King.

Jesus points us to what makes us truly blessed, truly rich. Not the blessings of earthly prosperity, but the blessings of forgiveness and grace. Not the circumstances of this life, but the riches of the life to come.

The moral of this story is a lot more complicated than just, “It’s bad to be rich.” There are plenty of rich people in heaven and plenty of poor people in hell, that’s not the deciding factor. Rather, the challenge of this text, as it applies to our earthly life, is to accept our lot as coming from the hand of God.

We can see this as Abraham rebukes the rich man, he says, “you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things.” He doesn’t say, “you worked really hard to earn your good things” or “Lazarus was lazy and that’s why he was a beggar,” but in both cases, the rich man and Lazarus received.

Whether you are wealthy or poor, you are to see it as receiving everything you have from the hand of God and to faithfully carry out the responsibilities that God gives with those things. For the wealthy that means being good stewards, not using your resources for yourself, but to serve others, to give to the poor, to support the work of the church. For the not so wealthy that means receiving what you do have with thanksgiving and trusting in God to provide, even when that means giving back to Him.

For all that Lazarus had to endure, he bore that cross with faith, he bore the bad things of this life as a true son of Abraham, knowing where his riches lay. We too, no matter what God has given, receive what we have, whether good or evil, and count our true riches in the life to come.

At the congregation I served as a vicar, there was one man that was always brutally honest, and I loved it. After church, I’d ask him, “How are you doing?” And he’d say, “Not great. I’m struggling with a lot of things. But God is good and He loves me and forgives me, so I’m blessed.” May we all share in that attitude, whether others would call our states in this life blessed or not. We have the riches of grace and forgiveness, we have been covered in the blood of Christ, which is of greater value than silver or gold, we have been bought at a price, the death of our Savior, and will be brought into an eternal kingdom. Amen.