The rich man’s story

If you were in Oxford last week, you may have noticed it particularly busy with bright young people, mostly excited, sometimes nervous, checking out the university and colleges in the last Open Day before the application deadline.   As a history tutor, I often find myself chatting to groups of potential students at this time of year, explaining the course, the process, what they might study...  Some people desire the familiar, to stick with the modern subjects they already know a little about.  But others are more adventurous, eager for something new.  And every now and again, a student comes along full of excitement and passion, keen to tell me about a place or a time that has awakened their curiosity, that has made them see the world a little differently.  Sometimes they show up later as undergrads, sometimes they don’t.  But always I hope they will never lose that curiosity, that fascination with the lives and experiences of others, especially those who can seem so distant from us.

Curiosity is, I think, a wonderful gift, especially if we use it carefully, to learn about others with genuine attentiveness and with compassion.  It can help us see the world from the point of view of others, challenging our own biases, our own sense of privilege and priority.  For cold, bare knowledge is never enough.  It can trap us in our own limited reality, tempting us to look only for what we recognize and already value, only for the people who seem just like us – simply a mirror for our own selves.   As a historian I feel this keenly, for the history that merely reflects our own values is a poor substitute for the real thing.   And in our Gospel reading this morning I am struck, too, by how keen Jesus is to alert us to this challenge and its importance for our lives.  For the parable we heard is not only, perhaps not even primarily, about how to use our resources or moderate our diets.  It is about the power of our stories to free us or to imprison us.  The rich man’s problem, I want to suggest, is not so much his wealth, as his blindness – his refusal to look around him in both space and time, his reluctance to examine the past as well as the present, and his resistance to any impact the stories of others may have on his life.   

For the rich man, we know, is familiar with the history of his people, he knows himself to be a child of Abraham and he is confident of the favour of God.  He and his friends and family have learned all about Moses and the Exodus; they have listened so often to the words of the Prophets, they can no doubt recite their favourite passages off by heart.  And now they relax with their feasting, sure of their place among the people of God, among those who will find blessing and honour.  And yet – surely we must wonder if they have really heard the words the Prophets were speaking?  Have they ever stopped to think what any of those words might really mean?  Did they ever listen to those words from Amos, of woe to the complacent, to those who feast on fine food and forget their neighbor?  To the rich man, it seems, these were just words, not to be taken seriously, a strange tale from the olden days when everything looked different, hardly relevant in the here and now.   Certainly the prophets were not going to spoil a good dinner party.

And this casual indifference is not just about scholarly integrity or proper history.  For the rich man is not only deaf to the words of the past, he is deaf to the cries of his neighbours now.   Insulated in his luxury house, in his rich purple robes, he can ignore the poverty and suffering around him.  The groans of Lazarus no more disturb him than the harsh language of Amos – after all, life is good for him.  What our rich man will not hear or understand, is that to share in the family of Abraham is to share in God’s story – and that is one to which we need to listen with our full attention, because it will challenge our assumptions and our values to their very core.   In that story it is not the wealthy and privileges who come to the foreground, but those on the margins, those exploited and neglected here on earth; it is these people who God promises to raise up and honour. 

Everywhere in the Word of God we hear of God’s care and concern for the poorest and the most vulnerable, in every part of the world, in every moment in time.  We hear too of a future where the hungry will be filled and the lowly exalted, and we are invited to share here and now in that great transformation, to work with God, through God’s grace, for the redressing of injustice and true sharing of wealth.  And that surely is a call we need to hear more powerfully than ever, in our society where rising costs seem to be borne by the poorest, and where our structures of power and government policies insist on favoring those with money and influence.  Even this week we are told that the bonuses of bankers must be protected, income tax for the highest earners must be cut.  It seems, perhaps, that our own society is a place where rich people feast, ignoring the wounds and the desperation of those at their gates.

It can be easy to lose heart or hope, feeling trapped in structures that perpetuate inequality – and not least if our own lives are comfortable too.  But God consistently calls us, each and every one of us, to speak once more the true words of Moses and the Prophets, words of challenge and change.  Words that insist upon the dignity and worth of every person, but especially those with the least status and standing here on earth.  Words made most truly real through the revelation of God in Christ, when the violence and exclusion of the cross was transformed into the triumph of love.

For this parable is a parable of judgement, of the cost of turning away from God.  But it is also a parable of hope, of what is made possible through the Word and the grace of God, if only we will allow ourselves to listen with genuine attention.   A hope that is founded upon the cross and resurrection and the presence of the Holy Spirit.   For when we open our hearts to God and God’s grace, perhaps we will find it is the values of God and God’s kingdom that come to shape and inspire our own.  For when we share in the story of all God’s people, we are invited to the true feast, where God’s life-giving abundance is offered to all, and all are precious and loved in God’s sight.