Saint Luke 16:19-31
I
In his book Class Clown, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Dave Berry, who wrote a syndicated column every week, was often asked where he gets his inspiration and he replied, “Costco.”1
As anybody who is old enough to have stared at a blank piece of paper in a typewriter or has looked at a blank computer screen under the pressure of writing a letter, a school paper, a sermon, or even a grocery list knows that inspiration can come from almost anywhere.
Today mine came from a reply to a Facebook post.
It was a picture of where one of my dogs was staying while I was on vacation, The Pooch Hotel. Because we shopped around for the place Lowell and I were staying in Puerto Villarta we got a great rate on a really good room. Our rate was so good that when we got home, we discovered that it cost more for my dog’s stay than it did for ours.
I thought it was funny, so I posted it on my Facebook page, and one response took me back. It was an acquaintance who seemed to believe that it was not only his right but his obligation to make some kind of comment that seemed to pass judgement on everything.
His reply to what I wrote in jest was. “Some people take better care of their pets than they do of other humans.”
While that comment may or may not have been true in my case or the case of anyone here this morning it is true for some people who treat other human beings because their lack of resources, or immigration status, or position in life, like “dirty dogs.”
An incredibly wealthy man who surrounds himself with incredibly wealthy people who vie for the prime spots near the man who would be king once said of the homeless.“We have people living in our … best highways, our best streets, our best entrances to buildings . . . where people in those buildings pay tremendous taxes, where they went to those locations because of the prestige. In many cases, they came from other countries, and they moved to Los Angeles or they moved to San Francisco because of the prestige of the city, and all of a sudden, they have tents. Hundreds and hundreds of tents and people living at the entrance to their office building. And they want to leave.”
As Rex Huptke, columnist for USA Today, pointed out.
The modern rich man paints an incredibly sad picture of wealthy homeowners holed up in their penthouses and high-powered business types cowering in their corner offices in fear of those who are just outside the well-guarded entrances of their high-rise towers that perhaps even bear their name.
“Do you know what that does?” Huppke asked. “That leads these people (who pay tremendous taxes) to leave, which, when you think of it, is a form of homelessness, except they still own multiple homes.”2
Huppke then goes on to point to several examples from the teachings of Jesus whom the rich man in question claims to follow. One of those examples is today’s gospel.
While he may not be surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of tents our rich man is being held hostage by a poor man, a very poor man, who has apparently been dumped in front of his house. There is someone on his doorstep who Jesus tells us was placed there by his friends perhaps in the hopes that the person who lived just beyond the golden gate would help him.
Jesus tells us plainly that to the rich guy he was a nuisance who had to be stepped over every morning on the way down the cobble stone drive to pick up the latest copy of The Jerusalem Post. Because he was there special care had to be used when the Bentley was backed down the driveway lest he is run over and scratches a bumper or flatten a tire.
It is even possible that since the beggar was dumped at the front door the rich man’s friends had to use the back entrance to avoid being bothered. It was enough to make them all want to leave.
I have always wondered whether this parable wasn’t the inspiration for or, at least, running around in the back of Charles Dickens’ mind when he wrote A Christmas Carol. Remember the response to the gentlemen who come to his office asking for a small gift to charity?
“Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge
“And the Union workhouses?” demanded Scrooge, “Are they still in operation?”
“They are. Still,” returned the gentleman, “I wish I could say they were not.”
“The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigor, then?” said Scrooge.
“Both very busy, sir. What shall I put you down for?”
“Nothing!” Scrooge replied. “I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry.”3
The men protest that without his help people might die.
“If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”3
If I read both offerings correctly it seems to me that Dickens is filling in the blanks of Jesus’ parable. Like this little peace of dialogue where the words of Dickens’ very rich man could have well been spoken by Jesus’ very rich man.
Jesus never gives the rich man “a name in the parable, despite several attempts early on to give him one. In popular usage, he is called Dives. Which, as Dr. Thomas G. Long tells us in his massive work Proclaiming the Parables, “is not a name at all but simply the Latin word for ‘rich’.” It’s such a generic term, observes Dr. Long, that “In the original Lukan parable, though, the rich man is nameless, period.”4
So, it would be fair game to call him a Scrooge because in popular culture it has come to believe any person who is miserly is a Scrooge. But, both Jesus and Dickins tell us that their protagonist is not just cheap, he is uncaring, unfeeling.
There is, however, one huge difference between Scrooge and the antagonist in Jesus’ story. Scrooge repents!
When one of the ghosts of Christmas shows him exactly how difficult life was for his nephew Bob Cratchit and his family and when Scrooge begins to see them as real people things begin to change.
Scrooge is especially touched by the plight of little Tiny Tim and, for the first time in his life, shows genuine concern for another human being. He watches as after Christmas dinner is over and Cratchit tenderly grasps his young son’s hand.
"‘Spirit,’ said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before. “Tell me if Tiny Tim will live.’ ‘I see an empty seat,’ replied the ghost, ‘and a crutch without an owner carefully preserved. If these shadows don’t change in the future, the child will die.’”
Scrooge cried out. “‘Oh no, kind Spirit! Say he will be spared!’”
The Spirit throws Scrooge’s earlier words right back at him. “‘If he like to die, he better do it and decrease the surplus population.’ Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.”5
Scrooge’s change of heart may be why our mailboxes are filling up about this time of year with flyers from theatre companies, large and small, inviting us to attend their annual production of the Dickens’ play while Jesus' vignette only shows up once every three years to be read by the faithful in church.
We would love it is Jesus’ rich man would have been more like Dickins’ Scrooge and seen the error of his ways, repented, took the poor man on his doorstep into his home, into his heart. Wouldn’t it have been better if Jesus’ rich guy let Lazarus curl up in front of his hearth like an adopted puppy.
That would have made for a great play! An annual play! Maybe even a musical! However, Jesus is not a popular author trying to sell short stories, so his story does not have a happy ending. As a matter-of-fact Jesus story doesn’t have an ending at all.
The rich man Jesus is telling us about shows no such contrition. Even when he finds himself in Hades and sees Lazarus resting near Father Abraham, he still treats this child of God with contempt.
Up until now when Lazarus was just a heap of humanity, maybe even less than that of a flee-ridden dog ruining the very tasteful and expensive welcome mat he saw late one night watching QVC on his 1,072 inch television and ruining his prestigious neighborhood. He never acknowledged him but now he needs his help. He needs a favor.
Still not speaking to Lazarus directly he implores Father Abraham to send him on an errand. “‘Father Abraham, mercy! Have mercy! Send Lazarus to dip his finger in water to cool my tongue. I’m in agony in this fire.’”6
Here is something really important. Jesus has hidden it so carefully in his story that we might have missed it.
Up until now we think that the rich man in Jesus’ story never even bothered finding out who the poor man was. For all he knew, for all he cared, the fellow out front was just a speed bump on the highway of life. It is only when the fires of hell are lapping at his lips do we discover that the rich guy knew Lazarus’ name all along. The vagrant had a name and the rich guy knew it!
At every turn of the story, he could have called to him, helped him.
That wasn’t some anonymous down-and-outer in front of the house his name was Lazarus and the rich guy knew it! He knew it but never used it until he needed something.
When Lazarus was dependent on him, he never bothered to speak his name but now that he is dependent on Lazarus he is dropping the name frequently but only as an errand boy.
The arrogance is astounding as the rich guy continued to think that the only thing Lazarus was put on this earth to do was to serve him. He demands that Lazarus be commanded to bring him water and when he is told that this will not be possible, he then asks that he be sent on yet another errand to go and warn his brothers.
Unlike Scrooge our rich man is so unrepentant that in trying to get Lazarus to do his dirty work for him that he goes so far as trying to order Father Abraham around.
Lazarus is still a nonperson to him. He is still treating him like a slave who is expected to do his bidding at a moment’s notice.
The man who, in his earthly life, never took the time to pass a morsel of food through a front fence to Lazarus now expects the poor guy who has experienced so much torment on earth to pass through the fires of hell to bring him a bit of relief in the next.
You have probably been sitting there waiting for me to drop the money card on you. You’ve been waiting for me to warn you about the dangers of the misuse of wealth and to tell you that you should be more generous but you know that. This parable probably runs through your mind every time you pass by a beggar on the street.
I know you and your probably bothered by this little story almost every time you stop at a stop light or reach the bottom of an expressway ramp and read the signs held by the downtrodden. “Homeless! Hungry! Help Me!”
If, like me, you are bothered every time you speed past one of those poor souls that is good. If that is the case, at least for us, Jesus’ words have achieved their goal! Jesus has made us more aware of the plight of those who have less than we do.
However, this parable is not just about money it is about indifference. Jesus’ rich man was indifferent to the plight of the man at his garden gate.
The man from our age who complained that we have “people living in our … best highways, our best streets, our best entrances to buildings” is indifferent to the plight of the poor and only sees them as a drain on the economy, a bother.
This story may be about money but it is also about our indifference to the needs of others. Not just monetary needs but emotional needs and spiritual needs and the need that all of us have to feel loved and cared for.
Jesus is not asking the impossible of us. Just as it would not have been impossible for the rich man to share a crust of bread not only with the guy on his front stoop but, if he was that rich, he could have used his spare pocket money to open up a soup-kitchen for all the homeless in his neighborhood.
That is, if he could endure the wrath of his wealthy friends for encouraging more of the Lazarus types to move in and take up camp.
The good news is the Scrooge didn’t stay a scrooge. After seeing the past, the present and the future all in one night he wakes up a changed man.
Scrooge only began to treat the Cratchit’s like living, breathing, human beings when he learned their names. Tiny Tim, Bob, Martha.
We know how The Christmas Carol ends.
Scrooge orders the biggest turkey at the meat market for the Cratchit’s Christmas day dinner. When Bob comes in late he doesn’t fire him but gives him a raise. And when he comes across the men he had unceremoniously thrown out his office the day before for begging on behalf of the poor he gives them a donation that is so large it causes one of them to exclaim, ““My dear Mr. Scrooge, are you serious?”
“If you please,” said Scrooge. “Not a farthing less. A great many back-payments are included in it, I assure you.”
He started to care about more than himself and his balance sheet. And Dicken’s writes of him:
Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.7
Of the three men before us today one of them changed; the other was toast; and the jury is still out on the guy who was more worried about shabby looking tents than the people who lived in them.
Last week's Sunday Morning program with Jane Pauley on CBS featured a segment on the unveiling of a mural in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.
The mural depicts the Apparition at Knock and significant figures from the Church's history in America, including Mother Frances Cabrini, the first American citizen to be canonized. There's a stirring scene of nineteenth century immigrants disembarking in New York, and another of first responders, many of them descended from those immigrants.
But what may be most talked about are the portraits of present-day arrivals waiting to be welcomed.
The murals creator, Adam Cvijanovic, titled it “What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding” and said that he wasn’t intentionally trying to make a political statement but then added, “there's been a shift in America recently. And one of the most important things that's happened in this last tumultuous decade is that there's been a permission to be cruel.”
As cruel as Scrooge and the unnamed guy in Jesus’ parable. Scrooge at the beginning and the repentant and Jesus’ character ever unchanged.
Dickens’ story comes with a happy ending. Jesus’ with a warning characterized best by Cardinal Archbishop Timothy J. Dolan’s statement at the close of the CBS piece.
"When all is said and done, when I stand before Jesus, he's not gonna say, 'Hey Dolan, good work with the mural, good work with the restoration and repair of the cathedral…. I need to ask you something: when I was an immigrant, did you welcome me?' And if I said, 'I'm afraid I didn't, Lord,'" he's gonna say, 'Well, get the hell outta here,' right?"8
All Jesus is asking us to do is to take care of each other. To reach across life’s chasms and help each other in ways that might not even be expensive but will be meaningful beyond measure.
Jesus finishes this parable on the pages of your life and mine for it is only when we overcome our indifference and begin seeing each other not as liabilities but those who are loved by and loved deeply by Jesus that, in the words of Tiny Tim Cratchit, “God” will “bless us everyone.”
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1. Dave Barry, Class Clown (New York, , NY: Simon & Schuster Audio, 2025).
2. Rex Huppke, “Shining Light on California's Homeless.” The Chicago Tribune, September 19, 2019, sec. 1. p. 3.https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/rex-huppke/ct-trump-california-homeless-border-fundraiser-huppke-20190918-y3jfh5lnm5avzcqwkg7vlthv4m-story.html
3. Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol. (London: William Heinemann, 906) 8-9.
4. Thomas G. Long, Proclaiming the Parables: Preaching and Teaching the Kingdom of God (Louisville: KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2024), 340.
5. Dickens, op.cit., p. 69-70.
6. St. Luke 16:22–24. (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2004).
7. Dickens, op.cit.
8. Mo Rocca, “An Artist’s Remarkable New Vision for St. Patrick’s Cathedral,” broadcast, Sunday Morning (CBS, September 21, 2025).
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