Trinity 1

Luke 16:19-31 - Trinity One - June 22, 2014
Fear, Love, and Trust in God

It’s easy to oversimplify things and imagine a certain virtue in poverty and a certain vice in wealth.  And so it is tempting to judge peoples’ hearts according to what we see.  This is because it is often true that poverty grants the opportunity to consider what is most important in life.  That’s why Jesus encourages us to fast, for instance —because denying ourselves certain pleasures helps us to consider the value of heavenly things over earthly things.  And if poverty aids a man in his piety, so it is even more often true that wealth corrupts a man and makes him stingy and materialistic.  That’s why Jesus says that it is very difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. 

But this is not a hard and fast rule.  Poor people are very often among the greediest, aren’t they?  Just look at how many people figure that if they don’t possess very many nice things, that makes it OK to covet the nice things that others have – as though it’s only fair that they give up a piece of the pie.  And they’ll even appeal to those in authority to take it from them by force in a way that only appears right.  Well, that’s greed if there is such a thing.  And then on the other hand, rich people are often among the most generous.  Just consider the endowments and offerings made by wealthy Christians to build schools and beautiful churches, and to support the preaching of the gospel in their own congregations and around the world – not to mention their personal contributions to the need they see around them. 

We shouldn’t judge vice and virtue by what we see, because we can’t see the heart.  Only God can.  Rich people are not necessarily bad; and poor people are not necessarily good.  The story that Jesus tells in our Gospel lesson shouldn’t be interpreted to teach otherwise. 

But either way, what would even be the point of turning Jesus’ words into some moral lesson, since it isn’t people who are really morally good who go to heaven anyway.  It is greedy, covetous sinners who repent of their sin and believe the gospel who go to heaven.  It is those who find their goodness not in what the world sees or supposes about them, but in the merits of Christ alone who lived and died for sinners to save them from their sins.  Faith embraces this.  Unbelief rejects it.  Those who believe are clothed in the righteousness of Christ and go to heaven when they die.  Those who do not believe are left with whatever goodness the world rewards, but that God’s holiness exposes as sin.  Those who trust in their own goodness go to hell when they die, where they are separated from all their earthly comforts and pleasures and from God’s good favor; and they stay there forever.  Those who repent of their sin and trust in God’s mercy to cover their sin go to heaven when they die, where their sin and the devil, bad conscience and all the misery of earth and hell can never touch them again. 

God’s law judges the intentions of the heart and does not discriminate between rich and poor.  Neither does the gospel.  The gospel does not require us to become rich or poor.  Instead, it gives us something to believe.  It makes us spiritually rich who, by the working of the law, have first been reduced to spiritual beggars.  And this is how the law does that: It requires that we sell all that we have.  This is not to say that we must empty our homes and checking accounts, but something far more difficult.  It is to say that we must remove from our hearts the love for earthly riches, cares, and pleasures, and love God instead.  The law requires what we in our sinful flesh are unable to do, because we by nature fear, love, and trust what we see and feel more than God.  And so the law condemns us as the sinners we are.  Whether rich or poor, each of us is reduced to a beggar with no claim on anything we have, not even one of the good crumbs that fall from God’s generous hand.  And yet to us who have no rightful claim on any earthly thing – to us is freely given the inheritance of everlasting life in Christ.  

The gospel is for sinners and no one else.  It delivers God’s love — God’s charity to those who are poor on account of their own sin.  The gospel is only for those who are in need of a hand-out from God.  That means it is for everyone.  But it is only received by those who are not ashamed to beg.  We are not ashamed to beg, because we are certain that God will not shame us for begging.  He will honor us by giving to us what he promises to give, and which his Son, Jesus Christ has earned for us by his innocent suffering and death.  The gospel requires nothing but faith.  The forgiveness of sins for Jesus’ sake creates the very faith that we need. 

Abraham had faith.  He represents all those who have believed and gone to heaven, because he is the greatest patriarch in the Old Testament.  It was to him that God first promised that in his Seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed.  That’s why angels brought Lazarus to Abraham’s bosom.  He was brought to what all Christians of all times have loved in this poor life of labor.  He was brought to what he and Abraham and all of us have in common: the promised Seed, Christ, the forgiveness of sins. 

Abraham believed the promise that Christ would be born through his line even though he himself was childless.  Lazarus believed that the riches of heaven were his even though he himself was penniless.  They both believed what they could not see or feel, and their faith was counted to them as righteousness.   And even though we know and experience the sin that we cannot remove from our hearts, and that we cannot undo because we are guilty, we believe with Abraham and Lazarus that we also stand righteous before our holy God on account of the atoning blood of Jesus.  This is what brings us to heaven.  And the joy you find in this good news today, albeit dim in comparison, is the very same joy that will comfort us when angels carry our souls to our everlasting home when we die. 

Nothing on earth can give us such joy.  So we don’t trust in anything on earth.  We trust what God says. 

Unlike Lazarus, Abraham had tons of earthly wealth, but none of it supplied the confidence he needed toward God that his promise was true.  In this way, he was poor in spirit.  To be poor in spirit means that his greatest wealth was not what he accomplished or accumulated.  It was not how much he gave away.  His possessions revealed that God had made him materially rich – sure, but only the promise of the gospel revealed that God had saved his soul.   Abraham’s greatest wealth was what Lazarus possessed as well.  They trusted God’s word. 

God would give Abraham a son.  And according to the same promise, God would give his own Son to redeem humanity from sin and hell.  This promise of Christ comforted Abraham whose money could not buy him life.  This promise of Christ comforted Lazarus whose lack of money could not deprive him of life.  They shared the same poverty of spirit, and so shared the same wealth in Christ.  This is why the angels gather all saints to Abraham’s bosom.  We all trust the same promise.  The same righteousness covers all of us together.  Faith justifies, not because it is so daring or bold a work, but because it lays claim to the forgiveness of sins that God promises in Jesus’ name. 

The unity of all believers is a mystical union that the Spirit of Christ creates.  It spans time and space and unites rich and poor in holy love for one another.  We identify this union quite easily, not by identifying who is rich like Abraham and who is poor like Lazarus, or even who is generous and who is stingy.  No we identify our Christian union by identifying what it is that we love more than money or health or public respect (whether we have these things in abundance or not).  We love mercy and forgiveness and peace with God (which we always have in abundance together).   And that is where our union with one another is identified: where our sins are forgiven through the word of the gospel preached and through the sacraments that Christ himself gave us for our eternal comfort and salvation. 

We love Jesus because he loves us and takes our sins away.  This love – this faith – is what unites our hearts with all Christians in the bosom of Abraham, because it unites us to Christ who was promised to Abraham.  Abraham loved Lazarus, and Lazarus loved Abraham, because they both loved the forgiveness of sins.  We who are united in one faith ought also to be united in love.  He who loves God loves his brother.  

It is for Jesus’ sake and his kindness that we are also kind to one another.  It is for Jesus’ sake and his patience that we who are poor receive what little we have in gratitude to God.  It is for Jesus’ sake and his generosity that we who are rich share what abundance we have with our Christian brothers and sisters as with Christ himself.  It is for Jesus’ sake and his instruction that we give what we can to support the preaching of the gospel among us.  It is for Jesus’ sake and his love for the Church that a Christian husband loves his wife as his holy bride.  It is for Jesus’ sake and his submission to the law that damned us that a Christian wife submits to her husband as to the Lord.  It is for Jesus’ sake and his humility, who emptied himself and took on the form of a servant, commending his cause to his Father in heaven, that we also empty ourselves and think like Christ.  We love and serve one another, because by loving and serving us, Christ gives us peace with our heavenly Father and brings us to heaven when all this world’s wealth and pride shall pass away. 

In the story that Jesus told in our Gospel lesson, the rich man did not love Lazarus.  This is because he did not love God.  It is not possible to love God and hate your brother.  The reason he went to hell is not because he didn’t show outward love to Lazarus.  In fact he might have.  Those breadcrumbs came from somewhere.  But no, he went to hell because he didn’t love what Lazarus loved.  

Lazarus loved God, because he loved the gospel that gave him peace with God.  We cannot love God unless he first love us.  It was God’s love for poor sinners that Lazarus knew and counted on.  This means that Lazarus did not find his love for God buried deep and naturally flourishing in his heart.  In his heart he saw nothing good – he saw resentment of the rich man and dreadful hatred of God for the injustice of it all.  He found what we find.  Sin.  But Lazarus found his love for God where God took his sin away, and taught him not to be afraid.  And so that is where we find our love for God too.  We find it in God’s love for us. 

God’s law requires that we fear, love, and trust him above all things so that we might also love our neighbor as ourselves.   But the law cannot give us the power to love or trust.  It can only teach us to fear.  But perfect love casts out fear.  So we go to where perfect love is revealed.  It is revealed where God becomes man and takes our sin upon himself to suffer for our sin and reconcile us to God.  Here and here alone is where the law is fulfilled.  And so here and here alone are we taught to trust God as the law requires. 

The rich man didn’t fear God.  That’s why he was so disinterested in hearing the gospel.  That’s always why people are disinterested in hearing the gospel, whether in conversation with you, or by going to church on a Sunday morning.  The reason is always the same.  They don’t fear God.  Something else is more important.   Frequently we fall victim to our own momentary lapses in judgment – when our own flesh imposes sinful priorities upon our minds.  We repent of these.  But with every sin, the devil wants to make it into a vice – a habit – and attitude toward God’s word.  He does this to harm our faith – by desensitizing us to our sin and by teaching us to trust in God’s mercy while at the same time despising God for showing mercy.  This was the end of the rich man! 

But dear Christians, we must remain beggars of God’s word.  We must remain in constant repentance.  We must count ourselves poor before God, living off the Bread of Life who came down from heaven for us.  Be afraid of your sin.  Know your enemy.  The flesh profits nothing.  But God in our flesh has profited all you need.  Fear him.  And love what he loves.  Love him for loving it.  Love mercy.  Because you need it.  And because it is yours in Jesus Christ our Savior.  And from this fear and love is borne that trust that will not be shamed.  The Spirit of God comforts you now through the forgiveness of sins until angels will carry you to your eternal comfort in heaven.  There we will gain our hearts desire. 

Let us pray:

On my heart imprint Thine image,
Blessed Jesus, King of grace,
That life’s riches, cares, and pleasures
Have no pow’r Thee to efface.
This the superscription be:
Jesus crucified for me
Is my life, my hope’s foundation,
And my glory and salvation.  Amen.