Trinity 1

Luke 16:19-31 - Trinity I - June 10, 2012 

Lord, Thee I Love with All My Heart

The parable of Jesus that we just heard is the only parable that Jesus ever told where he named one of the characters.  The name Lazarus means, “My God helps.”  There’s no way of knowing for sure, but perhaps the reason Jesus chose to name this particular character was because of his friendship with the brother of Mary and Martha.  His name was Lazarus too.  Consider how Jesus helped him.  And what greater need for help could there have been than his?  He was dead.  Out of love for his friend, Jesus wept.  And, out of the same great love, Jesus raised his friend from the dead. 

The Lazarus in Jesus’ parable died too.  But he did not have to wait until his death to become acquainted with his need for help.  He was a beggar.  His very livelihood daily required him to come to full grips with how much help he needed from others.  And even then, he was afflicted with public scorn, with infection and hunger, and with utter loneliness.  It seemed as though even God had rejected him!  The filthy dogs who ate the crumbs he desired from the rich man’s table were his only companions as they licked his open sores for dessert.  Disgusting, yeah.  This man was the lowest of the low.  There was nothing he had to call his own on earth.  He was not worth knowing.  But here is the beauty of the fact that Jesus gave him a name.  God knew him.  It is as Jesus said to his disciples, admonishing them not to place their confidence in what they can see, but in what remains hidden: “Do not rejoice in this,” he said, “that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” 

Lazarus found no cause to rejoice that anything was subject to him.  Nothing was – not even the dogs.  There was no evidence that God cared for him—no evidence at all but in the promise of the gospel that he believed.   When pleadings to wealthy men were rejected, and prayers to God seemed to be met with cold silence, then Lazarus had nowhere to flee but to where his name was written in heaven.  His only hope remained unseen.  But God saw it. 

Abraham had no visible hope either but in the promise of God that in his seed all nations would be blessed. He believed God when he said that through him the Savior of the world would be born.  He believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.  Lazarus believed the same promise.  Lazarus possessed by faith the same righteousness as his father in the faith.  That which comforted childless Abraham was the same thing that comforted penniless Lazarus.  It was Christ.  Jesus is the Savior that God had promised.  In Jesus, Lazarus and countless others are blessed.

The rich man had no name.  At least not in heaven.  Jesus didn’t give him a name because his name was not written in the Book of Life.  But, no doubt, his name was well known by the movers and shakers on earth.  He had no need for help or pity.  He had perfected the skill of avoiding pain and maximizing pleasure.  He could afford it.  His money never denied him anything.  His money never taught him to ask for help.  His money was faithful unto death.   But in death, his money was worthless.  Nothing could vouchsafe his happiness or pleasure anymore.  He had worshiped a false god.  And Mammon did what all false gods do.  He forsook his devotee in the hour of his deepest need. 

The promise that Abraham and Lazarus believed was not simply the generic promise that God would be good to them.  No, this is what the rich man believed!  This was his religion.  The rich man knew that his wealth came from God.  But what the rich man did not believe is what we confess in the Small Catechism, when we say that God gives us all these things “purely out of fatherly divine goodness and mercy without any merit or worthiness in me.”    

The rich man didn’t just think that he deserved what he got.  He thought that the things God gave him were signs of God’s approval.  He found in his wealth the evidence that God regarded him as righteous.  The rich man worshiped an idol.  Oh, sure, he didn’t wittingly replace the true God with a false one.  He didn’t openly deny the name of God.  But he didn’t find his help in the name of God either.  He didn’t see his need for help, and so despised the preaching of the gospel.  God had done for him all he needed God to do.  He loved his money because his money kept him from needing help.  But it is only when we see our need for help that God teaches us what true love is. 

The first table of the law that we just confessed together from the Catechism is summed up in Scripture with these words: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”  If one does not love God, it is not possible for him to love his neighbor.  The self-righteousness by which one convinces himself that he loves God with his whole heart is the same self-righteousness by which he convinces himself that he has loved his neighbor as himself.  This is what happened with the rich man.  He saw Lazarus begging at his own doorstep.  He did all he thought he needed to do.  “The Lord giveth (to me);” he figured; “the Lord taketh away (from him);” he figured; “blessed be the name of the Lord.”  But he had it all wrong. 

God had not been generous with this man in order to indicate that he was pleased with him.  He had been generous to him in order that he might in turn be generous to Lazarus.  God desired mercy.  And that’s why he gives so much.  God helps the poor by making us rich.  God doesn’t make us wealthy so that we might love our wealth, but so that we might love our neighbor. 

But wealth has a way of stealing our affection, doesn’t it.  It’s not the fault of money, you know.  It’s the fault of our hearts that long for pleasure.  It’s the fault of our hearts that have not loved God above all things.  It’s our fault, because our hearts have not loved our neighbor as ourselves.  St. Paul says that “those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows” (1 Timothy 6:9-10) 

Money doesn’t make us happy.  It can’t.  It can demand our love, but it can’t give us the satisfaction it promises.  And what is even worse than the extreme disappointment that it inevitably leaves us with, is the self-righteousness that it produces.  To love your stuff is not only to place yourself above your neighbor, and his needs; it is to tell God that there is nothing that you want more.  But there is something that you need more.  We need mercy.   

Lazarus the poor beggar desired mercy from the rich man.  He longed for whatever fell from the rich man’s table.  We see what the wealthy have.  We see what we lack.  We see the pleasures of the world.  We see our own disappointments and unsatisfied desires; we see our frustrated plans, and shattered dreams.  We think we know the mercy we need.  We think we know what God should give to us in order to bless us and make us happy.  We long for whatever falls to us from the table of the world’s delights, and so we search for them, because we see what we do not have, and we want it. 

But what do we need?  Do we need the wealth of the wealthy redistributed?  Is the mercy of God in this way spread abroad?  What do we need?  Do we need better insurance, better health, a better-paying job – even though it keeps us from hearing the word of God?  Do we need less pain, more money?  What do we need?  How should God show us mercy? 

But the sumptuous pleasures of the world don’t last.  So God doesn’t always give us these, as important as they seem.  And the reason they don’t last isn’t just because that’s how things go.  No, they don’t last because it is God who takes them away.  It is God who took everything the rich man had, because it is God who required his soul.  He lost it.  His money was all he had ever wanted, and he lost it.  The reason that money can’t make us happy is very simple.  It can’t give us God.  It can’t guarantee God’s favor, God’s love and forgiveness.  It can’t give us what we truly need. 

We need mercy.  We need a mercy that God defines.  We need a righteousness not our own.  We need a new heart.  We need a heart that does not envy the world’s riches, that does not grow bitter at our own poverty.  We need a heart that does not love the fading glory of earth, but that loves God above all things.  We need a righteousness that the first three commandments require of us.  We need what we do not have and what we do not by nature want or ask for.  We need what Christ lived a holy life to fulfill in our place. 

This is what Lazarus needed too.  He knew it.  God’s word had not only taught him the poverty of his own heart, but also the riches of God’s grace in Christ.  The mercy of God is the love of God.  All our stuff passes away.  Even faith and hope pass away.  And Lazarus saw this happen.  That’s what death is.  But love did not pass away. Because that’s what life is.  And this is what Lazarus found in the bosom of Abraham: he found love.  He found it while he still lived on earth.  It is the love of God in Christ that was his possession by faith.  And it remained his comfort in heaven. 

And it is ours as well.  It is a love that begins with God and extends to us.  We don’t seek God’s favor in the things we have.  We find God’s comfort where he strips us of all that we have – where he takes away our things, our righteousness, and even our peace of mind, and leaves us spiritually exposed to the righteous demands of God.  He renders us beggars who must cry to God for what we cannot find in ourselves.  But we find it in Jesus. 

Unlike the table of the rich man, jealously guarded by dogs and greed, God’s table is set with overflowing joys prepared for us who love him.  Just like Lazarus, we flee to where God joined his name to ours in Holy Baptism, where he reserves a treasure in heaven for us.  We don’t see it.  But look at what is ours!  We have what Jesus denied himself as he lived a perfect life of service to others.  We have what Jesus fulfilled as he loved God and neighbor with a pure heart.  We have what the Father took from him as he bore the sins of the world on the cross and became the sole object of God’s wrath.  What sin, what lust, what nagging envy and bitterness do you find in your heart?  Christ took it and made it his own with more eagerness and delight that the rich man sought riches.  Your sin was the most precious thing that Jesus could think to possess, because your redemption and eternal joy meant more than heaven and earth.  He took our sin.  He died.  And so we have in Christ’s resurrection from the dead the guarantee that with Jesus our risen Lord we are the objects of God’s eternal favor and honor. 

In other words, we have the forgiveness of all our sins.  We have in our possession the righteousness that the law requires.  We have peace with God, and eternal joy that the sorrows of earth cannot disturb.  And just as hell is removed from paradise by a deep chasm, so also your sin today is removed from you as far as the east is from the west. 

I know that this sermon is getting a little bit long.  But I’d like to say one more thing about the first three commandments – the first table of the law that requires us to love God above all things.  This is not just an arbitrary standard by which God judges our devotion.  No, the commandment to love God above all things is a command to have faith in the specific promise that he made to Abraham, and that he makes to us – that God is gracious and merciful for the sake of Jesus alone.  To love God is to love what lasts forever.  Without Christ this invitation, this command, to love God condemns us as we search our hearts and see that we love so many other things more.  But in Christ, we learn what it means to love our Lord with all our heart – because we claim nothing else to vouchsafe for us eternal joy.  God claims our heart by claiming our life of sin as his own.  He secures our life by giving us the life of Christ that fulfills love toward our neighbor and toward our God.  This is the life that we love.  And so we see in the promises to which our faith clings that we do love God.  Faith alone fulfills the law by claiming what Christ has done as our own, and by loving what God calls lovely. 

In Jesus’ name, Amen.