16th Sunday After Pentecost 2025

Texts: Amos 6:1a,4-7 ; Psalm 146, 1 Tim 6:6-19, Luke 16:19-31

Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Beloved, I’d like to begin today by focusing what we just heard today, with the following affirmation by the great Liberation theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez: “it is necessary to affirm, that our love of God is inevitably expressed in our love of neighbor. Even more so, God is best loved through the neighbor”. Gutiérrez was going over the idea that our love of God is mediated in a sense through our love of neighbor, because Christ often identifies Himself with the poor and suffering of the world. Gutiérrez highlights the Johannine scripture that says how can we say that we love God whom we cannot see, and yet hate our neighbor who we can see. How often do we forget by imagining God in His transcendence, that in Christ He has come to dwell in human flesh, and thus has made our material humanity the object of divine love. God loves us in an embodied way, here right now as we can see our bodily frailty, in this and through this, God made His love known in Christ Jesus. This is to say God’s love for us, and therefore the love that is born in us as well, is best expressed actively and not passively. It’s like saying we love somebody with our words, yet our actions do not meet the heavenly height of our words. Like Mister Rogers once said: “Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active

noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.” Love is a striving, God went to the depths of death to love us, God is active in love for us, and so as His followers, naturally we must ask, then what does this love provoke in us? How are our lives reflecting the reality of God’s love for us? As sinners drenched with grace, we cannot claim with arrogance and pride something we don’t deserve, and even less can we judge others as to their worth of receiving this grace. God’s love is despite our shortcomings, and therefore God calls us to reflect and daily convert to a way of seeing the world where our main purpose in life should be to expand the embrace of this love, not keep it selfishly for ourselves, or to uphold a contradictory worldview where we say “God is love”, but our lives are not Love.

So today we heard Jesus tell a story of a Rich man and Lazarus. It is an extension of the Gospel of Luke’s exposition of Jesus’ criticism of wealth that is not used in accordance with God’s will, meaning a wealth not spent in service to the poor. The contrast is starkly put: the Rich man “dressed in purple and fine linen and feasted sumptuously every day.” I’m sure we can conjure up images today of such behavior, the flaunting of opulence, people with offensively lavish lifestyles at the expense of workers getting

the minimum. And then there is a poor man named Lazarus, laying at the gate of this man’s house, full of sores. Jesus has set the contrast. And this is not an unrealistic portrayal. You can observe this contrast in both an individual and collective sense. Don’t we see this when we go through neighborhoods in any big city of the United States, when suddenly the infrastructure gets worse and worse and you see side by side how different sectors of a city are unequally treated based on factors like race and class. On an individual basis, you can go to Mass and Cass and see how some of our human brethren are full of sores and homeless, standing at the gates. Now Jesus signals the main problem: Lazarus longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table. Not a full meal, he longed for simply the minimum, the scraps of food. Such lack of care was overtaking poor Lazarus. And since this is a realist story, Lazarus dies, because without food and care, a human being cannot sustain their life. If this sounds like an indictment of trickle down economics, then we are right on the money, Jesus doesn’t agree with it one bit. In the end the rich man also dies, because riches cannot save us from death either. And then comes the reversal, Lazarus is embraced by God, yet the rich man who every day overlooked Lazarus at his gate, is tormented. In the realm of God’s Judgement, those with power who do nothing to alleviate the

suffering of their neighbor are cast down, and those cast down on the earth, are lifted up. It is Divine Justice at work, the settling of wrongs. In such a realization, it comes too late for the rich man, for his greed became his god, and he got divine recompense for his way of life. Because of his siloing himself in his wealth, when confronted with this divine reversal, he claims ignorance and seeks to alleviate the fate of his fellow rich men. Perhaps if his family and friends receive a message from the afterlife, they might change their ways. But such is the danger of wealth, Jesus says, that not even if someone rises from the dead, if these people had not listened to what had already been declared in Moses and the prophets, they will not listen to the risen one. It’s as if wealth and the system that produces offensive wealth is a trap that is difficult to escape. What is most difficult in this passage, it’s that faithful use of wealth is something that does not need divine intervention to figure out. By use of reason and morality, by knowing the Law of God and the sacred history of the people Israel, it is a fact that God lifts up the cause of the poor, and advocates for His people to do the same. It is a tough message from Jesus, which reveals humanity’s penchant to ignore what is clearly set down as being the right thing to do.

Thus is the reason why the early Christians, as declared in 1 Timothy, where highly suspicious of wealth and it’s pursuit, it was seen as a danger that could lead to destruction, and all kinds of pains, not just for the wealthy person, but for the neighbors of the wealthy. Like Lazarus, the wealthy can be so blind as to see Lazarus at his gate every day and act as if he doesn’t exist. Then they create this window screen where their wealth is displayed, and Lazarus remains at the gate empty. It is a scene of abandonment.

But God sees. And God acts justly. And such is also part of the Gospel that calls rich and poor alike to come to the table of equality, where the true riches lie. The true riches of eternal life with God which are rooted in righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. As I mentioned in the beginning with Gutiérrez’ affirmation, God has made it so that to love Him, you ought to love your neighbor. That if you want to see Christ, shed away power and self-interest, and fall in love with the divine image that resides in every human person. Let the love that is planted in your own heart call out to the love planted in another. And if another has no love, then plant the seed of love, and draw out love in faith and obedience to the call of God in Christ Jesus. The problem of wealth is that it makes human life superficial. It is all about what is beside

you, things that rot and decay. But God’s love does not decay or fall away, it is an everlasting bond that stretches beyond our own physical limits. Love of money won’t make you gentle, it won’t make you appreciate what is actually real, the true richness of the human spirit that God has made, the realness of God’s Creation which we are a part of that does not care for money, it cares to be cared for and be present to.

Therefore Beloved, in the same way that we have been cared for richly by God’s grace, in the way in which it is made known to us in Word and Sacrament that you are loved beyond measure, that you are not left out at the gate, but invited in to the feast, let us be a people that open the gates of our lives. That we be open to whoever God sends to our door, ready to give of what we have for the sake of God’s love, so that we live the life that truly is life. As stated by Paul in his 2ND letter to the Corinthians:

I do not say this as a command, but I am, by mentioning the eagerness of others, testing the genuineness of your love. 9 For you know the generous act[a] of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich. 10 And in this

matter I am giving my opinion: it is beneficial for you who began last year not only to do something but even to desire to do something. 11 Now finish doing it, so that your eagerness may be matched by completing it according to your means. 12 For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what one does not have. 13 For I do not mean that there should be relief for others and hardship for you, but it is a question of equality between 14 your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may also supply your need, in order that there may be equality. 15 As it is written,

“The one who had much did not have too much,

and the one who had little did not have too little.”

Let us then pray: