Sermon on Luke 16:19-31

A lot of fire and brimstone preaching I’ve heard in my life seems to me to betray a hypocritical hope for the damnation of our enemies rather than doing what it should do and serving as a warning to us in the hope of salvation. While Jesus does preach about the fire in Hades, we need to remember that he does not desire the death of sinners but rather that they repent and live (cf. Ezekiel 33:11). Life is salvation and it is death that we are being saved from (cf. Rom 6:23). Like God, let us desire life for all sinners – for our friends and for strangers, for our enemies and for ourselves.

Jesus does use the image of flame, as I say, to describe the anguish and torment of the rich man in Hades after he dies (Luke 16:24). So, the fire and brimstone preaching comes from somewhere. But let’s look at the whole context surrounding this image.

The rich man, tormented in Hades, sees Abraham far off and calls out to him, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me…, for I am in anguish in this flame” (Luke 16:24). Already take note that even though the rich man and Abraham are separated by a chasm, they’re still close enough to see and hear each other. They’re in the same vicinity, but having a different experience. The rich man’s experience is agony in flame, while Abraham’s is the light of God. St. Maximus the Confessor writes “The Word of God is light, which illumines the minds of the faithful” [like Abraham] “but at the same time, it is also the fire of judgment, which consumes those, who… abide in the night-darkness of this life” [like the rich man].[i] So both Abraham and the rich man are experiencing the same God, but the one who rejects him is experiencing him as agonizing flame.

Note too that it is not Jesus, as the narrator of this parable, who tells us about this flame, but the rich man who describes his own experience this way. It’s his own experience of God that is agonizing to him.

Abraham hears and answers the rich man. And first of all, he calls him “son” (16:25). I think it’s worthy of some note that Abraham still thinks of the rich man as his son, despite all his waste and neglect of the poor beggar Lazarus. The rich man, despite his evil-doing, is not so cut off as to have lost all relationship.

We are relational beings. That’s one of the ways in which we are images of God. God is a Trinity of Persons in relationship with one another and we are also persons in relationship with other persons and with God. We are relational by our very nature and that is indestructible. Even in hell, we remain relational. The image of God doesn’t go away. We are made in the image of God and after his likeness. No matter what, we remain in his image, though we can grow or diminish in our likeness to God, depending on how we live. The rich man in the fires of Hades is still an image of God. Somehow, Abraham is still his father and he is still Abraham’s son. That’s the first thing Abraham has to say, but it certainly isn’t the last.

He was responding to the rich man begging for was a drop of water from the end of Lazarus’s finger to cool his tongue (16:24). Seems like a small request. He didn’t say, “Get me out of here!” He didn’t beg to be delivered from the flame that tormented him. He only begged for a droplet of water. Surely this would not be too much to ask. But it would be a good thing – very like the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table, which he denied to Lazarus who desired them (16:21). And note how the rich man thinks it’s Lazarus who should wait on him, as if Lazarus is his servant. We can see in this his persistent impenitence. If he had instead offered to serve Lazarus, I wonder if he could have heard a different answer. As it is, Abraham reminds the rich man that he has already received his good things and shows him the great chasm between them over which none may cross (16:25-26). I think this chasm is created by the rich man’s impenitence. Abraham speaks the truth about it even though it is a hard truth, but he speaks the truth in love – not in vindictiveness. Remember, he calls the rich man his son.

So, yes, if we are like Christ we will issue the warning of the real possibility of damnation and fire, but, like Abraham, we will issue this warning out of love and truth, not out of some secret desire to cause the wicked to suffer. Very much to the contrary, Abraham doesn’t want the rich man to suffer but rather reveals to the rich man how he is simply suffering the result of his own actions (16:25). This is what happens when we die.

What happens when we die? And then what happens at the end – at the end of all things? These are important questions. Maybe some of the most important questions. This parable does give us a rare glimpse into what happens after death. Though, when studied deeply, I think the parable of the rich man and Lazarus doesn’t so much provide concrete answers as invite contemplation of the mystery of death – so that we might prepare ourselves for it. This is about how we might live now in preparation for death and what comes after.

First of all, by not only taking the opportunities that come our way but also by seeking out opportunities to give food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty, to welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick, and visit the imprisoned (cf. Matt 25:31-46). Notice Lazarus is most of these things: hungry, thirsty, and sick. So the opportunity to provide for these needs was always lying at the rich man’s gate, but he squanders that opportunity again and again. On the other hand, Abraham, who, by the way, was also a very rich man, did well at caring for these things. There are two rich men in this parable, but Abraham acts in just the opposite way. Remember the hospitality of Abraham to the three strange men who came near his tent.

“He ran from the tent door to meet them.” The rich man wouldn’t have even had to do that, for Lazarus was lying at his gate, but Abraham sought out the opportunity to show hospitality and ran out to meet them and he “bowed himself to the earth” before them. You can see how eager he was to serve them – grateful for the opportunity to show hospitality, knowing that doing so is also his own salvation.  He calls himself a “servant” to these strangers and says, “Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree, while I fetch a morsel of bread, that you may refresh yourselves.” And here is what Abraham meant by a “morsel of bread”: he “hastened into the tent to Sarah, and said, Make ready quickly three measures of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes.” So, a bit more than a morsel of bread. “And [he] ran to the herd, and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it. Then he took curds, and milk, and the calf which he had prepared, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree while they ate.” (Gen. 18:2-8). He stood while they ate! He didn’t even join them, but stood by like a waiter ready to attend to any detail of hospitality.

Live like this, like Abraham and not like the nameless rich man of Christ’s parable. That rich man stands before us as a warning. But show compassion to all others, whether they are just or unjust, even as Abraham addresses even the rich man with the warmth of the name, ‘son,’ do not cut off from hope and loving solicitude even those who cut off themselves. Maybe, if we speak the truth in love to them (Eph 4:15), rather than cursing them to hell, they will be stirred to repentance and join us in paradise.

[i] Maximus the Confessor, Questions to Thalassium, 39, 3: PG 90, 392.

Sermon on Luke 8:5-15 & the Seventh Ecumenical Council

More than twelve hundred years ago, our fathers gathered in the town of Nicaea for what would become the seventh ecumenical council, which is especially remembered for its defense of the holy icons against the iconoclasts – or image-breakers.

Now, I don’t know how many of you have tried to make an icon with the traditional medium of egg tempera, but it’s a rewarding and prayerful experience and I do recommend it. There’s a kind of intimacy you can gain with the saint that you are painting, which comes simply from spending so much time before the image as you help to deepen and clarify it with layer after layer of the translucent medium. One thing we are losing all sense of in this instantaneous information age is the value of spending time with things. Painting an icon in the traditional medium forces us to slow down and immerse in the sacred thing we are doing.

To work with egg tempera you must mix the pigment with the emulsion – which is egg yolk – while you are painting. This is because the emulsion does not keep and so the paint will spoil if you don’t use it the same day you make it. Anyway, working this way rather than with premixed liquid paints allows you to better see, touch, and smell the material you’re working with. And it becomes clear that, for the most part, pigment is dirt. It is various kinds of earth. In fact, some of the pigments even have names like “green earth” for example.

So, when we paint an icon, we are making an image of a holy person out of dirt, out of dust, out of the ground, out of earth. How fitting! Because remember, it is of this that we are actually made.

The holy images are made from earth – just like you and your loved ones and all of us. The council says that the holy images may be “painted or made of mosaic or of other suitable material,” but all of this has the same source: the earth.

My name is mud. Or, anyway, that’s what Adam might have said. The name Adam in Hebrew most literally means dust man. Or sometimes you see him called clay or earth or mud. Because it is of this that we are made. We will all “return to the ground, for out of it we were taken; we are dust, and to dust we shall return.” (Gen 3:8)

Today, our Lord teaches us in his parable about different kinds of ground. And he’s talking about us – about different kinds of people. We different kinds of people are really different kinds of dirt, see? But you can do a lot with dirt. Remember the holy icons. This dirt that we are, like the holy icons, can become worthy of veneration, because we all receive the seed of the word in us. The spermatikos logos, as St. Justin Martyr puts it.

This is a familiar image. Remember again Adam. Adam – and, in Adam, all humanity – is earth with God breathed in. “The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being” (Gen 2). The word of God speaks the earth into human life. So: earth, plus the word of God, equals human life. We see this in the account of the creation of humans in Genesis. And we see it again today in the parable of the sower as Jesus tells it. Only now the word is depicted as a seed in the earth.

Whether or not this seed takes root in us, gives life to us, depends on our receptiveness to it.  We must be like the good soil and hold the seed of the word of God “in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patient endurance.” Humility is clearly part of being like good soil.

Humility is honest and good. Humility is truth. And, the truth is, we are dust. Remembering this – being mindful of our earthiness – is humility. The word itself contains this meaning. It come from the Latin humilis, which literally means “on the ground,” from humus, meaning “earth.”  Another word likely also comes from the same root as humus: human.  So, again, this is what we really are and humility lies in embracing that truth. To be humble is to be a human aware of your own humanness – which is really your own creatureliness. We, like all the earth, are created by our creator and exist in that relationship to him. We are not the creator. We do not author our own reality, whatever the world may say to the contrary. The humble know this.

The grace of recognizing our lowliness, earthiness, and creatureliness – the grace of humility – lifts us up from earth to heaven and helps us to grow in ever greater union with our creator.

All this talk of humans being made of dirt may have given you the impression that I am down on humans. But nothing could be further from the truth. Remember where we began – with the holy icons, themselves also made of earth. But these we kiss and venerate and love, just as we do the holy relics of our saints. We do not treat them with contempt, but with veneration. This has everything to do with the seed of the word planted in the earth of the human.

It is God that makes us holy and breathes life into us. It is his presence in the earth of our bodies that makes our bodies worthy of veneration. In the icons, there is always the halo. The flesh is painted with common earth. But the halo is made of gold and represents the grace surrounding the holy men and women of God. It is this grace that makes anyone holy and nothing else. Just to recognize humbly that you are soil will make you better soil to receive the seed of the word of God in you. Be of honest and good heart – be humble – remember who you are and who is God – and that will give life to you and make you whole and holy.