LIKE Hamlet, some Bible readings are “full of quotations”. People who never go to church know that “money is the root of all evil”, or to “fight the good fight”; or call an uncrossable division a “great gulf fixed”.
In the BCP, the “great gulf” Gospel is set for the First Sunday after Trinity, the first Sunday in green time. Good, because the story of Dives and Lazarus (Dives is the Latin word for “rich man”; we never learn his name) expresses two principles of the life of grace which we can grow into during this period.
The first principle is general: use wealth aright. There are penalties for selfishly misusing it. This links to Amos, and to 1 Timothy. And it never hurts to be reminded that it is not money that is evil, but the love of it.
The second principle is targeted — at the Pharisees, and at the future. The distress of Dives when he is “tormented in this flame” is painful to read. It highlights a problem for Christians which has always troubled the thoughtful and charitable: how can a loving God consign people to eternal torment from which there is no hope of reprieve?
A Christian understanding of punishment allows for an element of retribution. If wrongdoing carries no penalty, the considerate, co-operative majority cannot be confident that their acts of trust are safe, and that harms done will require amends. That way lies social chaos. But there can be no Christian understanding of punishment in which the penalty outweighs the offence (eternal torture by burning for neglecting a beggar?), or makes no room for repentance.
Whatever we personally think about the reality of hell as a place of punishment in the next life, it is helpful to separate out the belief that actions (and inactions) can and should have consequences from the conviction that hell is a torture from which repentance can never deliver us. There is greater scriptural support for the former than for the latter.
The rich man is tormented, but not only by his own physical sufferings. The object of his distress, in other words, is more than just himself. He has learned a truth about the demands of divine justice. But, although he is unable to benefit from this himself, he tries to get the message to his brothers, so that they can learn from his mistakes.
He is not permitted to do so. It is a plain confirmation of the words of the psalmist, “No man may deliver his brother: nor make agreement unto God for him” (49.7; Coverdale translation). We can help, guide, support. But every servant of God must find the Way for themselves.
The parable of Dives and Lazarus is the only one that names one of its characters. Calling it “Dives and Lazarus”, as I have done thus far, obscures this intriguing fact. Luke alone records the story. It belongs to a category of material which is unique to Luke, which must have come from a hypothesised source we no longer possess (which biblical scholars call “L”).
Lazarus’s name is stated, but the rich man’s is not. Women are used to this kind of depersonalising in scripture. It makes them, instead of unique individuals, either representative types, or tools. Mrs Noah, Mrs Potiphar, Lot’s daughters, Pharaoh’s daughter, Jephthah’s daughter, the witch of Endor, the Queen of Sheba: grand and humble alike, they are only a means to some narrative end.
If this is true of the rich man, as we must now refer to him, it does not mean that he does not matter. By being named, Lazarus can matter to us as a unique person. But, by being unnamed, the rich man could be any one of us who has done as he did. He becomes a silent reproach, a mirror to hold up.
More than anyone else, the rich man reminds me of “doubting” Thomas; for he must once have ignored the evidence of others (Moses and the prophets), as his brothers are still doing. Even a resurrection from the dead will not convince them. Thomas had thought that he needed to see for himself before believing in the resurrection. Others did well to believe without seeing. This spectrum of reactions shows us that although some “need no repentance” (Luke 15.7), most of us are on a journey between ignorance and understanding. There is still so much to learn.