Thursday in the Second Week

Jeremiah 17:5-10; Psalm 1; Luke 16:19-31

Rob Bell does a great job with the story of Lazarus and the rich man, so I’m just going to quote him extensively here.  This is from Love Wins,, pp. 76-79.

“Jesus teaches again and again that the gospel is about a death that leads to life.  It’s a pattern, a truth, a reality that comes from losing your life and then finding it.  this rich man Jesus tells us about hasn’t yet figured that out.  He’s still clinging to his ego, his status his pride - he’s unable to let go of the world he’s constructed, which puts him on the top and Lazarus on the bottom, the world in which Lazarus is serving him.  

He’s dead, but he hasn’t died.

He’s in Hades, but he still hasn’t died the kind of death that actually brings life. . . . 

There’s more.  The plot of the story spins around the heart of the rich man. . . Jesus shows them the heart of the rich man, because he wants them to ask probing questions about their own hearts.  It’s a story about an individual, but how does the darkness of that individual’s heart display itself?

He fails to love his neighbor.

In fact, he ignores his neighbor, who spends each day outside his gate begging for food, of which the rich man has plenty.  It’s a story about individual sin, but that individual sin leads directly to very real suffering at a societal level.  If enough rich mean treated enough Lazaruses outside their gates like that, that could conceivably lead to a widening gap between the rich and the poor.

Imagine.

. . . What we see in Jesus’ story about the rich man and Lazarus is an affirmation that there are al kinds of hells, because there are all kinds of ways to resist and reject all that is good and true and beautiful and human now, in this life, and so we can only assume we can do the same in the next.”

Whatever you believe about hell after death, let these words about hell here and now sink in.  

Turn, and live.