by CCW | 2 June 2024 10:00
The Gospel story of Lazarus and Dives, the rich man, is a profound illustration of the teaching of the Epistle reading from the 1st Letter of St. John. God is love is the meaning of the mystery of God as Trinity, the essential doctrine of the Christian Faith. It is not a puzzle to be solved but a mystery to be adored. Neither is it a human construct but the making known of God to us by God with us. What we behold in that door opened in heaven last week is what is to be lived in our lives. Thus we enter into the Trinity season, as it has come to be known, which presents a constellation of patterns, patterns upon patterns that circle around and into the mystery of God as Trinity, not unlike the circles of the Heavens in Dante’s Paradiso. “The love that moves the sun and the other stars” is the divine love which joins the varied forms of our humanity to God himself. The Trinity season emphasizes the connection between what is made known through revelation and how that it is to be lived in our lives.
The Epistle reading underscores for us the radical doctrine of the Trinity. The passage contains the core teaching that “God is love; and he that abideth or dwelleth in love abideth or dwelleth in God, and God in him.” This is a strong statement of living faith, our living in the mystery of God revealed. This love is not a transitory moment, here today and gone tomorrow; it is not about God tenting with us, as it were, but more emphatically dwelling or abiding in us, and thus, our abiding in God’s essential life. The simple point is that what is revealed is to be lived out in our lives; “because as he is, so are we in this world.” That, of course, is the great challenge and the real meaning of our spiritual pilgrimage. It is not just to God but with God and in God through the very motions of God himself alive in us. But how? Only by our attention to what is revealed and made known to us.
This is where the Gospel comes into play. It is an effective and powerful illustration of the importance and necessity of our attention to the things of God which if neglected result in our indifference and neglect of one another.
How we think about the world, as we have seen, changes how we think and deal with one another. As we have seen, the Passion and Resurrection of Christ is about the redemption of the world as gathered to God as opposed to seeing the world as something alien, something indifferent, something nauseating, and even something hostile or evil. That, in turn, changes how we see one another. The recurring theme has been about a change from fear and resentment of the world and one another to our joy and care towards one another. But this is equally true about how we think (or don’t think) about God; it affects how we think and deal with one another.
Words and metaphors open us out to a deeper understanding of reality and of ourselves; and nowhere, perhaps, more profoundly than in the parables of Jesus. The parable of Lazarus and Dives, a beggar and a rich man is beautifully told and catches our attention. Simply put, how we think or don’t think about God affects how we think about one another. Our indifference to the one is equally our indifference towards the other. This is what the parable shows. It is not simply about the great and glaring gaps of inequality between the abject poor and the extremely wealthy, as disturbing as such things may be. It is more about how we see one another and how we act accordingly. But that turns upon our attention or lack thereof towards what has been made known and communicated to us in the witness of the Scriptures.
A certain rich man, a certain beggar. Yet only the beggar is named. He is Lazarus. He lays at the gate of the rich man’s house, “full of sores and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table.” In Luke’s telling and moving phrase, it is only the dogs who attend to him: they “came and licked his sores.” We are reminded of another story where the Canaanite woman noted that “even the little dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” Here Lazarus is served by the dogs but is not even granted the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table. In short, Lazarus is ignored and overlooked; as if he doesn’t even exist. Only the dogs acknowledge him.
This is a telling indictment of a culture of indifference or avoidance towards those who are regarded as beneath our notice or a threat to our vision of ourselves in our comfortable complacencies. The parable shows a paradoxical ‘reversal of situation.’ The rich man turns out to be poor towards God and thus at a far remove from God and heaven while Lazarus, poor with respect to the things of the world, is rich in the things of God having been “carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom,” an image of heaven. The parable imagines a dialogue between the rich man in Hades or Hell and Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom. The dialogue turns on the question of our attention to God and to one another, upon the ultimate good of our humanity as found in God and only so with one another.
How will we learn to care? The parable points to the Scriptures, to “Moses and the prophets”; in short, to the Hebrew Scriptures. For they, too, teach us about repentance and the radical life of God. It is one of the themes of the Passion and Resurrection and of Pentecost. The high things of God are made known to us by Word and Spirit in and through the Scriptures that bring to light the qualities of our lives in community. It is really a question of our attention to what we are being taught which affects our relations to and with one another. Repentance or metanoia is about our thinking upon or after the things of God made known to us. But what if we are indifferent to such things?
Learning how to pay attention is one of the great challenges of our age. It is not exactly a new problem. The monastic traditions understood only too well the forms of distraction. The problem of the rich man is not his wealth but his indifference to his fellow human being. As such he negates or denies his own humanity. He creates the gulf, the chasm, between himself and God. The parable, too, offers a strong critique of thinking that the meaning and worth of our lives is measured simply in material and economic terms. It recalls us instead to a sense of ethical responsibility towards one another that belongs to the true meaning of human life. We don’t live only for ourselves. We live for one another but only in living for God whose life is given for us. In other words, our relation to God conditions our relationships with one another. Being mindful of the one leads to our being mindful of one another.
The strong sense of the ethical in the parables of Jesus is about the love of God and the love of neighbour; they are intimately and essentially connected. To ignore one is to ignore the other and to find ourselves bereft of all that is good. Thinking that our good is to be found in our material well-being, “clothed in purple and fine linen” and “far[ing] sumptuously every day” turns out to be our undoing because it negates the common good of our humanity. Thus our indifference to one another is just as destructive of ourselves as using one another for our own ends. Both belong to the failure to attend to the teachings that belong to our life with God and with one another.
And all because of the necessary connection and interplay between knowing and loving. He that loves not knows not, knows not and loves not God. All because God is love. Thus today’s readings highlight the overall project of the Trinity Season: our incorporation into the life of God. Our abiding in the love of God seeks our increase and growth in holiness but only through our attention to the love of God manifested towards us in the world through the only-begotten Son. “That we might live through him.” Our attention to God requires our attention towards one another.
Fr. David Curry
Trinity I, 2024
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2024/06/02/sermon-for-the-first-sunday-after-trinity-12/
Copyright ©2026 Christ Church unless otherwise noted.