Sept. 29, 2019     The Rich Man and Lazarus                                

The story of the rich man and Lazarus always reminds me of something I saw on one of my Habitat Trips to Ecuador. Being wealthy Americans, who are well known for their love of shopping, our hosts took us to a Mall in the capital city of Quito. Now Quito is a large city of some 3-4 million people, so they have some pretty good sized malls, with lots of shops in them. The one we went to was in a building some 5 stories high and the length of a football field.

A unique feature of this mall was that it had see through glass walls facing a central square, so you could look in and see the shoppers, and shoppers could look out and see the square. There was just one disturbing thing about this, the beggars who sat outside the mall. Quito has a rather large population of beggars who come down from the hillside looking for work in the big city. When they get to the city, they send out members of their family who can’t work to beg on the streets. Almost every corner seems to have someone asking for a handout.

The mall had even more people like this, cause where there is money, there are beggars. The mall even hired security to keep the beggars away from the glass, so they wouldn’t disturb the shoppers, but you still had to walk through them to get to the mall, and as you looked out the window, they were still in plain sight. Later that evening at vespers, we had a time of sharing, and a number of our youth were quite disturbed by our trip to the mall.

It seems they didn’t like being watched shopping, even if from afar, some said it made them feel guilty of something, some said it made them second guess what they were spending money on, some felt like they should just leave and give their money to the beggars. Others noticed the way people just walked past the beggars as if they weren’t even there, how they sat at the restaurants in the mall and shopped for luxury items, seemingly oblivious to the poor beggars sitting just 15 to 20 feet away outside the glass.  

     The leader of our group, who had devotions that evening, and who knew what we were going to experience that day at the Mall, read to them the story of the rich man and Lazarus, and asked the youth to talk about what they heard in the story. Some noted that the rich man seemed to not notice Lazarus at his gate, just like some of the people seemed not to notice the poor all around them. Other’s pointed out that the rich man must have known Lazarus, because he asked for Father Abraham to send Lazarus to cool his thirst. Some thought the rich man felt Lazarus deserved his fate in life, and was surprised to find that in death, God favored Lazarus. This reminded others about how we treat the poor in our world, blaming them for their situations, saying we can’t help them all, expecting them to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Still others, worried about our place in the world, for compared to Ecuadorians, we are quite a wealthy people, and what that might mean for our afterlife.

It was quite a discussion, and at the end of the discussion, our leader that evening, noted that it was our faith in Jesus Christ, that helps us to bridge the gap between rich and poor, heaven and hell. It is our faith in Jesus Christ that helps us recognize how the world ignores or blames the poor for their situation. It is our faith in Jesus Christ that leads us to missions and ministries that reach out to the poor, hoping that we can make a difference in their lives, even if we can’t help them all. It is our faith in Jesus Christ, that helps us to understand wealth and power as a way to help others, rather than to simply indulge ourselves. And it is our faith in Jesus Christ, that moves us to action, that will be our salvation in this life and in the life that is to come. And that is the Good News of Jesus Christ!