Last Sunday Fr Jim reminded us that whilst wealth is not in itself evil, it is dangerous. He was discussing the parable of the unjust steward, a companion piece in Luke’s gospel to this morning’s familiar tale of Dives and Lazarus, but his pithy summary of Jesus’ teaching on the subject of riches is as good a starting point as any for our reflections on this morning’s readings. We began with Amos, a prophet who appeals to the left wing of his party. But it’s not just the conspicuous consumption of the wealthy folk of Samaria, reclining on their ivory beds, still less I hope – in this our Festival week – their love of music, that causes Amos to rail against the spivs and gamblers of his day. Nor is Dives criticised simply for his banqueting. In both cases the true target of the prophet’s anger is their well developed capacity to shut their eyes and ears to the needs of others. Dives knows that Lazarus is lying there at the gate to his house, in such a bad way that he doesn’t even have the strength to drive away the pariah dogs that lick at his sores. But he chooses to ignore him. Like the rich folk of Samaria, who are ‘not grieved over the ruin of Joseph’ (Amos 6.6). Paul puts his finger on what really matters when he says not that money as such is the root of all evil, but the love of money – and that by the way is something which can afflict us all, whether we have lots of money or very little. If we have lots, taking care of it and getting more can come to dominate our lives. And if we have little, we may be made sour and aggrieved by our envy of those who have more than we do.
Paul advises Timothy to command the rich not to be haughty, not to think of themselves as better than those they might be tempted to dismiss as the ‘feckless poor’ or the welfare scroungers; not to pin their hopes on the next fat bonus, or a roaring bull market – the uncertainty of riches – but rather on God who provides us with all we really need. He advises Timothy to challenge the rich to do good and to be generous in sharing their good fortune, ‘so that they may take hold of the life that really is life’ (1 Tim 6.19). It’s a message that will doubtless be heard from this pulpit more than once during October which is our stewardship month. But I might as well start now. This church urgently needs something like a 15% increase in its annual income, if we are to deepen and strengthen our own mission, particularly among children and young people, as well as through the Diocesan Common Fund which supports parishes less well off than we are, and through meeting our long-standing commitment to give 10% of our parish income to a range of good causes outside our own parish. Over the coming weeks there will be more information about what we need, and why we need it, on posters at the back of church, in letters to members of our committed giving scheme, and in appeals to those of you who haven’t yet made a regular commitment. On Saturday 16 October, there will be a special Gift Day when the Vicar will sit in church to receive your pledges. That gives us nearly three weeks to decide what each one of us can do. I look forward to seeing a long queue of people coming to see him, encouraging him by doing their bit, be it large or small, to put the necessary resources behind our mission programme. St Paul reminds us elsewhere (2 Cor 9.7) that God loves a cheerful giver, so I look forward to our Gift Day as a day of celebration.
But giving, even cheerful and generous giving, is not the whole story. Nor does it capture the key point of Jesus’ parable about Dives and Lazarus. Walking through the centre of Oxford last week, I dropped into New College to have a look at Jacob Epstein’s famous statue of Lazarus. Wrong Lazarus of course, but never mind. There he stands, the Lazarus whom Jesus raised from the dead, still tightly trussed up in his grave clothes. The figure of Lazarus stands in the ante-chapel, within inches of the west door, signifying his readiness to go back out into the world, but the most striking feature of the statue is the way his face tilts right back on his shoulder, as if straining to look the other way, towards the light of Christ’s presence which suffuses the east end of the chapel, as Austin Farrer suggested in a memorable sermon.
The banker Stephen Green, who recently stood down as Chairman of HSBC to join the government as minister of state for trade and investment, makes the point in his book ‘Good Value’, published last year, that giving – even cheerful and generous giving – is not enough if it is just an adjunct to a life out there in the world, focussed purely on pleasure or indeed on work. As we step through the church doors to go out into that exciting, busy and potentially all-consuming world, we need that backward tilt of the head, that turning towards the light of Christ’s presence, to keep our lives in true perspective. Without it we take the risk of allowing our lives to become focussed on, dominated by and ultimately consumed by whatever it is we value most. It may be money, or status, beauty or power. Or it may be the intense pleasure of the single moment of complete and utter satisfaction that ultimately caused even Goethe’s ever-restless, ever-questing Faust to declare ‘Verweile doch! Du bist so schon!’ – But stay awhile – O, how beautiful you are! Whatever it is that we love more than God, that is what has the power to consume and destroy us.
Dives was a Saducee. He could live for pleasure in this world, careless of the beggar at his gate, because he did not believe there was any life beyond death, when he would sink into the oblivion and nothingness of Hades. He was aware of Lazarus, but he didn’t think he had any responsibility for him. I know there are some exceptions among us, but I hope those of you whose income really is small will forgive me if I assert that many of us in this congregation are in the position of Dives – we have more than most people in this country, infinitely more than most people in the developing countries of the Third World. Our carbon footprint is well above the world average. Some of us exercise real power and influence. But we are also, most of us, aware of our good fortune, and keen to give something back to the community. We recognise that we have a debt, and that makes us debtors. When we respond to the still small voice within us that prompts us to give something back, we have a choice. Either we can just repay what we perceive as our debt, dropping a few coins into the collection bag or the charity bucket, or we can allow our hearts to be touched by the need which we had perhaps not really noticed before. If that compassion owes anything to the light of Christ to which we have turned just a little, then we may come to understand that our debt is not just being repaid, but forgiven. We may even come to know that not just the debt but the debtor is being forgiven. We are close here to the true alchemy of the gospel that Faust could never find.
When Dives asked that Lazarus be sent to warn his brothers and sisters of the truth that he had apprehended too late, he was told that this was both impossible and unnecessary. They had all the prophets to warn them anyway. An apparition was not going to make any difference. We have not merely Amos and Paul and all the prophets, but the example of Jesus Christ, who loved us so much that he died for our sakes. He is able, if we will let him, to take that spark of human compassion, that desire to give something back, and transform it by the grace and love of his own Spirit. If that Spirit dwells within us, his love will prompt us both individually and as a community to care as he cares for today’s Lazarus, and in doing so to find peace not merely through generous giving, but through experiencing Christ’s forgiveness of that nagging but deep-seated sense of indebtedness. As we accept that gift of forgiveness, as we live more and more by the light that we have glimpsed, we shall as Paul says ‘take hold of the life that really is life’.