2/25/2024 0 Comments Lazarus bible story theology![]() Remember, in context, Jesus is telling this story to priests and religious elites who lived in elaborate and posh mansions rivaled only by their Roman governors. The appearance Abraham in this story, standing on the side of Lazarus and arguing with the rich man on behalf of the poor man, likely would have left Jesus’ listeners drop-jawed. We’ve heard it justified because those people don’t need really help, that food aid to the hungry makes them lazy and dependent on others, that it weakens their moral resolve.īut Jesus does something interesting with this logic, and it might surprise us just as much as it surprised people 2,000 years ago. We see some of this logic played out in the proposal to cut $40 billion in food aid to the hungry and in need in our country. Many Americans - and even many Christians - believe incorrectly that poverty is a sign of some moral failing, be it laziness, drug use or something similar. It’s not so different from our own understandings of poverty and wealth today. On the other side of things, poverty, like we see in Lazaraus, was generally thought of as a curse from God, as punishment for sin, moral failing, and wrongdoing. So, in that tradition, the wealthy in Jesus’ time - many of whom were religious elites and priests - thought of themselves in a direct kinship line from Abraham, inheriting by proxy his wealth and promise.1 He was an exceedingly wealthy man, and the Hebrew Scriptures are clear that his wealth was indeed a blessing from God. One needed to look no further than the father of all Jews, Abraham. Rather, wealth was a sign of God’s blessing. They wouldn’t have seen the rich man as a villain initially. In the popular theology of the day, wealth wasn’t at the root of all kinds of evil. No, the most radical reversal belongs to Abraham. ![]() That trope had all been done before, almost exactly. Because the most surprising and most important role reversal doesn’t belong to Lazarus, who goes from emaciated beggar to bliss in the afterlife, or to the rich man, who goes from sumptuous feasts and finery to the fires of Hades. Perhaps because we are so accustomed to this narrative device, though, we’ve missed the most radical role reversal in Jesus’ parable today. ![]() It should be no surprise then that Jesus uses this basic storytelling device as well, and parts of his story are drawn almost directly from ancient Egyptian (or Greco-Roman, depending on the scholar) tales. It’s a beloved trope, one of the seven basic plots in our stories. Our movies and television shows are filled with this kind of story, from Trading Spaces with Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy to The Hunger Games. It explains the popularity of reality television shows like Undercover Boss where the wealthy owner of some national retail brand goes to work with the everyday minimum wage employees. ![]()
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