Reading Luke Together #36 – Segregation in Heaven

Only Luke recalls Jesus’ great story of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31). Simple on the surface, Jesus’s touch is subtle. The rich man isn’t named – a detail I love! In our world, and usually in Scripture, we know the names of the rich, but not the poor. Wretched Lazarus’ name is out there. He must matter – although he rich man thinks not. In his mansion he feasts sumptuously every day, never noticing, or stepping over with an annoyed sigh, this starving, pathetic leper right out on the street.

Was this wealthy man surprised after death to have landed in Hades? Even there, he’s unfazed, unchanged. Somehow he’s able to gaze up into heaven and sees poor Lazarus there. Still blind to their shared humanity, he still thinks of himself as powerful, and the poor as people to demean or boss around. He demands (!) that Abraham in heaven “send” Lazarus down to bring him some water. Oh, Jesus, how insightful!

I understood this better after I learned that Vernon Johns, Martin Luther King Jr.’s predecessor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, got hauled off to jail in 1949 for advertising his sermon title “Segregation After Death” on the church marquee. His text? The parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31). Under interrogation, Johns was required to preach the sermon to the white police. Even they were moved to tears.

Johns suggested the rich man hollered “across the great gulf of prejudice.” He was condemned, not merely for failure to share with the poor, but by his insistence on segregation, which he perversely maintains even after death. Johns, of course, was shining a bright light on the dark motives of white cops arresting and mistreating Johns and his black parishoners! – and maybe on our world today as well?

The entire parable is a little dicey if we try to get literal about it. Jesus is not giving a photographic portrayal of what things will be like: hollering across a massive chasm, Abraham leading the conversation, etc. It’s a story, brilliantly making its point. And you can’t miss the irony in “If someone from the dead goes to my brothers, surely they will repent” – but the risen Christ has failed to persuade millions, who might give mental assent that Okay, he arose! but live unaltered, unrepentant lives, jammed full of sins of commission and omission.

Clever church people might object to Jesus’ hint that we should help the poor. People should be responsible! Dependence on charity actually ruins people’s chances of rising up to self-reliance! Fascinating how our awareness of toxic charity can underwrite cold hearts – and so avoiding toxic charity leads inevitably to a toxic lack of charity.

How much of the Bible insists we care for the poor? How might we conceive of our offerings for those in need? “Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord” (Proverbs 19:17). Recall the complaint about the Christians from the emperor Julian the Apostate: “Those impious Galileans support not only their own poor but ours as well.”

Whatever our political ideology might be, Jesus and Paul established giving as a holy obligation. Never forget that for Paul, the poor also are required to help the poor! Some of the most courageous, impactful ministries for the poor I’ve seen in my lifetime are fully carried out by people we’d think of as poor. I have a friend in Lithuania who engages in startlingly effective ministry with the poorest of the poor – while she herself is poor. And when I’ve preached in Haiti, we take up a collection for, yes, the poor.

As Christians we don’t stop when we put a check in an envelope. Charity without relationship really is toxic. How much church charity drills home the demeaning message that You are a problem, We are the answer, You have no worth, We will provide worth and you can thank us.

Wesley was right: it is always better to deliver aid than to send it. The rich man could have sat on the step with Lazarus and shared a meal, or invited him in to sit at his own table. Jesus again: “When you have a dinner, don’t invite those who can invite you in return, but invite the poor…” (Luke 14:7-14). Can we figure out how to share and just be with the poor in a way that real friendship can happen? – remembering that the basis of all such friendships is that God has befriended us?