26TH Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C, 2025

Amos 6:1a, 4-7; 1 Timothy 6:11-16; Luke 16:19-31

How do the readings of this Sunday talk to me, many may ask? I am neither rich nor poor. Even the rich and the poor of our reading, we are not told what their sins were: neither poverty nor riches is the reason for what happened to them. To make matters more complex, today, many poor people have dogs, and do not see any difficulty sharing a meal with a dog. The question may be asked: Would a rich man share his meal with me, invite me, in tattered clothes, to his banquet? What is going on in our readings?

The Lord is telling us a different story through today’s readings, a story that goes beyond either being rich or poor. I suggest that the Lord is telling us that in each one of us, there is something of Lazarus and something of the rich man. Remember that the rich man has no name and will remain nameless. That is, namelessness is the lot of anyone who comports himself like the rich man. The fundamental flaw the rich man exhibited is a lack of generosity, especially when God couldn’t count any kindness he showed to  Lazarus. This is consequent upon the rich man’s blindness to the presence of another human being (Lazarus) and his needs. Indeed, when we become anonymous to the needs of our society, environment, and family, we become nameless like the rich man. Our self-centeredness, especially when we have been blessed with wealth –  material or spiritual. When either our beauty or handsomeness drags others in the mud of sin and irrelevance. When our use of our intelligence insults others, instead of help them. When the world is all about us and no one else – all the missed opportunities to do good!

Importantly, Lazarus was not praised because he was poor! Lazarus, covered with sores, looking for food and wrestling for survival with dogs, yet he was right in front of wealth – the rich man’s door. Is this not humanity’s poverty too, the unsatisfied needs of the poor, our collective nakedness before the world, and desire that God will intervene and transform our situation for the better, whatever our different needs are? Lazarus was rewarded with Heaven (Abraham’s bossom) because he remained a good person despite poverty! The poverty of Lazarus led him to search for help, to the rich man’s door. His presence, his sores, haggard dress, and famished demeanor are the proofs of his state of poverty. He counted on God and human generosity. Human generosity failed him, but God remembered him and sent angels to elevate him to the company of God, to Heaven.

The rich and the poor have one commonality – they both died: their wealth or poverty was no help to keeping them physically alive. Interestingly, the poor and rich are alive, after physical death, but with different dwelling places – the bosom of Abraham and the Netherworld – one went down, the other went up, and an uncrossable chasm separates them. But we are not told that the rich man was a thief, adulterer, murderer; his sins were not enumerated, and neither were the virtues of Lazarus listed out. Their manner of dressing and eating are different, and the company they kept, Lazarus with dogs that licked his sores and became his competitors for the same food.

Apparently, Lazarus is aware of the rich man, at least, he wanted to eat the scraps from the rich man’s table. There is no inkling that the rich man was aware of Lazarus’ predicament, even though his requests to Abraham to send Lazarus to quench his thirst and take a message to his brothers show they knew each other.

The message of today, at least from the arrays of the liturgical readings we have, becomes clearer from the emphasis of the first and the second readings. The first reading underscores the failure to feel with the plight of others: “Woe to the complacent in Zion! . . . yet they are not made ill by the collapse of Joseph!” Indeed, we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers, that is the message. All that affects one person is the business of all. To be indifferent to the needs of others is already a sin. It is wrong to want to be happy alone while denying others happiness. We need to step out of our comfort zones to reach out to others right at our doorsteps and beyond. In Nigeria, such a sin is called “I better pass my neighbor”: when I measure my wealth in comparison to the poverty of others, and not through what makes us both human beings, children of God.

To teach us a lesson, unlike the nameless rich man, the poor man has a name – Lazarus. Like some of us, our names have a meaning; the meaning of our names may not be of our choosing, but it appears that those who give us those names have a purpose for them – they either showed their situation in life or the hope they built into life. Lazarus, which means the Lord-is-my-help, alludes to God’s design to help the human person: living with a strong faith and hope in God against all odds. Life is lived well and meaningfully when you and I live our lives with God by living as he dictates. According to our second reading, “man of God, pursue righteousness, devotion, faith, love, patience, and gentleness. Compete well for the faith” (1 Timothy 6:11). We need each other to practice the faith. My rich and poor neighbors are human beings too, so their needs are my concern and business. It is not only consanguinity, race, language, status, gender and nationality that bind us together – humanity does. And, every human being is alive because God has endowed him/her with the gift of life – we are debtors of God’s gift of life.

Paul says, in our second reading, “I charge you before God, who gives life to all things”. If life is a gift of God, then God has a reason for giving you and I life. Paul continues, “Lay hold of eternal life, to which you were called” (1 Timothy 6:12). In other words, it is neither the earthly life that matters nor our status on earth, rich or poor. One thing matters, doing our utmost to make it to Heaven, Abraham’s bosom; a place of comfort and eternal bliss! Hades/Hell of Fires is a situation of separation from God; our first reading describes it as exile – “they shall be the first to go into exile”. That is the distinction between Lazarus and the rich man: the rich man died, and “he was buried”; Lazarus died, and angels took him to the bosom of Abraham, to Heaven. When we live separated from God, men will bury us. When we live united with God, angels will carry us to Heaven. Human beings bury us six feet below – the netherworld, but angels take us up to Heaven.

Curiously, the rich man was not still converted in Hell/Hades! When he spoke in Hell of Fires, the rich man only saw Lazarus as an errand boy, not a human being of equal status. Like you and I, the rich man loves his family: “Then I beg you, father [Abraham], send him [Lazarus] to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they too come to this place of torment”. Come to think of it, the rich man has five brothers, so he is the sixth brother; when you add Lazarus to the list, they become SEVEN, the Hebrew word for PERFECTION! This is the sin of omission to have eliminated Lazarus from the list of his brothers! “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” (Matthew 19:21).

We must bring in every Lazarus at our doorsteps, those whose plights we are fleeing from because they inconvenience us. It is a sin of omission to refuse and fail to provide a place for the Lazaruses in the world. Like the rich man, saving one Lazarus is good enough, if that is all you and I can do. Sin of omission is the problem. Bring in Lazarus so that you and I can prove that social differences don’t count, but humanness does; Lazarus too is a human being, the seventh brother, deserving of love and care.

 Assignment for the Week:

Open your eyes to the needs of a Lazarus around you and make him/her feel human and loved.