Have you noticed how this time of year plays tricks with our expectations? One day teases us with spring warmth, the next reminds us winter hasn’t quite finished. With April Fool’s Day just around the corner, we’re reminded how easily we can be fooled by appearances. Have you experienced that moment of uncertainty over the last few weeks – is this real spring, or just another false start?
These seasonal transitions mirror something deeper in our lives. Consider moments when we’ve misjudged a situation based on surface appearances. The coworker we dismissed as unfriendly until learning about their personal struggles. The neighbor whose life looked perfect from the outside but was quietly falling apart. The person asking for help whom we assumed was trying to scam us.
Today’s story about a rich man and a poor man named Lazarus challenges our tendency to make these surface judgments. As we continue following Jesus toward Jerusalem in Luke’s Gospel, he confronts us with a parable about someone who was fooled by appearances – focused on maintaining his comfortable lifestyle while missing the human need right at his doorstep.
This story invites us to look deeper, to see beyond something misleading on the surface to what truly matters. What divides are we maintaining? Who might be at our gate that we’re failing to notice? How might God be calling us to bridge these gaps before they become permanent divides?
Throughout our series, “The Way Home,” we’ve been following Jesus on his journey to Jerusalem. Each step has revealed different aspects of what it means to find our way to God.
We began with Jesus setting his face toward Jerusalem, showing the courage needed to follow God’s call. Then we saw him expand our definition of “neighbor” through the Good Samaritan and teach us about true hospitality with Mary and Martha.
Last week, Jesus revealed how God persistently searches for what’s lost through three powerful parables – the lost sheep, lost coin, and lost son – showing that everyone belongs in God’s family.
Today’s parable of the rich man and Lazarus adds a challenging dimension. While previous stories emphasized God reaching out to us, now Jesus shows our responsibility to reach out to others. The way home isn’t just about our personal journey to God – it requires us to notice those at our gate, bridging divides that separate people from each other and from God’s love.
When Jesus told the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the Roman Empire ruled Israel with an iron grip. Most people lived as farmers or laborers, struggling to make ends meet while paying heavy taxes to both Roman authorities and the Jerusalem Temple. Think of a society where the gap between rich and poor was like a deep canyon – with no middle class to bridge it.
For the wealthy minority, life was luxurious. Purple clothing, mentioned in the parable, was extremely expensive – the ancient equivalent of designer fashion that screamed “I’m wealthy!” Daily feasting was another clear status symbol in a world where most people ate meat only on special occasions. Meanwhile, those with severe illnesses like Lazarus often became beggars, completely dependent on others’ mercy, with no social safety net or healthcare system.
In Luke’s Gospel, this story appears as Jesus journeys toward Jerusalem, teaching about God’s kingdom values along the way. Luke, more than other Gospel writers, emphasizes Jesus’ concern for the poor and marginalized. This parable follows right after Jesus criticized the Pharisees for being “lovers of money,” making it especially pointed.
Jesus uses vivid storytelling techniques here, contrasting extreme situations – wealth versus poverty, comfort versus suffering, awareness versus indifference. The conversation between Abraham and the rich man creates dramatic tension while delivering the parable’s punch. What makes this story particularly powerful is that Jesus names the poor man (Lazarus means “God has helped”) but leaves the rich man nameless – the opposite of how society typically operates.
This parable is full of biblical themes. It conects with prophets calling for justice, like Amos 6:4-7, where they criticize those who feast while others suffer. It also reminds us of Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain, where Jesus says, “Blessed are you who are poor.” And it reminds us of the Bible’s constant message to care for the vulnerable.
The central message is clear: our treatment of others, especially those in need, has eternal significance. The divide we create through indifference in this life can become permanent in the next. This parable isn’t primarily about wealth itself, but about failing to see and respond to human need right in front of us.
Jesus calls us to bridge divides now, while there’s time to create pathways of compassion instead of canyons of indifference. The divides Jesus described still exist, though they may look different in our world.
Consider the invisible barriers we create through inattention. Most of us have experienced that moment at a stoplight – someone holding a sign asking for help while we sit in our climate-controlled cars, perhaps averting our eyes or focusing intently on our phones. The rich man’s failure wasn’t active cruelty but something more familiar to us – the choice not to see Lazarus as a real person with dignity and worth. How many people do we pass each day without truly noticing? The neighbor whose name we never learned, the custodian whose daily work makes our lives better, the person serving our coffee whose story remains unknown to us.
Then there are the divides we maintain through our choices about resources. When we decide how to use our time, money, and attention, we’re either building bridges or deepening divides. The clothing we purchase without asking who made it and under what conditions, the food we consume without considering its true cost, the entertainment we choose without examining its messages – these daily decisions reflect what we truly value. The rich man’s fine purple clothing and daily feasting weren’t inherently wrong, but they became so when they created a barrier between him and human need right at his gate.
Perhaps most challenging are the divides we justify through our worldviews. Like the rich man who even in torment couldn’t see Lazarus as an equal – still viewing him as someone to serve his needs – we too can hold perspectives that keep others at arm’s length. When we believe certain people “deserve” their suffering, when we think some problems are too big to address, or when we convince ourselves that systemic issues aren’t our responsibility, we’re reinforcing the very divides Jesus challenges us to bridge.
This week, I invite you to take three specific steps toward bridging divides:
First, practice truly seeing. Each day, intentionally notice someone you might normally overlook. Make eye contact, learn a name, or really listen to a concern expressed by someone outside your usual circle.
Second, examine one area where your resources could create connection. Consider how your spending, time, or talents might be redirected to address a need in our community or world.
Third, challenge a perspective that maintains distance. Question assumptions about why people struggle, learn about an issue from those directly affected by it, or explore how your faith calls you to cross a boundary you’ve maintained.
The divides in our world aren’t inevitable. Through small but intentional acts of seeing, sharing, and reframing, we participate in God’s work of building pathways home for everyone.
The good news is that even in this challenging parable, God reveals a path forward. While the rich man discovered too late that his choices created an unbridgeable chasm, we have the opportunity to respond differently. This isn’t just a cautionary tale—it’s an invitation into God’s vision of a world where divides are healed and relationships restored.
Throughout scripture, God consistently works to close the gaps that separate people from each other and from divine love. From the garden where God walked with humanity, to the Exodus where slaves became a community, to the prophets who challenged kings to care for the vulnerable—God has always been in the business of bridge-building.
When Jesus tells this parable, he stands in this prophetic tradition while pointing toward something even more profound. In his very person, Jesus becomes the ultimate bridge-builder, the one who spans the greatest divide of all—between heaven and earth, between God and humanity. On the cross, Jesus enters the deepest depths of human suffering and death to create a way where there was no way.
This parable reveals God’s heart for wholeness in human community. The tragedy isn’t simply the rich man’s punishment but the broken relationship that could have been healed through compassion and recognition. God desires a world where no one remains invisible, where abundance is shared, and where every person’s dignity is honored as bearing the divine image.
In Christ, we see this redemptive work most clearly: the one with the riches of heaven who became poor for our sake, who touched lepers, spoke with outcasts, and revealed that God’s kingdom operates differently from our human systems of value and worth. This is the heart of the gospel: that in Christ, God is reconciling all things, tearing down walls of hostility, and creating one new humanity.
The divides in our world aren’t fixed or inevitable. Like the changing seasons that eventually bring new life, God’s transforming love can bridge even the deepest chasms. But unlike spring’s automatic arrival, bridging human divides requires our participation. When we truly see those at our gate, when we share what we have with open hands, when we build relationships across differences, we help close the great divide between what is and what God dreams for us and the world.
Will you pray with me?
God, open our eyes to see those we overlook. Move our hearts from comfort to compassion. Break down the walls we build and help us create pathways of connection where chasms once stood. Amen.
In crafting today’s sermon, I employed AI assistants like Claude and Apple Intelligence, yet the ultimate responsibility for its content rests with me. These tools offered valuable perspectives, but the most influential sermon preparation hinges on biblical study, theological insight, personal reflection, and divine guidance. I see AI as a supportive aid to enrich the sermon process while ensuring my own voice in proclaiming the Word of God.
Rev. Andrew Conard 