Who Dug the Ditch?

October 9, 1988

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Scripture: “And beside all this, there is a great gulf fixed...” Luke 16:26a

I realized that in all my ministry, I’ve never preached a sermon on this parable, this parable of the rich man with the beggar at his back door. For some reason it’s been gnawing away at me recently...this whole week, in fact. I know I haven’t plumbed it completely, I probably never could, but here’s where I am so far.

I have to tell you it’s a troubling story to me...a frankly disconcerting story, as most of Jesus’ stories, frankly, are. In a way it’s no wonder they crucified Him when they got the chance. It stings, this story, it bites....it leaves you unnerved---even across the years, across the centuries, it grabs you by the throat.

There’s an abrasive starkness about it, a severity which leaves you first gasping and then sweating as you dig into it and then dig a little deeper.

If it weren’t so simple and uncomplicated in one sense---maybe that’s the problem—if it weren’t so transparent and direct, we could perhaps deal with it more easily.

We could study it, examine it, analyze it.... We could escape from it through the wonderful protective device of investigation. We often do that in Bible Study...preachers are notorious for it.... “Let’s see now if we can ascertain what the Lord is saying here....” It makes us look pious and we end up not having to make a response.

IT’S TOUGH TO DO THAT WITH THIS STORY. The sharpness, the vividness of the contrasts

throughout---Dives.......Lazarus, rich man.......poor man, wealth........poverty, a scrap of bread........a drop of water........

The contrast of the lives, the contrast of the deaths, the contrast of the eternities...IT’S POWERFUL STUFF, and much of it is disturbingly unambiguous.

Remember how Mark Twain once put it.... What bothered him most about the Bible, he said, was not the part he couldn’t understand, but the part he could. So here.

I don’t know whether this story is based on an actual, historical incident---some scholars have suggested it---or whether it’s pure parable. If it IS pure parable, it’s the only one, Jesus told where one of the characters is named. Maybe, like Shakespeare, he took an already existing story and embellished it, wrapping it in the genius of his own unique creativity.

I don’t know. I only know that in the form in which it has come down to us, there is such compelling force, such probing scrutiny, such gripping intensity, and such sweeping implication that once it gets inside of you, it simply won’t  let you go.

Will you look at it with me this morning?.... 2 Acts...2 characters. We’ll spend more time with the first.

Act I. “There was a certain rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen, and who feasted sumptuously every day.”

Do you realize? That’s the only description we have of the man. That’s really all we know about him. Tradition has named him Dives, but the Record doesn’t say that. Dives is simply the Latin word for rich man. Jerome called him that back in the 4th Century when he wrote his Vulgate Edition of the Bible, translating the Greek into Latin.... The name has stuck ever since.

But that one sentence is really all we have to go on. There’s nothing in the story specifically to indicate that there was anything wrong in the man’s life. There is nothing to suggest that he got his wealth illegally, or immorally. There’s nothing to suggest that he cheated people, that he defrauded his customers, that he was dishonest in anyway...it just says he was a rich man.

It’s no disgrace in the Bible to be rich. It’s no disgrace today. I read recently about a young woman who became romantically interested in a rather wealthy man, who was by several years her senior in age. She went to her mother about it. She said, “Mother, do you think he’s too old to be eligible?” Her mother, quickly sizing up the possibilities, said, “Too old to be eligible? Honey, he’s too eligible to be old.”

The Bible doesn’t disparage having money. Wealth, per se, according to the Biblical perspective, is not immoral. You can be rich and godly, or you can be rich and ungodly, just as you can be poor and godly, or poor and ungodly....

You don’t find any treatise in the Bible on bashing the bourgeois, just as an end in itself. Indeed, some of the noblest personalities in the Biblical panorama were persons of considerable wealth. Abraham himself, who appears later in this very parable as the representative of heaven, was a wealthy man.

It’s no sin to be rich. And yet it IS sad, I think the Scriptures would agree...it IS sad if the only thing, if the only definitive statement you can make about a person is to say that he’s rich. That becomes a different matter.

Sometimes when I’m working on a meditation for a funeral, I try to encapsulate in a single sentence something about the person being memorialized that is most characteristic, that speaks in summary form of something significant about that person.

I might say, for example, “He was a wonderful father, an exemplary family man.” Or, “She gave herself unstintingly to the upbuilding of her church.” Or, “He loved people, and liked to be with them.”

Those are fine things to be able to say. Just imagine, here’s a man, about whom, if you speak truly, the only thing, the ultimate thing, the definitive thing that could be said was that he was rich, that he had a fabulous wardrobe, and that he dined daily on sumptuous cuisine.

That’s all. It’s not immoral, exactly, it’s not illegal...but if that’s all you can honestly say, it certainly is terribly thin.

Nothing more than that for the record. That’s what impressed those who knew him. That’s what impressed him. That was his life.

Can you picture him? Can you recognize him? I see him as a man who slowly became what he became....not overnight. No doubt there was ability, and probably nobility when he started.

He started fast, I suspect, grew, expanded, flourished, made a bundle...but then, something changed in him, down inside.

His very success thwarted his values. What he was working for began to work on him. Those whores, materialism and pleasure, who are supposed to be on the payroll, moved to the Board of Directors. How many times it’s happened...means became ends, goods became goals, clients became things, things became treasures, acquisitions became obsessions, consumption became king....it’s an old story. Before he knew it, and maybe without knowing completely, Dives was the pre-pigpen Prodigal, only he never moved beyond that.

The more he had, the more he had to have, the more he had to have, the more he had to protect it, the more he had to protect it, the more enamored he became of the protection itself.

The larger the inventory, the larger the alarm system...because every day there were more wolves, and more Lazaruses coming to the door.

Finally, he locked the door, and pulled the shades. Only Dives and Mammon were left in the house, and Mammon had the larger appetite.

Am I being unfair? Of course it didn’t happen overnight, this selfish inward turning, but piece by piece, bit by bit, he was hammering out his destiny, digging that ditch that grew to such proportions beyond the grave.

At the end he was reduced to slavery and garbage, even while proclaiming his freedom and guzzling his Heineken. The material goods themselves, the pleasures themselves, all he had left, became his security, his standard of measurement, the means by which he evaluated, and above all, the buffer, which protected him from the ugly and the crass.

And the buffer thickened, inevitably, defensively.... You see, people who live in that kind of world don’t like to think about any other kind of world.

The worst thing that can happen to them is a Lazarus, because it’s a reminder of their misguided use of resources. They don’t like to think about slums, and hunger, and bed sores, and cockroaches. Those things are an offense against their contrived value system.

I doubt if Dives ever really did see Lazarus, really see him, as a human being, as a person, with hopes, and dreams, and human aspirations.... I doubt if he ever really looked at him.... It would have been too painful.

I’m sure he pulled the shades tightly when a funeral procession went by...with its implied warning of vulnerability, his own inability to control everything, his own approaching mortality... AND GOD, THE REAL GOD.... That was the last thing he wanted to be reminded of. If a flicker of remembrance found its way into his consciousness, he quickly dismissed it, and plunged headlong into diversion.

But the older he got, the harder he had to run, the more he had to frolic, the more coconut he had to have in the ambrosia, the tighter he had to draw the shades of protective security around to shield himself from the reality that was out there.

Lazarus at the back door is the disconcerting symbol of his hollowness.

And Lazarus himself?.... Not the symbol, but the man. Is it more difficult to recognize him? We know by now better than to laud poverty for its own sake. That’s unbiblical too. You’ll look through the Bible until you’re blue in the face for an unctuous homily on the blessings of indigence. It’s more realistic than that.

As there’s no virtue, per se, in being rich, there’s sure no virtue in being poor. “I’ve been both”, says the comedian, “and on the whole, rich is better.”

There’s no description in the account of Lazarus’ character, either. Only the outcome in the epilogue gives us the essential element. But that’s enough.

Being utterly destitute could have driven him to desperation, or worse...it does some people.

It could have made him furious, bitter, seething...we’ve seen it happen over and over. Don’t oversimplify it. True, he didn’t have to meet the more subtle temptations which confronted the rich man...BUT nothing saps the very life juices of a person more than being absolutely beholden to somebody else for everything you have and get.

That’s the depth of degradation. To be reduced to begging, to groveling for bread, for clothing, for medical treatment, for life itself may be as humiliating an experience as one can have. Affliction can drive a person to pray, but it can just as easily drive him to curse.

It would be a travesty to say Lazarus had plenty of time out there to cultivate his spiritual life. That’s pious gibberish only someone with a full belly would have the gall even to suggest it.

Yet, somehow, his experience didn’t embitter him. We don’t know the dynamics, only the fact. Not because of his poverty, but in spite of it, in spite of the sores, and driving rain, and gnawing hunger, in spite of the coldness of Dives’ insulation, Lazarus trusted God. That’s the bottom line. The name Lazarus, literally, means “God is my helper”. Maybe that tells it. Though he had nothing, even less than nothing, he never abandoned faith in the eternal goodness.

That was the difference between the two men. The one shut his hand tightly around his “things”, and squeezed them without regard for anyone else. The other opened his hand in simple gratitude, and gave thanks for everything he received.

The beauty of Lazarus’ life is not at all in his surroundings, but in his refusal to let those surroundings warp him.

The tragedy of Dives’ life is not that he was horrendous, but that in spite of his bounty, he allowed himself to become heartless.

Not even misfortune made Lazarus bitter...and not even blessing made Dives sensitive. He let his riches, not bad in themselves, take over and control his life. Being rich was not his crime; being rich was his OPPORTUNITY, but he chose, maybe gradually, maybe over a period of time, maybe even unconsciously, but still decisively, not to respond to that opportunity. Out of such momentous decisions are fixed gulfs widened.

Now, before we get to ACT II, one more thing about these two. The danger of this parable, for us, I think, is the danger of seeing Dives and Lazarus simply as caricatures. That’s an inviting temptation, and it’s a mistake.

How easy it is to say, well, that was back there, that was another era.... This story doesn’t apply to me. I’m neither as rich as the one, nor as wretched as the other.... Certainly I’m not wealthy like Dives.

BUT THE TRUTH IS, YOU ARE. WE ALL ARE. We’re all extravagantly wealthy. We don’t all have the same kind of wealth, of course, but even the poorest among us, financially, even those among us with the smallest bank accounts have access to goods, and services, and appliances, and gadgets that would have blown the mind of a First Century millionaire. Even on that level we’re rich. Dives never saw television, or rode in a car, or watched his garbage go swooping down a disposal....

He never even took an aspirin, or “stepped up to the mike”, to relieve the itching of his athlete’s foot[1]. Even in the strictly pecuniary, cash-flow sense we’re wealthy, maybe the richest people overall in the history of the world. God help us if we ever forget it!

But more than that. Many of us are wealthy in other ways, too. Some of us are wealthy in education. We’ve had the rich luxury of being able to go to college, of being able to read books, to learn, to know about the world.

We’ve had the opportunity to be exposed to the finest in art, and music, and literature, to be exposed to what the best minds of the ages have thought. THAT’S WEALTH.

Some of us are wealthy because we’re loved, loved by our spouse, by our children, by our parents...our families, our friends. We have a place to go that’s ours, where we’re wanted, and welcomed, and received with open arms. We have relationships that sustain, and encourage, and lift us. That’s wealth.

Some of us are wealthy because we’re blessed with good health, and a robust disposition. We can take a deep breath and fill our lungs with fresh air.

We can dress ourselves and walk down the street without assistance. We have senses that are unimpaired, ears that can hear, noses that can smell....

Our limbs are straight and our minds are clear. YOU DON’T THINK THAT’S WEALTH? Of course we’re wealthy. Now, none of that is bad. Education, family, love, health....and more when you start counting...liberty, opportunity, a nation at peace. These are wonderful blessings.

But you see, even the finest gifts, maybe especially the finest gifts, like Dives’ fabulous treasury, may come between us and God if we let them assume a role out of proportion to their rightful place in the eternal scheme. That’s what happened to Dives.

It would almost seem that whenever God blesses us lavishly, he puts a Lazarus at the back door, to remind us that the one wealth that lasts, that can last, is the wealth that’s used to bless.

If my wealth is in education, Lazarus, for me, may be that dropout, that functional illiterate----they say there are 10-12 thousand of them in Orange County alone---My Lazarus may be that “can’t-read-yet” man, who is waiting for me to come help him.

If my wealth is in being loved, it may be that lonely, crotchety widow down the street, who gripes about everything that happens, and hasn’t had any living soul to touch her tenderly in 30 years.... Maybe I could befriend her.

If my wealth is in good health, it may be going to the Nursing Home to visit, or driving an elderly couple to the grocery store, or writing a letter for someone who is blind....

It’s what you do with your wealth that shapes your destiny. God doesn’t care about the amount. He cares about your willingness to deploy it.

Do you know the role this parable played in the life of Albert Schweitzer? He tells it in his autobiography. It was this story more than any other which made Albert Schweitzer a missionary, he says. He read it, and it grabbed him.

He read it over and over, he studied it, and wrestled with it, and came to the conclusion finally that for him the continent of Africa was Lazarus, lying wretched and hungry at the back door of wealthy Europe. That was the motivation for the founding of his famous hospital at Lambarene.

Now, the other extreme----Lazarus, the beggar. Caricature? Are you kidding? Maybe you’ve never been in that kind of literal, extenuating circumstance.... I hope you  haven’t.

Maybe you’ve never had to endure that kind of physical affliction and deprivation. BUT THERE’S MORE THAN ONE KIND OF EXTREMITY.

If you’ve ever been in any sense at the end of your rope, if you’ve ever seen your security dissolve beneath your feet, if you’ve ever had what you thought were adequate resources snatched out from under you, if you’ve ever been where no matter which way you turned, there was an impenetrable brick wall facing you...then you know Lazarus’ experience is more than some figment of the imagination.

He’s not caricature, he’s biography. It doesn’t have to happen outdoors at somebody’s gate....It can happen to you in a hospital. It can happen during the illness of a loved one. It can happen at a time of painful separation. It can happen as you stand with the remnants of your shattered dreams in your hands.

It can happen under the intolerable weight of the burden of guilt....THAT’S WHEN---the moment of extremity---when being rich or poor, in the physical, literal sense, really doesn’t matter a fig.

All you can do, the only thing you can do then is exactly what Lazarus did-cast it all on Him, utterly and absolutely, and trust in His bare mercy.

The New Testament calls that “casting” FAITH, and it calls God’s reception of it SALVATION. It’s not cardboard art, my friends, it’s real, and it’s how destiny is shaped.

For you see...maybe no story in the Bible tells it with such compelling power....

ACT II really is epilogue. That’s the point and why this is not a flippant matter. The denouement is already determined.

Who dug the ditch? All the time Dives was hoarding and hiding, he was digging. All the time Lazarus was enduring and trusting, he was building.

Heaven and hell are not arbitrary, external judgements. They are extensions of the way of life we’re forging right now.

Choice hardens into habit. Habit produces character. And character lasts even unto eternity.

What kinds of choices are you making........today?

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[1] This was related to a television commercial that was popular at the time this sermon was preached.