Sunday July 12th 2026 Bulletin
Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
July 12th, 2026
Perplexing Texts: The Rich Man and Lazarus
Luke 16
You know that my family and I spent many years in the South, most recently in Birmingham, and though it’s strange to think about it now in the high heat of summer, but down there, snow is an unusual event. If even a dusting is predicted, people rush to the grocery for the essentials: milk, bread, toilet paper, and bourbon. Get there too late and the shelves will be empty, pandemic style. Much like here, people who have a safe place to go hunker down at home, the streets of downtown empty out, and the city gets quiet. But there are also a good number of people who don’t have a warm place to go because they are unhoused. So in Birmingham, they would open a shelter in Boutwell auditorium, to get anyone and everyone off the street. I think we did that here too, right, hosting a rotating cold weather shelter in Hyde Hall for a time? The guy in city hall who would orchestrate this feat was Don Lupo. Lupo wore aviator sunglasses and had a gold earring, and he was a mix between a magician and a saint. He would conjure up cots and blankets and volunteers to host hundreds of people; he’d recruit restauranteurs to provide meals, and he’d send buses out to bridges and underpasses and encampments around town to encourage people to come in, out of the cold.
The church I served there was downtown, with a good number of unhoused people living around the property. In particular, there was a Russian woman and her elderly mother who would often stay with their mountain of belongings in the bus shelter behind the church. I knew from talking with them that they were Jewish, and had spent time in Israel, but how they’d ended up in Birmingham was not clear. They wanted desperately to return to Russia, but according to the lawyers and social workers we consulted about their situation, problems with visas, statehood, and mental illness made it virtually impossible.
I can remember one evening when a big storm was predicted, and I was leaving church with Maddie – she was probably three or four at the time. Snow was already falling in earnest, so I can’t remember why we weren’t home already –maybe it was our Wednesday night program, or maybe we’d gone to drip the faucets, or something. But as we came out of the church building and made our way to the car, the women were still there, huddled in the bus shelter. I went to talk with them, to tell them that much more snow was coming and encourage them to go to Boutwell, but they refused. A van had been by already, and they didn’t want to go. As we pulled out of the parking lot and drove away, Maddie asked me, “Where is their home?” I explained they didn’t have one. “but won’t they be cold?” she asked. “Yes,” I said. “they will.” And we went home.
Children have a way, don’t they? Of cutting through to the heart of things. No pretense. She was able to name the awful truth of that situation, this mother and daughter left out in the cold, as we returned to the warmth of our home, and the snow fell.
I can’t help but remember that moment when I re-read this challenging tale of the Rich Man and Lazarus. Challenging for us for a couple of reasons. We are much more likely to identify with the Rich Man in this story, who ends up roasting in Hades, begging for a drink of water. We can’t help but wonder, have we done enough? Or is this what might happen to us?
And the story is challenging because it contradicts what we profess to believe about the love and mercy of God, made known to us in Jesus. Do I not stand at the font each week and proclaim forgiveness, no matter what we’ve done or left undone? So why is the rich man condemned? And while we’re at it, do we really believe in hell?
This parable is found in Luke’s gospel, which is full of stories about wealth and what we are to do with it. It is the same gospel in which the rich young man is told that it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of God. One new testament scholar suggests this story should be read as a morality tale, and not a treatise on the afterlife.¹ A hint can be found in context: Luke includes this story after Jesus tells a series of parables about lost items: the lost sheep, the lost coin, the prodigal son – stories that demonstrate God’s grace, and relentless pursuit of all who are lost, that they might be brought back into the fold. And Jesus is speaking to both the disciples and the Pharisees, telling them that all they need to know about faithfulness, love of God, and love of neighbor can be found in the Jewish law and scriptures. You know, where it says to welcome the stranger, for you were once strangers in the land of Egypt. To care for the poor and vulnerable, and to seek the welfare of the city, for in its welfare we find our own.
Did you know that in all of the parables Jesus tells, in all four gospels, Lazarus is the only character who is given a name?! It means “God helps.” This poor man, weak and wounded and waiting at the gate – is the one favored by God, important enough to be named, Lazarus. Wealth is not evidence of God’s blessing. The name is.
There is foreshadowing, too, in the story’s conclusion. Jesus observes that the rich man’s family has all the teaching they need to know how to be faithful, so if they’re not caring for others yet, nothing will change their hearts. Not even a person returning from the dead. I can’t help but envision the ghost of Jacob Marley visiting Scrooge, bound and burdened by the chains he forged in life.
There’s a Christmas Carol call to action and sense of urgency here. Isn’t there? Maybe that’s why I thought of that story of the Russian women in the snow. Because we can’t hear this story without wondering, what about us? As rich Christians in an age of hunger, are we doing enough?
I’ve been out of town, in the mountains with my family, and not following the news closely. But I do know that ICE agents shot and killed an innocent man in Houston a couple of days ago. That the bombing continues in Syria and Lebanon and Iran, despite a ceasefire. That in Caracas, a little girl just about Gillian’s age has been living in a tent in a park for the past two weeks, after her home was destroyed by an earthquake.
There is a poem by a Russian American writer named Ilya Kaminsky called, “We lived happily during the war.” The poem similarly convicts the reader, so I want to share it with you, so you can hear it:
We Lived Happily During the War by Ilya Kaminsky
And when they bombed other people’s houses, we
protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not
enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America
was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house—
I took a chair outside and watched the sun.
In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the house of money
in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,
our great country of money, we (forgive us)
lived happily during the war.
The peacemaker and poet Padraig O’Tuama includes this poem in his poetry podcast, and he observes that what Kaminsky is “doing is highlighting over and over again, in so many places of war, that while some people are wondering, “Will I survive the day?” somebody else is wondering what color to paint the kitchen or whether they should reupholster the chairs or what choice to make about holiday. There’s a brutality about that.” He says, “This poem isn’t, I think, trying to make us feel guilty about those things, but it is trying to say, “Are you doing enough?” Because the poem has the invitation to say, “we protested / but not enough, we opposed them but not / enough.” O’Tuama asks: “So what is the “enough” going to be?”
These days are difficult. It seems as if the systems that have shaped our society are crumbling, the values of justice, equity, and the common good that upheld those systems are eroding away. And our media feeds us a neverending stream of bad news. How can we be faithful in the face of the complexity of Ebola, and civil war in Myanmar, and Graham Platner, and on and on? How can we ever do enough?
The good news is that most days will offer another chance to respond to the Lazarus at our gates. And that as a community, we’ve committed to not just caring for Lazarus, but questioning the systems and inequities that led him to suffer in the first place. We don’t do it alone, we don’t go it alone; we are in this together. And our shared values mean we offer our hearts and hands and resources to build and be the beloved community right here, together. We don’t always get it right. And we’re not there yet… we aren’t magicians or saints. But we are a work in progress. It is normal to wonder, in the face of everything, to ask “am I doing enough?” But I hope you leave today also remembering, that you ARE enough. We can’t do everything, or respond to everything, but we can do something, and we can do it together. Thanks be to God.
1 Boulton, Matthew Meyer