Proper 21, Year C | Luke 16:19-31
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
September 14, 2025
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
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It’s easy to read the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus as a sort of morality tale, a straightforward story of how the humble who suffer receive good in the end while the powerful find themselves left to pain and regret. Or you might see it as a lesson regarding riches and the importance of generosity. While those are certainly conclusions people can draw from the text, this narrative is far deeper than that. At its core, this is a tale about belonging.
But before we get into that, we need to consider a few things.
First, we need to break out of our standard, currency-driven economic mindset wherein possessions are simply “consumables.” We generally think of the things we own or use in terms of money—how expensive the particular object was or is. The items themselves—our possessions—frequently don’t hold anything beyond momentary value for us or anyone else,[1] so once we’re done with them, we simply toss them aside and move on to the next thing that catches our interest. The ancient world did use money, but money wasn’t necessarily a person’s everyday form of trade. That would have been bartering. With bartering, the object itself possesses the value—the concern becomes less about how much the thing costs and more about how useful the item is. Rather than simply being a possession, something a person owns and then, over time, no longer cares about, everything functions as a resource, either due to the ongoing need for the utility it provides or for the value that utility might hold for another person when making an exchange.
Looking back over our summer Gospel readings, thinking of possessions in terms of “resources” can offer some clarity about what Jesus has been saying. The warnings he’s been giving us often seem to point toward continuing to use, share, and maintain the actual value-aspect of the resource—making use of the item—rather than simply allowing it to fall into the category of “stuff” like our culture teaches us to do.
Secondly, there’s a common teaching among Modern American Evangelicals that the Rich Man and Lazarus isn’t simply a parable. They’ll tell you it’s “literal,” meaning that Jesus is giving us a factual glimpse into what the afterlife looks like and how it truly works. The only argument for the teaching is that, unlike anywhere else in the Gospels, Jesus has given one of the characters a name. While that particular detail is true, the rest of the idea is raw fantasy. The only way for this parable to be “literal” is if the world beyond is literally structured the way the Greco-Roman public imagined it to be and that a literal ancient god literally manages it. If any of those variables are inaccurate, then this parable can only be what it actually is—a story Jesus is using to challenge our thinking and hoping will alter our behavior in this life.
Moving forward, Jesus introduces his story describing a man who is “rich.” To us, that term is just a reference to money or wealth—the physical manifestations of power and authority we like to collect in order to command a certain measure of control or certainty in our lives. But for Jesus, saying the word “rich” involves invoking the name of a god. The literal translation of what we see here is that this person was “a plutonian man” or “a man of Pluto.”
Pluto was the ancient Greek god of wealth. The Romans also recognized him as such but, because humans mine riches from the ground, he also doubled as their equivalent to Hades, god of the Underworld. The grammatical structure of “man of Pluto” is similar to what we translate as “child of God.” While the term is a description of the person, it’s also a subtle statement of to whom that person belongs. So the rich man, a man of Pluto, not only enjoys the blessings Pluto provides in this life but is, in a sense, one of Pluto’s own possessions—or “resources,” as we talked about earlier.
Recognizing that helps explain the weird little poetic contrast about Lazarus dying and being carried away to be with Abraham while the next sentence, “The rich man also died and was buried,”[2] feels so flat. As a child of Abraham, it just makes sense for Lazarus to join his ancestor’s household. The “plutonian” man also goes to be with his master, which means he’s simply dumped back into the ground, where all of Pluto’s treasures rest. Having finally reached his home, he too will continue to enjoy the blessings of the god he served so well. The problem arises when Hades, Pluto’s realm, doesn’t quite match the rich man’s expectations.
It’s important to recognize that Hades is not a direct equivalent to our modern concept of Hell. In fact, our later theologies influence aspects of the translation we read. Our idea of Hell, the place where “sinners” go when they die, is largely based on two images: the Lake of Fire mentioned in the book of Revelation and Jesus’ own metaphor of “Gehenna”—the wasteland where all of Jerusalem had been burning its trash throughout the generations. Hades, on the other hand, was a realm for all the dead and, therefore, wasn’t entirely a place of torture. Like any city, it had both its nicer and less desirable neighborhoods. And it wasn’t necessarily a fun place to be—imagine the better views overlooking a foggy, featureless plain without even a hint of a breeze—but not everyone there was in agony.
Wherever he had ended up, the rich man was not particularly happy with his lot. It seems he still had access to everything Pluto had ever offered him. It’s just that the true form of those riches—the formal reality behind the physical objects he had known—didn’t match his earthly memory of them. We read Jesus describe him as “being tormented,” but that isn’t quite what the text says. Jesus has framed this the same way he talks about possessions. The rich man still has plenty of resources; but now his resources feel like “tortures”—or “testings” or “examinations.” The word Luke uses suggests the idea of intense scrutiny or interrogation. So unlike when he was alive and everyone had to answer to him, now in the direct presence of Pluto’s watchful eye, his every move is under review and needs to be accounted for.
Yet the man doesn’t seem to realize what’s going on. His interaction with Abraham reveals that he still understands himself as the one with power and authority. He’s polite enough with his “Abrahamic ancestor”[3] (at first), but he still clearly views Lazarus as an inferior. “Father Abraham, I’m struggling, ever so warm[4] in this stagnant atmosphere! Why don’t you go and dispatch that Lazarus with a dab of water to refresh my tongue.” Abraham politely rebuffs the request, responding that Lazarus is now “comforting himself” while the Plutonian is “afflicting himself.”[5] But there’s a double meaning in how Abraham describes Lazarus here: “comforting” is also the word for “summoning.” So it isn’t simply that after a hard life, Lazarus finally gets to rest. He now has the wherewithal to do the summoning and dispatching; the rich man has no authority whatsoever to tell him (or Abraham) what to do.
But the rich man still doesn’t get it, replying, “Fine, ‘dad,’ then make him go tell my family that the afterlife with Pluto isn’t as great as we thought—so much micromanaging!” However, sufficiently resourced with what for him has become torment and facing rejection once again, there’s no indication he ever recognizes he isn’t in charge. And it’s likely that he’ll never come to that conclusion—he’ll just spend the rest of time frustrating himself, “tortured” with constant nitpicking and oversight and audits while having to reinspect and continually manage the accounting of Pluto’s treasures in their true form.
When we began I described this parable as a tale of “belonging.” What I meant is that this is actually a story about families and households and, like the slave trying to serve two masters last week, a warning to consider to whom we belong. Lazarus has a single identity throughout the narrative: whether through fault or accident, he’s just an extremely poor child of Abraham. His life may not have amounted to much, but he knew who his family was, and that family was happy to claim him in the end.
The rich man, however, holds a split identity. He self-identifies as a child of Abraham, three times calling him, “Father.” But everyone else recognizes him as “a man of wealth,” a man of Pluto. The question comes down to with whom does he belong? With which family was he more concerned?
A child of Abraham huddles outside the wall, starving, while the Plutonian feasts with other men of wealth. One of Abraham’s children, in pain and misery, crouches beside the gate, constantly wakened and wearied by dogs licking his wounds, while the rich man rests quietly on cedar couches and naps on feather beds. With Abraham’s child sprawled dying at the door, the rich man squanders food and, like his father in Hades, secrets away his resources as in a cave, hoarding and protecting possessions he would never use and probably didn’t even realize he still had. Even after death, we see the child of Abraham enduring ongoing demands for service not from God or his father but from Pluto’s son.
So despite any self-identification, with whom had the rich man actually aligned himself? To what family did his actions show he truly belonged?
A child of Abraham would see and support their siblings. Children of Abraham comfort and provide for their family. Each of Abraham’s descendant thinks to seek their siblings’ good. Abraham’s child will follow their father, honoring and serving both family and stranger alike.
What, then, of us, who imagine ourselves not only to be descendants of Abraham, but claim to be children and images of God? How might we account for our choices and actions throughout this life? We cannot help but reflect the nature of the one we worship. So with which family does our present behavior reveal we belong? And if we don’t like the answer, what might we do to change it?
[1] Any lasting value tends to be anticipatory (think of Beanie Babies, Stanley cups, and other similar consumer bubbles) or individually sentimental rather than practical.
[2] Luke 16:22 | All Bible quotations are from the NRSVue unless otherwise noted.
[3] An alternative translation of “Father Abraham”
[4] The word for “flame” can also mean “warm.”
[5] Both verbs are mediopassive, meaning the subject is both the one acting and the recipient of the action.