to somebody. A name is an instrument of personal relationship. To know somebody's name is to distinguish that precious individual out of the seething mass of the crowd.
To have a name is to be a person, to be valuable, to be significant, to matter to somebody. The rich man had no name. This does not mean that there was a blank on his birth certificate. Indeed, in the daily newspapers of his day, I expect that he was 'well known'. The point is, however, that as far as Jesus' story is concerned, his name is irrelevant. For he was just rich, nothing else. He spent his money on material luxury. Other people didn't feature on his agenda. And as a result he didn't feature on theirs. He didn't need a name; he was just a faceless millionaire. That was his tragedy.
The poor man, however, was not anonymous. Somebody knew him personally, and Jesus gives us the name Lazarus to tell us who that somebody was. In the Hebrew, Lazarus is Eleazar, and it means Tie whom God helps.' It was God, then, who cared for this man. A pauper like him might have plotted revenge or harboured bitterness. He might have blamed his misfortune on God, and cursed him for his misery. But by giving him the name Lazarus, Jesus is indicating that this poor man did none of these things. By his patience and faith he proved himself to be the man who looks to God alone for his vindication. He was one whom God helps, a man in whom trials have bred not resentment, or self-pity, but faith.
Here then are two totally unequal men—the one with wealth but no identity, and the other utterly poor, yet known personally to God. Ask yourself, which would you rather have been? There is, you see, such a thing as spiritual as well as material inequality. And the purpose of this story is to warn us that very often they are inversely proportional to each other. 'Blessed are the poor in spirit,' Jesus said, 'for theirs is tire kingdom of heaven' (Matthew 5:3). 'What good is it for a man to gain the
85
