bombers again. This story of the rich man and Lazarus is told with his eye on those Pharisees. Beware, he's warning them, you can't serve God and money. Show me a man or woman dedicated to material acquisitiveness, claims Jesus, and I'll show you a hell-bound pagan. No matter how respectable they appear on the surface, or how regularly they attend church, or how well-thumbed is their Bible, they cannot serve two masters. They are going to be devoted either to the one or to the other. If you're devoted to money, by definition you hold God in contempt. Their love of money proved that the Pharisees' hearts were not with God, and that therefore their destiny could not be with God.
Our story then is a cautionary tale designed by Jesus to demonstrate the peril of a life dedicated to acquisitiveness. The rich man had every opportunity to lay up treasure in heaven by investing his material resources in this poor man and thus making him his friend. He then would have been using his wealth as a wise steward for the benefit of others rather than for his own self indulgence. But he conspicuously failed to do so. His condemnation was not a verdict on the way he became wealthy, or on the fact that he was wealthy. His tragedy was that he was just wealthy. There was nothing else to write in his obituary. He committed no murder, no adultery, no theft. If you had accused him in the street he would have shrugged his shoulders indignantly and said, 'I've done nothing wrong,' and it would be true in a sense. For it was not for the bad things that he had done, but for the good things he had left undone, that this man went to hell. You had your good things, says Abraham, but the beggar at your gate never benefited from them. You had the opportunity to use your wealth to help him and you refused. That's why you are there, rich man. Money mattered more to you than people. Heaven would be hell for a person like you!
Often we take refuge in our negative righteousness—all
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