Outside the Gate is based on Luke 16: 19-31
What is this parable about?
This parable is variously seen as a parable about rich and poor, about life after death, or about the Pharisees of Jesus’ time. The speculation that it’s about the Pharisees is mainly because this parable is told a few verses after Luke says that the Pharisees loved money.
There’s no real evidence that the Pharisees were particularly rich. The rich man in the parable has the kind of wealth that was more associated with the Sadducee group. What is possible is that Luke meant that the Pharisees bought into what we’d now call the ‘prosperity gospel’. That is, the idea that God blesses the very faithful with wealth and good health.
Turn this idea around and a healthy, wealthy person is clearly right with God. A poor beggar with a terrible skin disease is clearly a bad guy. God must be punishing the beggar for something he’s done, because God wouldn’t do such things to the virtuous.
A rebuke?
So at its most basic, this parable might be a rebuke to ‘prosperity theology’. The very rich person ends up cursed, in Hades. The poverty stricken and unclean beggar is the one who ends up blessed by Abraham and God. Prosperity is not a sign of God’s favour; the rich may end in Hell, the poor in Heaven.
That might be why Jesus never says what the rich person actually did to end up in Hades – he’s targeting the very idea that ‘rich equals virtuous’.
Modern Attitudes
While the prosperity gospel is a current idea, modern cultures often have an ambivalent attitude to the rich. Centuries of listening to parables like this means that the idea that the idea that a rich person might end up in some sort of next-life punishment cell is taken for granted. Even people who’ve never heard a parable in their lives will have absorbed the idea that a rich person might also be a bad person.
What that means for retelling is that the first part of the parable no longer has the same ‘shock value’ it would have done when Jesus told it.
Lazarus the Beggar
The Galilee and Judea of Jesus’ day had a lot of beggars. Disabled people who couldn’t work (and whose family couldn’t afford to support them) had no choice but to beg.
Both the Old and the New Testaments have firm comments on the individual’s duty to support themselves by working – if they can. Combined with this is the equal duty of the more fortunate, or the rich, to help support people who either can’t work or can’t find enough work. Lazarus the beggar, with a terrible and ‘unclean’ skin problem, clearly falls into the ‘can’t work’ category.
However, in the modern UK, we’ve nationalised this sort of support. Someone who can’t work should be provided for by the government. Could a Lazarus fall through the cracks and end up outside a rich person’s gated community? Yes. There are a lot of beggars in the modern UK. But the Lazarus of the parable, with his obvious skin disease, should be whisked off to the nearest hospital.
Long Ago and Far Away
We’re back to the ‘long ago and far away’ problem. Jesus told a parable so close to real life in Judea and the Galilee that generations of scholars have tried to identify the ‘rich man’ in the parable.. But while our ‘Lazarus’ could be homeless (maybe in a tent), the graphic description of his illness suggests someone who should be in a hospital.
Would it be possible to retell the story with ‘Lazarus’ as a drug or alcohol addict? That would certainly bring back the shock value – the homeless alcoholic is the one who ends up in heaven, but the ‘nice’, respectable, rich guy is the one who ends up in hell.
What About a Refugee?
I chose a refugee. We could definitely retell a more modern version of this parable with a homeless alcoholic, but I wanted to use a connection with the previous parable I blogged.
Would we have a refugee literally sitting outside someone’s gate? While (as I write) the refugee policy in the UK is almost changing by the second, refugees are supposed to be given accommodation and food while they wait to prove their status as a genuine refugee.
As with others who need government support, people can slip through the cracks – perhaps because, while they are genuinely a refugee, they’re scared they can’t prove it.
Or we could have a refugee metaphorically sitting outside the rich person’s gates. They could be kept safely outside the ‘gated community’ of our rich and comfortable country. But another way to keep them ‘outside the gate’ is to act like the second child of Matthew 21.28-32.
Connections Between the Two Parables
Even though the parable I retold as The Two Daughters isn’t in the same gospel, the two parables can connect very well. People who loudly object to refugees coming to the UK are very often like the first child. When an actual refugee is laid (like Lazarus) outside their door, they end up helping the refugee settle in at work or college, helping their kids integrate into local schools, setting up English lessons or clubs.
People who make all the right noises and say all the right things about the need to support refugees and admit far more refugees to the UK can too often be like the second child – or like the rich man behind his gate. The actual refugees will stay ‘outside the gate’.
Refugees won’t compete with the rich for housing (because the rich can buy and won’t need to either rent or go on a waiting list for social housing). They won’t compete with the rich for places at the local school (the rich might send their children to private school, or can afford to move to a ‘good’ catchment area). A refugee won’t be in front of the rich person in the NHS queue (because the rich person goes private).
Refugees might not be literally camping outside the rich person’s gate, but metaphorically? Refugee Lazarus is outside. Our rich man can be like the second child – say all the right things, secure in the knowledge that their comfortable lifestyle won’t be affected.
The Poor Outside the Gate
The entire point of a gated community is to shut out all the unpleasant stuff. Crime, beggars, unsightly poor people – all can be kept beyond the gate. In The Two Daughters the call is to go and work in the vineyard, but here the rich man has done the equivalent of pulling the bedclothes over his head.
Abraham’s rebuke to the rich man in the parable is that he did have, in his life, the warnings from the law and the prophets, both of which spell out ways that rich people can and should help the poor. He could have easily afforded to give alms to Lazarus, yet Lazarus was lucky if he got the leftovers.
By the end of the parable, the rich man has found himself to be the one ‘outside the gate’ – he’s outside the gated community of Heaven.
The Afterlife
There is a huge chasm between Abraham and the people with him, and Hades where the rich man is. Scarily, Jesus has Abraham say that the chasm cannot be crossed. This is in keeping with other comments and parables that mention the afterlife; Jesus consistently tells us that the decisions we make during our lifetimes will affect us forever.
At the moment, a lot of Western theologians are struggling with the idea of a permanent damnation. Surely a loving God wouldn’t torture people forever? Yet this parable seems to suggest just that.
Even given fairly convincing evidence that God saw Lazarus as more important (or more virtuous) than his wealthy self, the rich man still sees himself as the important one. Lazarus is still someone of lower social status – someone to be ordered about. The rich man thinks Lazarus should bring him water. Perhaps Lazarus should be sent with a message to his brothers.
Abraham is the important patriarch; the rich man still sees Lazarus as a nobody, someone suitable to run errands (or in a famous UK comment, serve him coffee in Pret). Even now, he’s still ignoring Lazarus, never addressing him directly. Abraham, a patriarch, is a suitable person to talk with. Not Lazarus, the former beggar.
If God, perhaps, is going to leave the rich man in Hades until he learns the error of his ways, it looks like He’s going to have a long wait.
Previous parable: The Two Daughters
Next parable: The Flower Seeds and the Pots
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