Wealth and greed and dishonesty seem to be on Jesus' and Luke's mind in this chapter. Jesus seems to have a problem with all three of these things. They do something to the soul, turning us inward, making us selfish and dishonest for the sake of our self-interest. The wealthy struggle to divest of their wealth, even for compassion's sake and for another suffering human. But Jesus believes in a great economic reversal in which equity and justice will be established and the poor will be glad in the kingdom of God.
Economic inequality is pervasive, systemic, transcendent of time and place, deeply embedded, and immoral--robbing the poor of basic dignity. These parables highlight the 1st century Palestinian situation under Roman imperial taxation, in which the poor were exploited. Our present day circumstances, under free market capitalism, exaggerates income inequality and the ever-widening gulf between the rich and the poor. Jesus' parable of the rich man and poor Lazarus at the gate illustrates how selfish greed and acquisitiveness can overthrow our basic humanity, making it possible to ignore or even reject the person in poverty before us. We do so at our own peril, says Jesus. He suggests that our present greed has eternal consequences. I'm not sure what that means, but I am sure most Americans would be shocked to hear it. Our fascination with wealth and our desire to obtain it at the expense of the global poor endangers millions of people. We see the consequences of our blind consumption in the climate crisis we now face or deny.
It is impossible to escape the judgment leveled against the rich in these texts. Not the first words of indictment in this gospel; they began with Mary's song in Luke 1. Luke sees the gospel as a great liberator of the oppressed and poor, the great equalizer of the poor and rich, the maker of a social justice-reoriented world where all have enough and none are invisibly forgotten or neglected. May it be so.
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