“If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets,
neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” Luke 16:31
I’m worried
about the brothers. Yes, it’s the five brothers I’m worried about. And their pants.
That’s
because, like their deceased sibling doing a slow burn somewhere beyond the
sunset, they’ve bought wholesale into a gold-plated lie. And there’s no one in
sight prepared to shout, “Pants on fire!”
That’s “pants
on fire,” as in the schoolyard taunt “Liar! Liar! Pants on fire!” … and more
recently, Pulitzer Prize-winning, nonpartisan PolitiFact’s ranking of claims
made by politicians ─ rankings ranging from “True” to “Pants on Fire!”
Check out PolitiFact.com.
Their researchers are working overtime this election cycle to assess what New York Times columnist Paul Krugman
calls the competing “moral universes” occupied by the two principal candidates.
Now, they both
rate “Pants on Fire!” rankings many times over. But one, who will go nameless,
is nothing less than a raging conflagration. Kiss those broad-in-the-beam,
fancy-pants good-bye!
And yet, the
PolitiFact fact-checkers would be working no less furiously in rating the moral
universe shared by the gazillionaire and his equally-cash-flush siblings in “The
Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus.”
But let’s
call the latter “Laz,” so as not to confuse him with Jesus’ well-heeled best friend
Lazarus, the one he raised from the dead.
So, what’s
the “Pants on Fire!” lie? And why should we care?
Picture this:
Reversals.
You have two
avatars of the ways of the world. There’s a no-name plutocrat. And then there’s
Laz, the quintessential, not-a-pot-to-pee-in pauper.
The data? Trappings:
The rich man is decked out in linen, the finest imported clothes money can buy.
Laz, dumped in a pustulent heap just outside the gates of the rich man’s
McMansion, is clothed ─ not in linen, but lesions.
Diet: It’s a non-stop
banquet up in the McMansion. Outside, Laz is desperate for an occasional scrap,
if only the rich bloke would stop ignoring him.
And that’s a huge
problem that speaks volumes about the gazillionaire’s moral universe ─ a moral universe driven by a lie: “God blesses with wealth. God curses
with poverty. Ergo, you can’t be too rich.”
But riches or no riches, death doesn’t discriminate. And one day death deep-sixes
both the moneyman and Laz. Where do they end up? Reversal. The rich man is dumped
in what we would call Hell, to suffer the torments Laz experienced in life.
And Laz is
escorted to far more felicitous digs than even the rich man enjoyed in life. Laz
ends up in Father Abraham’s lap ─ what we
would call Heaven.
In death, as
in life: yawning chasm … with a dash of karma.
Complication:
Some (of a more literalist bent) suggest that Jesus is charting here the geography
of the afterlife: Heaven … Hell. Reality check. This is a parable, not National Geographic. The point is the reversal in the two main
characters’ fortunes. Standard storytelling stuff. Just ask Charles Dickens.
Result? When
the rich guy gets a-load of Laz enjoying a silver-lined eternity, he channels Joseph
Campbell: “Regrets are illuminations come too late.”
If that
weren’t bad enough, he gets salt rubbed in his festering wounds … not once, but
twice. Father Abraham shoots down his modest request for Laz to leap the gulf
stretching between their new circumstances just to moisten his parched lips.
And when the
rich man suggests that Abraham send Laz back from the dead to alert his gilt-edged
siblings with a shout-out to Lost in
Space (“Warning! Warning! Danger! Danger!”), Abraham’s response? “No can do.”
By now you might
be wondering, “What is the name of the Montgomery Burns knock-off?”
We don’t know.
This is Jesus’ stab at a short story. It’s fiction. So, it’s not as though the poor-excuse-for-a-human-being
really lived. But many have tried to pin a name on him to avoid “The Parable of
Laz and … What’s-His-Name.”
A few arbitrary
names have been suggested, but the one that has stuck is Dives. (Wow your
friends at cocktail parties with the Brit pronunciation: Dī-vēz.) But a tag like
that doesn’t really work, because Dives-as-proper-name is the result of a bit
of confusion. In the Latin version of the parable ─ the Latin version holding sway in the Middle Ages ─ ‘rich man’ = dives. So, some
thought that was really his name: Dives, as in the ballad, Dives and Lazarus.
Fact is: In
no other parable does Jesus provide a character’s name, suggesting that Jesus intentionally leaves the gazillionaire anonymous,
while he intentionally names the beggar
Lazarus.
Why?
Jesus has
made his name by pointing out a grim
reality: In the real world, the over-compensated one percent generate brand. They
make sure their names monopolize the skyline from Caesarea to Jerusalem … from Manhattan
to Vegas, lit up in yuuuuge gold letters, while the victims of their greed go unnamed
in the anonymous shadows below.
That means, highlighting the economics at the heart of the parable, Jesus engineers another
reversal: the obscenely-wealthy, larger-than-life person (stand-in for the one
percent) goes unnamed … while the invisible, pauperized person (stand-in for
the remaining 99 percent) gets a name.
Giving the rich
bloke a name, then, is to miss the point … because Jesus here is showing his
hand: God rigs the system. God rigs the system in favor of the 99 percent that have
always merited a name in God’s book. Standing in for them all? Laz ─ or Lazarus ─ whose name means “God is my help.” Coincidence? We think not!
But what
about those five surviving siblings I’m so worried about, the rich guy’s clueless
brothers? With Abraham denying Laz safe conduct back to the Land of the Living,
who will save the siblings from their brother’s fate? Who will save them from themselves
with the alert, “Your ‘you-can’t-be-too-rich’ moral universe? God’s ranking: ‘Pants
on Fire!’”
And we are
left to wonder, Will the siblings never pay attention to facts laid out by Moses
and the prophets, as Father Abraham suggests?
That’s Moses,
who says in Deuteronomy, “Since there will never cease to be some in need on
the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor
in your land.’”
And the prophets.
Take Jeremiah: “Scoundrels are found among my people, says the Lord. They take
over the goods of others. Like fowlers, they set a trap; they catch human beings.
Like a cage full of birds, their houses are full of treachery; therefore they
have become great and rich, indulging in gluttony. They do not defend the rights
of the needy.”
It doesn’t
get any more straightforward than that.
But do the gazillionaire’s
gilded siblings ever get it? We don’t know. We don’t have to know … because the parable is open-ended, pointing to the moral
universe Jesus invites us to occupy, one
that captures the guiding principles of Moses and the prophets paraphrased as “Love
your neighbor as yourself.”
Problem is:
In this election cycle, we are witnessing unprecedented, gob-smacking affronts
to that principle. We are awash in lies
─ about poor people … about immigrants … about
African-Americans, Muslims, gay people, and so many of our other neighbors …
passed off as fact ─ data-free “fact” ─ over and over again.
For example, when
you hear a candidate say, as a candidate did this past week, “[Black people]
are worse off than ever before. Ever, ever, ever!” … when you hear something so patently false like that, there should be alarms
going off in your head … pounding, excruciating
alarms:
Worse off than
slavery? … worse off than mob lynchings? … worse off than segregation? … worse
off than being clubbed, beaten, set upon by attack dogs?
I mean, you can’t
be an aware follower of Jesus ─ active, engaged, voting ─ and let a comment like that wash over you without saying, “Hey, wait a
minute! What about history? What about facts? What about, ‘Hey, you’re pants
are on fire!”
Or when a
friend or an acquaintance, maybe a co-worker, even a parishioner, says ─ as did a rep ─ a white rep ─ from one of the campaigns a few days ago: “There was no racism in this
country before [January 20, 2009].”
Wha’?!
“If you’re black,”
she continued, “and you haven’t been successful in the last 50 years, it’s your
own fault.”
Wha’?!!
Now, look. That
may have come from the mouth of someone who claims to be Christian … but it is not
a Christian remark. It’s not a Christian remark because it’s not based in facts.
It a lie … a verifiable, “Pants-on-Fire!” lie.
Consequently,
Jesus’ “Parable of the Rich Man and Laz” compels us not to let a lie like this ─ and remarks like it ─ stand. Because such a freewheeling relationship
with the truth doesn’t represent what we stand for. It’s alien to the moral
universe Jesus invites each of us to occupy.
Bottomline: Whether
or not we’ll shout “Pants on Fire!” when we witness these lies ─ in conversation with our friends and others face-to-face or online ─ depends on the degree to which we believe Jesus commissions each of us
to stand for fact-based truths and opinions in real time, all the time.
The good news
is that if we take to doing our own homework … and take a shine to facts … if
we cotton up to shouting “Pants on Fire!” … think of all the friends we’ll save
─ perhaps, even ourselves ─ from ever having to sit on the hot seat!
Amen.
