By Maximos Pafilis, Bishop of Melitene
Sermon on the Gospel according to Luke 16:19-31
What is the gateway and what the chasm? It may be the place where the one sees, while the other is not discerned, the one lives in the light of his own splendour, and the other lies in the shadow that the splendour creates, a shadow cold and deep. The gateway of the rich man, that stone boundary of the house, was already the chasm itself, a rope as if woven from burning sand, that no hand can grasp. The chasm is a way of seeing, or rather, a way of not seeing, which greatly exceeds the geographical distance.
This rich man, «ἄνθρωπός τις», like an anonymous role in tragedy, without having his own name in this life, known only from the externals, wore the purple as if it were skin, damp, heavy and dense, which smothered the light before it reached the poor man, and the fine linen, a fine fabric which hid mainly the depth of his empty soul, beyond the body itself.
His life was daily festivity, a meticulously composed splendour, public joy, a festival of the senses, while internally there was nothing, a deep silence beneath the beat of the cymbals. His wealth was a cancer with a velvet texture, clinging to the age, hooked onto the flesh of time, which fed on its own indifference. He thought that he ruled the money, but the money ruled him, a ship full of gold which was already sinking before death, pulling him to a dark bottom by the very weight of the splendour.
This is the gleam which secretly we all seek, as if our own ship will not also sink sooner or later… And Lazarus was cast out, refuse of life, like a stone, like a useless vessel, surpassing the property of man, full of sores, his body a silent protest written in flesh that was decaying. The one had everything and was no one, the other had nothing except for his name.
His name was Lazarus, which is interpreted as “God is helper”. Within the absence of any human help, only his name testified to the presence of God. The rich man, within his self-sufficiency, lacked a name. The poor man however, within his nothingness, had everything, he had the relationship, he had the name. And he desired to be filled with the crumbs, while the soul of the rich man cast off every thought for the outside world, for the other.
And the dogs would come, the only messengers who licked the sores which the rich man saw perhaps as an aesthetic blemish upon the marble of the courtyard, as a visual annoyance. I think that the claws of the dead were already groping the soul of this rich man, even if he felt only the soft touch of the fine linen.
It happened then that they died. Death equalises all things, or rather, it reveals who each one is, it strips man of the masks of the purple and of the sores. The poor man, the angels carried him to the bosom of Abraham, an invisible harbour, where the shadows of pain are silently washed ashore, where the soul rests in the partaking of love, which it was seeking. The rich man however died and was buried. Only this. He was buried. His burial was only an end, deprived of any beginning. His purple rotted, the fine linen was devoured by the worms, his banknotes, like dead leaves upon marble, rotted inside the grave.
Inside Hades, there, in the place of naked truth, he recovers sight, he recovers voice, he recovers memory, but all these only in order to be in pain. He sees Abraham and Lazarus. And this sight is unbearable, the vision of love which he denied. The flame which he was feeling was nothing other than the memory of the abyss transformed into ash, a dire thirst without moisture. “I am in agony in this flame” (Luke 16:24). The flame was his very life, the past one, which was now burning his conscience without consolation. And his tongue, which formerly tasted the splendid suppers, now a dried leaf of paper, was asking for a drop of ink to write how much he repented, a drop of water to cool the memory.
And crying out he said: “Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus…” (Luke 16:24). Even now he considers Lazarus a slave, even now he thinks that he can have servants, even now he measures the world there with the measures of this world, where some rule and others serve. But the supplication is useless… The response of the Patriarch cuts off every hope: “Son, remember that you received your good things…” (Luke 16:25). Memory becomes hell. You received your good things, those which you considered good things, and Lazarus likewise the bad things.
Now however the roles have been reversed. The time of mercy has passed. As the wise Leontios of Byzantium writes, analysing this desperation, “for you are not worthy to call this one father, but according to your merciless way you are a son of darkness and of Gehenna”. (Gr. «οὐ γὰρ εἴ ἄξιος τοῦτον καλέσαι πατέρα, ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὸν ἀνελεήμονά σου τρόπον υἱὸς εἶ σκότους καὶ γεέννης»).[1] Leontios sees sharply that Abraham himself was also rich, but his wealth, which did not harm him, became an instrument of love, as he practised hospitality, having pitched his tent beside the road, so that no one might escape him, in contrast to the wealth of the anonymous rich man that was a wall of exclusion.
The rich man, although he was in the flame, still denies the reality of the chasm, or rather, he denies its cause. He asks now for a miracle, a mighty sign for his brothers, surpassing the request for mercy for himself. “Send him to the house of my father…” (Luke 16:27-28) “if one from the dead goes to them, they will repent.” (Luke 16:30). The delusion of the visible still masters him.
He asks for logical proof, a miracle that shakes the senses, so that faith might rest on sound logic, ignoring that this faith is risk and deliverance from worldly certainties, a leap into the void of the divine promise.[2] The rich man wants man to be convinced through the logic of startling proofs, through the fear which the ghost of the dead man brings.
But Abraham answers steadfastly, revealing the only way of repentance. “They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.” (Luke 16:29). The words of the holy men, the Scripture, are a sufficient rule for the faithful to be saved, without needing any addition from Hades.[3] Truth is whispered in the words of the prophets, in the daily hearing of the divine word, surpassing the need for ghosts or monsters. It seems that the hardening of the soul is ultimately a willing refusal of the call of God, surpassing simple ignorance. The laughter of the rich man, when he was still in the world, was a pair of tongs, tender perhaps, which was pulling his soul silently into the darkness. And thus, daily life, sweet and carefree, leads to a dead-end road.
The chasm was fixed here, near the gateway. Let us not be deceived. It was fixed on the silence of the rich man and on the agony of the poor man, on the purple which could not cover the sore, and on the dogs which were the only things that were healing that which man ignored.
[1] Leontius Byzantius, Ta Heuriskomena Panta [The Complete Findings], in Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Graeca, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne, vol. 86b (Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1860), 448.
[2] Ioannis Karavidopoulos, Kyriakodromio kai Eortodromio: Grapta kirygmata vivlikon theologon sta evaggelika anagnosmata [Sunday and Feast Day Homilies: Written Sermons of Biblical Theologians on the Gospel Readings], Nea Ekdosi [New Edition] (Athina: Artos Zois, 2022), 71.
[3] John Bunyan, The Entire Works of John Bunyan, ed. Henry Stebbing, vol. 1 (London: James S. Virtue, 1859), 163.
