Better to Serve in Heaven Than Rule in Hell
26th Sunday : 29 September 2013 : Luke 16: 19-31
Father Hugh Bowron, 2013When asked by a BBC interviewer about the source of his boundless self confidence and the sense of utter conviction about the rightness of his opinions, which has infuriated so many of his political opponents, Anthony Wedgewood Benn pointed to the influence of his mother. A woman of deep religious faith, she would come to his room to say his prayers with him every night of his childhood. Then she would finish by saying, "Another happy day tomorrow darling."
There are some people who have been blessed by the kind of upbringing where there were lots of messages of affirmation, lots of support and encouragement to extend themselves and their talents to the full, and plenty of praise for their achievements and successes. Such people often carry with them into their adult lives a sense of confident expectation that whatever they do will turn out well, that the world is their oyster, and that, by and large, the people around them can be expected to co-operate with them in their plans and aspirations. At its best this kind of background can produce the kind of plus personalities whose leadership potential is a blessing to the organisations and groups they serve. But sometimes it can lead to a born to rule attitude that grates.
The rich man in today’s gospel story is not in the hot place because of his wealth and comfortable life style. He has fallen under judgement because of his arrogance, his blindness to the needs of others, and because of his obliviousness to the impact of his words and actions on others. So great is his born to rule attitude that he even thinks he can order Lazarus around from across the great divide that separates the place of torment from the bosom of Abraham.
We are accustomed to think of the resurrection of the dead as being about our personal immortality. But in the world of Jesus, where justice was hard to come by, people were rather more conscious that if eternal life was on offer it would carry with it a judgement on the kind of lives people had lived before hand. Sin, evil, injustice puts a kink in the structure of reality, it unbalances the moral equilibrium of the world, and so in the life that really matters on the other side of death, God will carry out a rebalancing of this disturbed equilibrium. He will literally straighten things out in all the crooked lines and lives of this world.
This cleansing judgement would have worrying implications for those in the ancient world whose comfort and ambitions had been made possible by the worked to death agricultural labourers and miners of their businesses, by the callously done to death gladiators who had entertained them, and by the soldiers whose lives had been frittered away in reckless and ruthless military expeditions. As Rowan Williams remarked in an Easter sermon, the first reaction of the rich and powerful on hearing that someone had risen from the dead, would most likely be, "how can I stuff them back in the grave as soon as possible." In the Roman world you didn’t get on by being nice to people, and the last thing you wanted was to be confronted by the people you had removed as you pulled your way up the greasy pole.
I doubt if any of us have treated beggars like dirt, or terminated our enemies with extreme prejudice. But we need to be aware that the hope of heaven that is keenly anticipated by all of us also carries with it this justice and judgement dimension, that can I point out will often work to our advantage because it means that injustices done to us, and the malicious machinations of our enemies will get its come uppance in the heavenly realms.
But there is a deeper dimension to this story that also concerns the hope of heaven. The rich man wanted Lazarus to be sent back from the dead to his five brothers to offer them convincing proof that would deflect them from their present trajectory to the place of torment. But he is told that they have the Law of Moses, the Torah, and the Prophets available to them, and that is sufficient for the job.
St John of the Cross had a famous saying. In Jesus Christ, the Word of God, God has said everything that he intends to say to the human race, there is nothing more to add, and there is nothing else that is required. We live in a sceptical age in which some long for the latest supernatural sensation and others doubt large chunks of Christian belief, even those within the household of faith – hence the famous saying of some liberal Christians, "Every year I believe less and less more and more." Those who are pre-occupied with the latest wild and wacky spiritual phenomena and those who turn widespread scepticism into a religious position are two sides of the same coin – the give me more brigade who want God to offer conclusive, knock down proof that all is as it says it is in the creeds and the gospels.
But if God did that we wouldn’t need faith, we would just have certainty, and so human beings wouldn’t have to do anything more than just acknowledge the sovereignty of God, and obey what was required of them, without the burden of freedom or choice. Of course, in such a situation I would be out of a job because we wouldn’t need priests or preachers or churches or sermons or sacraments. Faith is faith in what is not seen – we hope for what we do not yet possess, except in first instalments. And there is a great deal of content in the Christ event, a great deal to work on with our reason, and imagination, and with our memory, and with our will. And faith in Christ isn’t just an intellectual exercise, a good idea to be taken on board with quiet satisfaction. It is, in that wonderful definition of Simeon the New Theologian, "love in action." We feel the truth of what Christ teaches as we do what he asked us to do in our particular situation, and as we use the tools of the Kingdom such as prayer and worship.
John Milton’s most famous poem was "Paradise Lost," in which the beautiful angel Lucifer led a revolt against God, and was thrown down to the lower regions, a place which he preferred out of pride because as he famously says, "It is better to rule in hell than serve in heaven." I have called this sermon, "Better to serve in heaven than rule in hell." That is the dividing line of the judgement that will be rendered on us. And it is not just kindness, humility, and ethical alertness that are required of us. We need faith in the rich and abundant content of the Word spoken to us in Christ.
May these words give him glory, and spread abroad understanding of his ways.
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