“RICH MEN IN CHRIST”
Saint Luke 16: 19-31
1st Sunday After Trinity: 6 June Anno Domini 2021
Fr Jay Watson, SSP
The rich man has no name so that you, convicted by The Holy Ghost and the uncompromising Law of God might see yourself—your sinful self—in the role of the rich man. And this has nothing to do with Marxist (Satanist) fever dreams of wealth re-distribution and government theft of your earned wages. There is one true God and Lord. He is Mercy and Forgiveness. With His Grace comes atonement for all your sins, including the sins of apathy, selfishness, gluttony, greed, and idolatry. These trespasses all result from idolatry.
“Rich” men (and women) are deluding themselves into thinking they are wealthy because they worship (trust) in the idols of mammon—stuff. This false pagan god is the devil’s temptation. It worked on Eve, on Adam, it works on you.
The poor man Lazarus worshipped, Trusted, in The Lord of Sacred Scripture—the Gospel mercy and forgiveness of Moses and The Prophets. Lazarus had forgiveness, thus he had life and salvation. He was rich beyond description. He possessed The Peace which passeth all understanding.
The Rich Man had mammon.
What is the first command? Love. Had Adam loved God he would not have fallen. Where would the rich man have found that truth? Moses and The Prophets, the Hebrew Bible! Where did that Will and Deed become fully manifest? When Tablets were given to Moses on Sinai. “Thou shalt have no other Gods before Me!” What does that mean? “We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things.”
We don’t. The rich man is us in our sinful “old Adams.” But we are not dead yet. We are not “in hell…being in torments” wishing for drop of water to cool our tongues.
The great gulf which is fixed between sinner, creature, and Perfect Righteous Creator is no longer a chasm. The gulf has been bridged by the arms of Christ reaching out—doing, suffering, bleeding, dying, so that The Father now sees all of you as He sees His only-begotten Son. Jesus was not given a drop of cool water as He tasted the torments, the flames of hell on Calvary. But the propitiatory cleansing blood and cool Baptismal Water gushing from His Sacred Heart does more than cool your parched burning lips and throats in this world of decay and sorrow; it fortifies and re-hydrates you with the Water of Life—with The God/Man Himself.
You are miserable beggars, in and of yourselves, carried to The Lord by angels—messengers of not just the Old Covenant but also of the New Testament. For the Christ of The Supper was indeed present in a hidden, yet real, way in Moses’ Pentateuch and in The Prophets. One day soon you too will be comforted by Father Abraham while you wait eagerly and joyously for the Resurrection of all flesh at the final Advent. But even now, you are clothed in not purple, but shining bright white linen and you fare sumptuously every Lord’s Day. No crumbs for you but a victory feast; a wedding banquet; fine wine on the lees and the Paschal Lamb of loosing and liberty.
You hear Moses and The Prophets and you too will rise from the dead.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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