When Goodness is Not Enough

Luke 16:19-26
By Rev. John Mendez
Pastor of St Stephens Baptist Church
Winston Salem, North Carolina

In this New Testament passage, we encounter in one of Jesus’ many parables an unnamed man who is referred to as “dives”. Dives is a Latin adjective, which means “rich”, but is not his name. It was used that way in the Latin Vulgate version of the Bible. Chaucer, the father of English poetry, used it as a proper name in the 14th century and related it to the rich man in this text. Since that time he has been called Dives. In this passage, we encounter a strange scene where Dives surprisingly lifts up his head in hell. Yet, something inside of me suggests that it was not his riches that condemned him to a place of torture and torment. There are plenty good people who are wise and thrifty, hard working enough to accumulate wealth for them selves.

Furthermore, the Pharisees who scoffed earlier in this chapter at Jesus’ position of “either God or money,” believed that riches were a sign of God’s favor and evidence of one’s righteousness. They based their theology of plenty on the Book of Deuteronomy, which suggest that wealth represents God’s blessings. Jesus made the point, however, that to be prosperous did not mean to ignore and neglect the poor. In the same book, Moses specifically required that the harvest of prosperity be shared with the poor and the transient. He says, “if there is among you anyone in need …do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward your needy neighbor. You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be” (Deut. 15:7-11).

I don’t believe Dives’ wealth sent him to hell. AS I searched and studied this text, I confess that I initially looked for what Dives might have done to condemn himself to hell, but I couldn’t find it. But the more I studied I finally concluded it was not what Dives did, but what he did not do that condemned him to hell. Dives was by all moral and cultural standards a good man. There is nothing to indicate that he accumulated his wealth by hook or crook; or indulged in drug traffic, or ran the numbers, or pimped women, or was involved in corporate greed or white collar suite crime. Dives was a good man, but I submit that was also the cause of his problem. Dives goodness was rooted in an oppressive worldview of hegemony, which shaped his attitude toward life and other people. Dives goodness was class conditional-he could only be good toward his kind. Dives goodness was characterized by power, privilege, pride, and arrogance, which isolated him from the least, the less, the lowest, the last, and the left out. Dives goodness blinded him to the unfortunate plight and needs of the poor and the oppressed. Dives was a Good man, but his goodness represented a form of prejudice that was manifested in an abominable sinful act of omission. I t was not what Dives did, but what he did not do that sent him to hell.

As Benjamin Mays put it, Dives went to hell because he did not have a “social conscience.” Dives had economic security, political power, class privilege, social status, and cultural prestige. Dives had everything except concern and compassion for a poor beggar named Lazarus who lay outside his gate. Lazarus representation was a prototype of what Franz Fanon referred to as the Wretched of the Earth. Lazarus had nothing. Everyday while Dives ate the best food, Lazarus had to beg for crumbs. He didn’t ask for a porterhouse steak, only the crumbs that fell from Dives’ table. Lazarus’ only friends who showed him any kind of mercy were the dogs that licked his sores. But dives did not care. Dives never saw Lazarus. He was the equivalent of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Dives did not know he was his brother’s keeper. Dives didn’t have a social conscience.

My brothers and sisters, this is not only a scene in Jesus’ parable; it’s a commentary on present day American life. We have our modern day dives whose consciences are dead as they continue to neglect and ignore the plight of the poor. Never before have I seen such open greed and gluttony. When we say the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, it is more than a notion. For instance, the price gorging at the gas pumps has resulted in the top five oil companies; Exxon,/Mobil, Chevron, Conoco-Phillips, BP< and Royal Dutch/Shell reporting total earning the last quarter of almost $33 billion. Subsequently, the salaries of CEO’s soared by 215 percent since 2002. lee Raymond, CEO of Exxon/Mobil began raking in $26 million a year salary, bonus, and stock gains. When asked about contributing some oil money to help the poor with their heating bills, he said that, “it’s the responsibility of the government to help the needy” for its social programs and spending. Yet, its corporate lawyers and accountants that continue to rip off workers benefits and retirement pensions. How hypocritical can you get? Corporate America lacks a social conscience. They do not care.

Companies such as Wal-Mart who made over $34 billion in profit last year constantly and continually deny it employees affordable health care. They in the name of profit compel workers to apply for health benefits from state governments. In 22 states researched Wal-Mart workers and their families top the list in all 22 states in receiving government assistance. While arguing that they pay completive wages, they deny the majority of their workers to actual work full time thus relegating them to part time status. The average pay for a Wal-Mart sales associate is $1,000 below the poverty line for a family of three. Wal-Mart is becoming the smiley face with an insensitive heart. Like Dives they do not care.

Congress is equally insensitive as the Bush administration and the Republican Party seeks to push through an immoral sinful budget that cuts childcare, food stamps, student loans, school lunch programs, and Medicaid to feed the unjust war in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s more attacks on the poor people who need it. They don’t care. This is one of the reasons we have to fight to raise minimum wages, which is presently $5.15 per hour or $10,000 a year. That is over 40% below the 1968 level adjusted for inflation. Who can live on that? This means most of the poorest people in America go to work every day. Their poverty is connected to their wages. It’s bad when you go to work everyday and still have to apply for food stamps and public assistance. People deserve a living wage and its time we struggle for it. Like Dives, they do not care.

Like Dr. King, we have to declare war on poverty, especially as it impacts out youth. More than 30 million children are born into poverty each year. We have one of the highest mortality rates in the world running neck and neck with third World countries. I believe it is imperative we continue to press for Summer Employment for our youth. I believe that City-County government and Corporations combined can appropriate $100,000 to put 500-600 youth to work through the urban League every year. It will lighten the burdens on families.

As long as there is life in our bodies, we got to care and be concerned about the plight of the poor. I heard Jesus say that our relationship to God is dependent upon our relationship to all people. “Insomuch as ye did it unto the least of these, ye did unto me.’ Dives went to hell because he did not have a conscience. He did not care.

Again, Dives went to hell because he did not affirm the dignity, value, and worth of the human personality. Dives drew a false dichotomy between himself and those whom he considered not as good as he. Dives was too conscious of his own class, race, and sex to affirm Lazarus humanity. Dives never saw Lazarus as a full destined, creative, dignified, valued, purposeful, and meaningful human being created in the image of God. Dives saw Lazarus only as a despised, unworthy, inferior non-human being unfit with which to associate. If Lazarus had been born in the right neighborhood, right class, right family, right profession, and with the right title as Roman, judge, senator, Pharisee, or aristocrat, Dives would have never given him crumbs, but would have given him the best wine and food.

What Dives did not know was that even though he discriminated against others God is no respecter of person. Dives did not realize that even though Lazarus was poor, he was still somebody in the eye of God. Dives did not know that god loved Lazarus also. God is concerned about everybody and every aspect of our lives. One of the most powerful contributions of the Christian faith is its affirmation of the human personality and its reverence for life. We are all created in the image of God. The test of real religion is not how we treat our peers and those above us, but how we treat those furtherest down. Yet, it is that reverence for life that is always in the dialectical tension as the nation’s majority culture continues to discriminate on the basis of race. The rise and spread of fundamentalism throughout the nation only creates greater intolerance for any kind of diversity. The theory of the “melting pot” is really about “cultural normativeness,” a derivative of white supremacy that seeks to accentuate the white majority culture while devaluing the minority culture and way of life. The technical name is “assimilation” and ‘acculturation,” where as W.E.B. DuBois put it, minorities see themselves through “the eyes of other.” In other words, we all have become white. This process fails to affirm that which is black, brown, yellow, beautiful, and positive people of color.

Nowhere is this process more pronounced than in the new racism that is propagated by the neo-conservative political and religious right. It is racism which out racist. Various conservatives argue that the post-civil right era is a post racist era. They point to the middle class to prove it. The new racism today is no longer predicated on biology, heredity, or genetics. That is too offensive and brings too much resistance. The new racism is about “blaming the victim”. It focuses on culture and not genetics. They perceive black culture as ‘anti-social behavior, pathological family structure, and a dysfunctional value system.” They use code words to inflame white passion such as ‘welfare queens,” “Crime,” and “want something for nothing.” So is you don’t succeed today, it’s not racism, but culture, “blame the victim.”

In addition, they have also sought to coop the language of the civil rights movement and especially Dr. King’s reference to judging people by “the content of their character” and not by the “color of their skin.” They use the argument of “equality” and “color blind” to oppose affirmative action and fight against any kind of preferential treatment of people of color. They emphasize ‘individual rights” and not “group right.” They ignore hundreds of years of slavery that gave them a jump on everybody. How selfish and narcissistic can anyone be?

This leads to a society with out grace and mercy. They want everything done on individual merit while continue to practice group discrimination. They accept inequality as an option. That’s what the Bell Curve book was all about. So when we talk about the death penalty they have no problem issuing it out. The death penalty is for poor folk. Also, it is the pro-life folk who oppose abortion, but support war and the death penalty. If you claim to be pro-life by opposing abortion, you got to be pro-life when it comes to the death penalty and war. It all symbolized death. I am for life. Jesus was for life. He died to give us life. Even if some people may deserve death, following Jesus, I want to be better than that.

Moreover, Dives went to hell because he was thought he alone was in charge of wealth. Dives thought he was self-made. He thought he was an island unto himself. He thought he pulled himself up by his own bootstraps. He acted like he had accumulated all his wealth by himself. I want say that nobody is self-made. All that we are, is because of God’s mercy and grace, and the people he puts before us to open doors for us along the way. We owe everything to God and the people He sent our way. The destiny of each person is tied up with the destiny of another. We are so interrelated so that what effects one directly affects all of us indirectly. King said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Ignorance anywhere is a threat to sanity everywhere. Dives never read Job who declared, “We brought nothing into this world and we will carry nothing from this world. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.” All the wealth Dives accumulated in this life he left for others to fight over once he died. The money we hoard, the oil big nations fight over, the wealth that CEOs from Exxon/Mobil and Wal-Mart make, guess what, you can’t take it with you.

But I do know someone that has prepared a place for me.
If I treat my neighbor right.
If I treat my employees right
If I treat my community right
If I treat those who are the le
ast of these right,
If I live right
If I believe in his name
If I call on him
If I live for him and
If I die for him he has prepared a place for me, a home called heaven.