Who’s At Your Gate?

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15
Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16
1 Timothy 6:6-19
Luke 16:19-31

 

©2025 The Rev. Seth Olson

 

Holy God, may my words be your words and when my words are not your words, may your people be wise enough to know the same. Amen. 

 

There was a man who wore Italian suits and sat in a corner office with glass walls overlooking the whole city. He never thought about how much the meal in front of him cost — only whether the chef had cooked it with enough creativity. If not, he sent it back. His wine was aged, his shirts monogrammed, his calendar packed with power lunches and board meetings.

 

And at the revolving glass doors of the skyscraper with his name on it, a man named Luis sat on the sidewalk with a cardboard sign. Every day. His hair was matted, his body hunched, his legs covered in sores no one wanted to see. Most people walked past with eyes forward, AirPods in.

The CEO did the same. He didn’t curse him or spit on him. He just didn’t see him. Luis was NRP — “not a real person,” as the Roy family from HBO’s Succession might put it. Disposable. Forgettable. Background noise in someone else’s success story.

 

It sounds Dickensian, doesn’t it? Like Ebenezer Scrooge sweeping past the Cratchits, blind to their humanity. But unlike Scrooge, this man never has a ghost of Christmas Future to shake him awake.

 

Because the future arrives too soon. Both men die. The one who lived in penthouses now lies in torment. And the one who begged at the gateway of the building is carried into the nearness of God, embraced by Abraham, Jesus, and the faithful. There, wrapped in God’s love, Luis is made whole.

Across a great chasm, the CEO cries out to the heavenly hosts: “Send Luis to bring me something to drink, a sports drink or some water at the very least.” After being rebuffed — because he had already received his reward in life and had not shared it — the CEO demands that Luis be sent to warn his children and grandchildren.

 

“They have already heard the good news of God’s love for them,” comes the reply.

 

“Yes, but if they receive a special invitation from one risen from the dead, they will listen.”

 

Finally, the heavenly voice answers: “If they do not listen to the good news of love conquering death, of captives released and the lowly exalted, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”

 

That’s not quite how Jesus told it, but it’s close. And if you’re like me, you might feel your stomach twist a little bit. Because this is one of Jesus’ most unsettling parables. It’s not polite. It doesn’t let us get comfortable.

And here, in this unsettled space, I need to name something clearly: This is not a parable about the afterlife.

 

Yes, Jesus uses afterlife imagery — Hades, Abraham’s bosom, a great chasm — but the point isn’t to map heaven and hell. The point is to expose what happens when wealth blinds us, when indifference becomes the air we breathe, when we treat certain people as if they are “not real.”

 

In Jesus’ time, the gap between rich and poor was as brutal as it is today. A tiny elite lived in luxury while most scraped by. Banquets, purple robes, fine linens — those were the trappings of royalty and an exclusive priesthood, not the daily wear of ordinary people. To imagine someone dressed like that every day was to picture obscene excess—the modern-day equivalent of Ellison, Musk, or Saudi princes. 

 

And Lazarus? He is given dignity in the story by being named, and his name means “God helps.” The rich man remains nameless — not because he is not loved by God, but because in the Kingdom of God, the rich man’s identity has been lost in all his things. As though pieces of his soul are owned by the things he owns. 

 

Back on earth, dogs lick Lazarus’ sores. In Jewish culture, canines were unclean animals. The image isn’t just pitiful — it’s scandalous. This is social, physical, ritual exclusion all in one. No person attends to him; it is the other creatures of God who show him compassion.

 

But, then comes the reversal. Abraham’s bosom was a way of describing the rest of the righteous dead. Hades, torment, the great chasm — these were familiar apocalyptic images, meant to shock hearers awake, not to provide a tourist guide to eternity.

 

Notice how the story unfolds:

• The rich man never once speaks to Lazarus. Even in death, he only talks to Abraham, as if Lazarus were still beneath him. “Send Lazarus to bring me water.” “Send Lazarus to warn my brothers.” He cannot imagine Lazarus as anything other than a servant. His blindness follows him even into Hades.
• Abraham’s response is sharp: “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.” In other words: the rich man doesn’t need new revelations. The Scriptures are already clear. Justice, mercy, care for the poor — it’s written all over the Law and Prophets.
• Then the stinger: “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” Which foreshadows Jesus’ own resurrection — and the hardness of hearts that refuse to see its power. It points us to the very pattern of existence: life, death, resurrection; order, disorder, reorientation.

Well, what about us?

Luke tells us that Jesus spoke this parable right after the Pharisees ridiculed him, “for they were lovers of money.” They thought their wealth and status were proof that God was on their side. But Jesus says otherwise. And friends, if we’re honest, we need to hear this warning too — because our own comforts can lull us into believing we’re fine, while Lazarus still waits at the gate.

Even if we’re not extravagantly rich like the man in purple robes, many of us live with comforts, with security, with full pantries — and it becomes so easy not to notice the Lazaruses we walk past every day.

The sin of the rich man is not that he is wealthy, nor is it cruelty. It is neglect. He never strikes Lazarus, never yells at him. He just lives his life as if Lazarus does not exist. That neglect condemns him.

And it corrodes whole systems too. The Roy family in Succession coined “NRP” — “No Real Person Involved.” That’s chilling, isn’t it? A category for people whose suffering doesn’t matter, whose disappearance won’t be noticed. And yet, if we’re honest, we have our own versions of “NRP”: the immigrant family caught up in politics; the unhoused neighbor we pass with eyes averted; the incarcerated person whose humanity is erased by statistics.

Barbara Brown Taylor calls this “living in a gated community of the heart.” It’s not just iron gates. It’s emotional and spiritual walls that keep us from seeing.

Richard Rohr says sin is blindness — the refusal to see reality, the refusal to see Christ in the least of these.

This parable is not a horror story meant to scare us into good behavior. It is a wake-up call to reorder our lives now. The chasm is not simply in the afterlife — it is in our world, in our neighborhoods, in our pews. And the gospel call is to bridge it before it becomes unbridgeable.

How do we bridge it?

• First, notice that the poor man is named. Even the rich man knew who Lazarus was. Who are the named, real people in our lives whom we are tempted to treat as invisible? Can we learn their names, hear their stories, see their dignity?
• Second, act now. Abraham says, “They have Moses and the prophets.” Friends, we already know what God requires: to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. This isn’t new revelation. It’s old truth waiting to be lived.
• Third, embody the power of Christ’s love. Abraham warns, “Neither will they believe even if someone rises from the dead.” Resurrection is not magic proof. It is an invitation. If we don’t practice compassion now, we may miss Christ even when he stands before us, alive.

Friends, this is a hard parable. But the good news is that it’s not finished. We’re still alive. We still have time. The great chasm is not yet fixed. We can still cross it.

We cross it every time we notice someone at the gate. Every time we resist the urge to label someone “not a real person.” Every time we open our hearts, our wallets, our schedules, and our communities to those the world overlooks.

And when we do, we discover that it’s not just Lazarus we’re meeting at the gate. It is Christ himself.

Because Christ is always found at the margins. Christ is always with the one on the sidewalk, the one in the detention center, the one who’s been told they don’t matter. Christ is waiting at the gate, calling us across the chasm, into the Kingdom of God that is already breaking in.

Amen.