NOTES for Luk 16:1-31

In the Gospel, parallels are very often drawn between earthly and heavenly wealth. This is no accident, because life always works out so that some people always have more of something (material or spiritual) than others.

Perhaps the central words in this chapter are verses 9-12. Do we realize that everything we have is not ours? That it has been given to us only as stewards, who must rightly manage what they have? And Christians (and human beings in general) can have only one goal: to make God's eternal love real in their own place, that is, to serve one another. Therefore, if we use this wealth that belongs to another rightly (guided by love), then in return we will receive what is truly our own: the fruits that grow out of such relationships, abiding in God's love and light.

Another funny anecdote about a resourceful scoundrel and, as always, a strange and frightening conclusion: "the sons of this age" know their business better than the "sons of light." Always and in every age, people seeking wealth, fame, and power know how to get what they want, by fair means and foul, by deception, force, cunning, and ingenuity. But those who seek the "Kingdom of God and His righteousness" sink into laziness, slackness, and indifference. It turns out that money and power are stronger incentives, if for their sake a person is ready to give up anything and devise any scheme, just to achieve the goal. So much for "spirituality." Spirituality, however, also finds a place: it serves as one form of leisure, since one cannot work for "unrighteous wealth" all the time. Of course, like every parable, this anecdote is told not so much to accuse as to make a person, after rejoicing over the resourceful thief, think about what he wants in life and how he goes about obtaining it.

Today Christ tells His disciples an astonishing parable. He compares the relationship between God and the human being with the relationship between a master and an unfaithful steward. Facing the inevitable threat of dismissal, this steward decided, perhaps for the first time, to show mercy to the Master's poor debtors. In the same way, before elections, increases in salaries, pensions, and benefits are regularly announced. In essence, the steward does this at the Master's expense, but the Lord does not condemn him. He only makes an ironic comment about the shrewdness of the sons of this age.

Far more important is that those who have benefited at the Master's expense receive the steward not merely into their own houses. Here the Lord goes beyond the limits of the parable and speaks of eternal dwellings. Thus mercy shown to people turns into a completely undeserved but real opportunity to enter the eternal dwellings of the Lord Himself.

And it is also striking that it is not the master who admits the steward there, but those whom the steward had pitied. That is why it is so important for us to be grateful and to pray for those who have helped us in one way or another.

One often hears people complain about work. They say, how can anyone take it seriously, everything is tiresome, routine. If only one could drop everything and do something useful for humanity, something bright and beautiful. But there are no such occupations, and while there are none, one has to sit out and wait out a boring and uninteresting job, treating it accordingly.

But Jesus tells us that He cannot entrust us with a great and important work if we cannot show ourselves faithful in something small and unimportant for the fate of humanity. How can people be entrusted to someone who cannot be responsible for things? If we do not begin to treat each day as a test that reveals whether we are fit to do something great and important, we can spend our whole life sitting in dreary expectation.

"You cannot serve two masters" - what is this about? The body? The world? The love of money? And most important: if one cannot serve two masters, how can one live at all in a world that, as we know from the same Gospel, "lies in evil"? What is to be done? Run from the world, flee into the desert, as monks, hermits, and desert dwellers have done in every age?

But is that really a way out? Even in the desert and in the forest one will have to think about feeding oneself somehow, at least minimally. And there this may prove even more difficult than in the city. Nor is food the only issue; the matter is one of principle: if one cannot serve two masters, then one also cannot live by the laws of the world in which we live. Wherever you run, it is still with you, because any one of us is part of it, and the evil in which it lies has to do with us.

But if the Kingdom exists, if it has already entered our world in order to transform it, then not everything is lost. If there is an alternative, then it is possible to live in this world without submitting to it, to live according to the laws of the Kingdom and not be divided, not serve two masters. Of course, it is not easy to live this way, but in principle such a life is possible. And this means that there is an alternative to the world that lies in evil. The main thing is to find it, and, once found, not to lose it.

Christ's words about the impossibility of serving two masters are one of the most vivid images of the choice a person makes when becoming a Christian. This choice allows no compromises and no conditions. And this choice must be made. It is absurd to make claims against God if you have not made this choice or have preferred to serve your own prosperity. It is your decision, only your own. This is an amazing good for us, and at the same time a terrible truth. We so want to lay responsibility for our dead condition on God. But it is your own choice, which no one, not even God, will make for you. And all the more astonishing is the mercy of the Son of God, who dies for us all, regardless of anything, "while we were still sinners," as the apostle Paul says.

"So if you have not been faithful in unrighteous wealth, who will entrust you with the true?" Why be faithful in unrighteous wealth? It sounds strange. The point is that today the Church has appointed the reading for us in a somewhat special way, offering only the last lines from the parable about unrighteous wealth, which must be distributed. Thus, as we read it today, we turn out to be somewhat separated from this meaning, although of course we are free to return to it. But if we do not return to it, we may recall a very "original" interpretation, in the words of Archimandrite Zacharias, of "unrighteous wealth" by Elder Sophrony Sakharov, disciple of Elder Silouan the Athonite:

"Our ontological union with the God of Love presupposes the merging of two wills: God's and man's. The union itself is accomplished in a state of love. God, the Personal Spirit, and man, the person (persona), are united into one in the eternal Act of Divine Life. Thus God is known by us. To acquire this Love is the final goal of the Christian struggle. The attainment of this goal is connected with a long and difficult path. But it is possible to experience God's visitation in great power as a gift from Above at certain moments, when the soul, in a surge of repentance for sins, becomes receptive to the Light descending upon it from God. Yet these first visitations are not yet the state of the saved acquired forever. They are only still 'unrighteous wealth,' which can still be taken away because of unfaithfulness. But to preserve this grace, to remain faithful to everything it has taught us, is impossible without deep mourning for years" (Archim. Sophrony Sakharov, To See God as He Is, chapter "On Spiritual Mourning").

Thus every sensation of grace we have is still unrighteous wealth, in which we must be faithful only to the Lord and not to ourselves, even though this state can be so intoxicating. And if we remain faithful to God in this, then one day we will receive the true wealth.

Faith and faithfulness are single-root words not only in English language, but also in the biblical language. Faith always implies faithfulness in a biblical sense. If Christian faith is something that opens to us the possibility of uniting with Jesus, and consequently the way in the eternal life, it is in particular faithfulness to this faith that keeps us on this way, whereas unfaithfulness throws us off into the darkness of this world. So, our entire fate is defined with the acceptance of God's salvation by faith and faithfulness.

But is it possible to accumulate on one hand faithfulness in this so important line of life for us, and on the other hand unfaithfulness in anything more partial and less important? There is a joke which was very popular in Soviet Union which says: "if you deceive your wife today, tomorrow it will be the motherland" the words of Jesus show that He wouldn't have taken it just like a joke. Faithfulness is a property of man's personality, not so innate, as we can learn and develop it; the level of development of this property is reflected in all the spheres of the human character. How many times we had to observe with sadness how people, unfaithful to their own word, turn out later unfaithful in friendship, marriage, membership in Church.

The Savior's words about responsibility for one's own and for another's may at first glance seem strange: everyone knows that a person always treats his own more responsibly than another's, whether the issue is property or anything else. But this is how it appears only at first glance, if one does not think about what responsible treatment of anything actually is, whether it is one's own or another's.

What, indeed, is responsibility? Where does it come from? True responsibility is impossible without a free and conscious choice, when a person spiritually defines himself with respect to his own life. Responsibility is the reverse side of the freedom of choice realized by a person.

But for a choice in a concrete situation to be truly free, a person's whole life must be conscious. For this a person must be aware of every desire and striving, every intention directed toward someone or something. If nothing of the kind exists, then there will be no conscious desire in a person's life. Yet, it would seem, everyone desires something, and most people desire quite strongly, while very few, alas, are aware of themselves and their life. What, then, should one think about the desires of the majority? As can be seen, it is hardly possible to call them conscious.

But such desires can hardly be considered desires in the proper sense of the word: a real desire is always spiritual; it is an act of will in which a person gives account to himself completely and to the end. An unconscious desire, however, is merely a passion, emotion, affect, a force that has seized a person and that he can neither understand nor control. And when it seizes a person, the thing toward which he passionately strives seems to him unconditionally his own, absolutely necessary, and even absolutely inseparable from himself.

A person cannot imagine himself without "his own," not because he has understood and become aware of what place in his life the object of his desires should occupy, but because he has merged with it to the point of almost complete indistinguishability and certainly complete inseparability. To take such a "one's own" away from a person is the same as cutting off his arm or leg, or even worse, a part of his soul. In such cases people most often say, "he tore it from his heart."

But of course there can be no talk of any responsibility in such a case: what responsibility can there be where a person seized by the desire to obtain or hold on to "his own" does not even possess himself? With another's, however, with what is "not one's own," nothing of this sort can exist by definition. To treat responsibly what is not the object of one's own passion, what is indifferent to you, precisely real responsibility is needed.

And if it exists, a person will be able, first, to distinguish his own from what only seems to him to be so, and second, to treat his own as consciously and responsibly as everything entrusted to him. This is no surprise: a person who lives consciously cannot fail to understand that even his own is only entrusted to him by God, that it is given to him for use, not for unconditional and absolute possession. And he treats it accordingly, just like everything given to him and entrusted to him.

Are money and devotion really so incompatible? Don't we meet rich Christians who are at the same time good and generous? Haven't we met brutal criminals out of poverty? Keywords here are surely: "serve", "love", "be zealous ". Which of these dominates in our heart? Who or what do we serve? Wealth - but which wealth do we have - money - it is a purpose or just a means? If it is the purpose then we have to be treated from kleptomania, and not fool oneself that everything is well. And if it is a means, then it is a means for what? Money brings new possibilities in our lives, but all these possibilities are not useful for our salvation. We can use this money to have power on others (power is the most terrible drug), for various self-satisfaction (food, sex, comfort, travelling etc.), to calm our conscience (almsgiving, beneficence), in brief to indulge oneself. How can money be used as a way of serving God by us (without being at the same time a self-exculpation) – here is surely the question which each of us should answer in his relationship with God. Two persons cannot sit at the same time on a throne…

The Pharisees who mocked Jesus when He said that it is impossible to serve God and wealth think about the Kingdom of God the way we usually do. Only when someone dies do we say, "May the Kingdom of Heaven be his"; to wish the "Kingdom of Heaven" to a living person is psychologically impossible for us. A stereotype formed over the centuries places the Kingdom "afterward," beyond the bounds of this life. The Pharisees thought the same way, hoping for the resurrection of the dead and expecting the Kingdom in a historical but distant future. The Pharisees regarded wealth, honor among those around them, and family well-being as the only, or in any case the chief, manifestation of God's favor in this life. Our stereotyped religiosity matches the Pharisaic one here too. This is visible when we reproach God for injustice, seeing swindlers prosper and the righteous suffer.

But the Lord tells the Pharisees, and us who think as they do, that the proclamation of the Kingdom of God as something belonging to a distant future was valid only until the time of John the Baptist. From the moment his witness to the Lamb of God sounded, to the beloved Son in whom the Father's favor was given to people, from that moment the Kingdom of God has been proclaimed as a present reality. And therefore, the Lord says, to enter it only effort is required: the effort of faith and resolve. The Pharisees do not want this nearness and openness of the Kingdom; for them it has come too unexpectedly and too early. Alas, here too we do not differ from them. To His disciples, however, the Lord speaks of the need to forgive people without limit, as God forgives. This is an essential mark of the Kingdom, into which we are called to enter here and now.

The center of the good news brought by the Savior was the proclamation of the Kingdom of God. Of course, people had spoken about the Kingdom before, ever since the early prophets. But in those days those who spoke of the Kingdom of God saw it primarily as a religious and political reality. It was, in essence, a fully earthly Kingdom, a social order embodying the Torah, the Law given by God.

But since the Torah in those days was perceived primarily as legislation and as a moral code, the Kingdom was also seen precisely as an earthly state. Sometimes, to be sure, the issue was not a secular state but a theocracy or a hierocracy, yet in any case what was envisioned was a fully earthly society, created by people, though guided by God's law.

Later, in the context of the experience connected with temple worship, the Kingdom began to be seen as a reality that was spiritual rather than religious and political. The Kingdom began to be associated with that Throne of glory that was revealed in the Temple to the prophets, and perhaps not only to them. This Throne of glory was perceived as the center of the Kingdom, and it was assumed that it would be revealed at the end of time to the people of God, and then the world would become the Kingdom: for then God would visibly reign over the world, becoming visible to everyone in such a way that no one would any longer be able to deny His authority or even His very existence, as had happened before.

And God would send the Messiah to earth, who would receive His authority at the Throne of glory from the One seated on it. The visible Throne of glory in heaven and the Messiah, the righteous King, on earth: this is how many imagined the Kingdom in Gospel times. The Kingdom itself remained largely earthly, but its center was the Throne of glory, located not on earth but in heaven, the Throne revealed in the Temple as the place of God's presence.

But then the Messiah comes and says that not only the Throne of glory, but the whole Kingdom exists and is revealed to the world as a spiritual reality, having nothing to do with any earthly institutions or arrangements. "The Torah and the Prophets," as what we now call sacred Scripture was called in those days, are until John the Baptist. After that comes a new age, the age of the coming Kingdom. The Kingdom enters the world, and now everyone who wants to can enter it.

True, this is not simple; effort is needed here, but without effort nothing happens in spiritual life, or in life generally. The point here is not that the sacred books we now call Old Testament books somehow become "outdated." The point is that everything described in them has happened. Both the Pentateuch and especially the prophetic books have at their center not only the Torah itself, but also the Messiah and the Kingdom. Much is said there about the coming of the Messiah and the coming of the Kingdom. And now all this has happened: the Messiah has come and brought the Kingdom with Him. The Messiah, of course, will have His own ministry, and the Kingdom its own history, but other books, the New Testament books, will tell about them.

The Gospel says little about what "life after life" is like, and most likely this silence is due to the fact that the road to heaven passes over the earth, where we are to live according to our calling. But here before us is a story that slightly opens the mysterious veil. Even here, however, the focus of our attention is not the details of existence beyond the grave, which are mentioned briefly, but the meaning of the story as applied to our life.

And so we see how a man who thoughtlessly lived for his own pleasure ends up in hell because he has already received everything in earthly life. One might ask, what wrong did he do? True, he did not feed Lazarus, who was lying by the house like a filthy homeless man, but after all, one cannot feed everyone. Nothing else bad is said about this rich man; it is not mentioned that he robbed or murdered anyone. Why, then, did he end up in hell?

It must not be "for what," but "why": not because he enjoyed earthly pleasures, but because they blocked God from his sight. Just as the same substances can, depending on dosage and proportions, be either medicine or poison, so the gifts the Lord created to satisfy our needs can become destructive if because of them we stop noticing the Creator.

And this story also contains an important prophecy: if people do not listen to well-known prophetic words, they will not believe even the One who rises from the dead. To this day, it is difficult for those who hope for endless life amid earthly luxury to believe the Risen One. But when He descended into hell, He overcame the great chasm that until then could not be crossed.

Christ tells a rather frightening parable about how one indifferent man, who paid no attention to the suffering of his neighbor, ended up in hell in a completely irreversible way. But the thing is that parables are told not about hell or paradise, but about you and me, about how we are to live on this earth. The point is not that we are being frightened with the torments of hell, but that a definite alternative is placed before us: to try to "receive all the good things in life" or to see the pain and loneliness of someone who was less fortunate in this life than we were. And here the decision must be made completely freely, because if a person is deaf to the voice of conscience, to human and divine law, then he can be frightened with hell or anything else as much as one likes: even if someone rises from the dead, he will not believe. And all that is needed is simply to tear ourselves away from our own happiness, or unhappiness, and share "at least the crumbs" of our life, for that is why it was given to us...

Reflecting on today's text, one can notice one of its features. The rich man's name is not given. Lazarus's name, by contrast, is given. One may think, what is so special about that? But if we try to recall other parables and stories in the Gospel, it becomes clear that the names of bad people are almost nowhere mentioned, with those rare exceptions when not mentioning them is impossible, as in the case of Judas, Caiaphas, and Pontius Pilate, because this is factual testimony to historical authenticity. This differs from the Old Testament. If one were to sketch, somewhat conditionally, two tables for the Old and New Testaments, each with two columns, names of evil people and names of good people, then in the first case these columns would, perhaps, be comparable in length, also with some qualification, simply as a trend. But in the case of the New Testament... It seems that the column of good names would be much longer than that of evil names. Not, of course, because there was much less evil. But this seems to be a sign of the new theology of the New Testament. Several reasons can be given for this.

A name is something very important for a Christian. Why? For some, because of superstition; someone sees in a name some sacred meaning; we often hear from our contemporaries that by giving your child a name you influence his destiny. But superstitions leave no room for true faith, and true faith lies in the very important circumstance that, by assigning Adam the right to give names to the things He had created, the Lord called the human being to participate in His Creation. To give a name means to share creativity in the world with God; a name serves, as it were, as an icon of Synergy.

Why does a person change his name when being tonsured a monk? There is an opinion that this is done in order to break completely with one's life in the world. Such an interpretation seems doubtful: life in the world, from the point of view of Orthodox doctrine, is not in any way considered something lower in relation to life in monasticism. The fact that a monk changes his name, on the contrary, testifies to the meaning of the name as an icon of co-working. And so Jesus comes and, as it were, renews that moment when Adam gave names to the animals and birds.

Such a small ratio of evil names to good ones in the Gospel draws, as it were, an icon of the Kingdom of Heaven, where evil will no longer exist. Let us note in parentheses that icons differ from paintings precisely in this: above every saint depicted on an icon, and above all, above the Lord, there is always a name. Evil is described, but it is not named, and by that very fact it is allotted, as it were, a lesser degree of existence, just as Adam, by giving names, completed the creation of things in the world.

The parable of the rich man and Lazarus is one of the hardest for us to understand. Much of this is because we read a written text, while Christ's parables are an oral genre. When we read a book, we can go back and consider different shades of meaning, but the listeners did not have that opportunity and grasped one or two essential images. Therefore, when Jesus wanted to communicate something truly new, He presented the background information in keeping with the system of ideas His listeners had. Check it: all His parables are built this way.

The two most essential points in this parable are, of course, its final phrase about the one who will rise from the dead, and the connection between existence here and existence after death. For the rest, Jesus relies on traditional ideas: Abraham's bosom, Sheol - without yet trying to change them. All of that still lies ahead: after descending into Hades following His death on the cross, Jesus abolishes the idea of Sheol as a place where God is not present.

Atheists and skeptics who assert their unbelief in God very often appeal to the claim that the miracles spoken of by believers are inventions, that they do not want to believe in them, and that this is the main thing repelling them from faith. Today the Lord says very important words to them and to us: if they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe if someone rises from the dead. In reality, then, they are mistaken about the causes of their unbelief. Even if a miracle happened before their very eyes, they would not believe it.

Only the word of God—"Moses and the prophets"—teaches us to discern a miracle. A miracle can be seen only by a heart filled with the divine word, because "what is essential is invisible to the eye," as Saint-Exupéry's character said. Just as the eyes of the rich man's five brothers would not have helped them recognize in the man who might come to them the risen Lazarus, so the eyes of today's unbelievers do not help them see that "the whole earth is veiled in the smoke of the Lord's love."

It is the last words that Jesus makes go out of Abraham's mouth in the parable of the Rich man and of Lazarus. Certainly, the parable is first of all about a posthumous reward, even if it is not the only meaning. We are in general, let say used to this meaning, however for the Jews, first people to listen to this parable, it was an important and new revelation. But the last words of the Lord's parable talk about the testimony of the Resuscitated from the deaths: "…neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead ". Of course, it is here about His Resurrection, and it is essential for us to know that a man is capable of believing the Resuscitated only if he "hears Moses and the Prophets". It is necessary to note that the expression "Moses and the prophets" means first of all the Bible in all its completeness as it was known and accepted when Jesus was on earth. Secondly the word “hear" in this context doesn't mean as much an aural perception, as obedience, the execution of God's word. The great sign of Resurrection will not bring us to change our lives if we do not execute God's word.