A woman once said to her pastor, "I enjoy your Bible classes very much. You get so much out of the text that isn’t there." What she meant, of course, was that he saw and explained things that were not evident to her.

Let’s take her literally for a moment. As we study the Gospel for today, let’s get out of it some of the things that are not there in order to see clearly the things that are there. It’s easy to read some unwarranted meanings into this parable - like putting on a suit of armor to keep the real point of the story from jabbing us. Let’s take off that armor of unwarranted meanings and expose ourselves to its possibly painful prodding of our personal Christian living.

First, this is not a condemnation of wealth. "Dives" is the Latin word for "rich," and this man certainly was. He was "clothed in purple" - the outer garment dyed with costly purple murex - and "fine linen" - the under garment woven from Egyptian flax. Jesus knew the circumstances of the rich as well as the poor. This was no occasional banquet. The rich man feasted sumptuously every day. Here is a solid citizen, a man of wealth and social standing. That was not his sin. There is here no condemnation of his wealth. After all, Abraham was wealthy, too.

Second, this is not a praise of poverty. A beggar "lay" at the portico of his palatial home, evidently carried there by someone else. His name was Lazarus (in Hebrew, "Eleazar"), meaning "he whom God helps." Such was his poverty that his rags could not cover his ulcerated body. When dogs came and bothered him, he had no strength to drive them away. He begged for the discarded pieces of bread the diners had used as napkins to wipe their hands and mouths.

Lazarus died. There is no mention of his burial; perhaps it was in some potter’s field. When Dives died, Jesus says he was "buried." Perhaps it was a first class funeral, with wailing hired mourners, befitting his station in life. Not all beggars are godly people, but we can assume Lazarus’ godliness since he was carried to Abraham’s bosom. Whether he deserved compassion or not, Jesus does not say. It doesn’t make any difference. The point is not his deserving, but his need.

Third, this is not a factual description of heaven and hell. Jesus believed in heaven and hell but made no attempt to describe them. "Abraham’s bosom" was the ancient Jewish term for heaven (something like our "Pearly Gates" expression), and Hades was the expression for separation from God. These are symbols, and we must not make them "proofs" of a fire and brimstone hell.

There are here, however, indications of the nature of eternal life: there is self-consciousness (death is not oblivion, even though some people might wish it were); there is memory (life is not "water over the dam"); there is recognition (knowing one another is possible, even across the gulf that Jesus describes).

Finally, this is not evidence of Dives’ loving concern for his five brothers. It is rather a clever camouflage to excuse himself. You see? His predicament is God’s fault. Who could expect anyone to be convinced on only the say-so of Moses and the prophets? He hadn’t. But if one came from the dead, that would save his brothers. That would have saved him, is the implication. It’s God’s fault for not pushing him harder. If he’d only known! And God should have made him know.

We may be inclined to agree with his estimate that his brothers would be reformed if one came to them from the dead; but they wouldn’t, of course. They - or we - might gape in wonder, and quake with fear at such an event, but these emotions would soon pass. As with other fears and wonders, time would soften the impact and the old self would soon assert itself again. They had God’s revelation of himself for their day - Moses and the prophets - which they chose to ignore. We have even more - God’s revelation of himself for our day - his Word, which we can read every day; witnesses, past and present, of the power of his saving love; Jesus himself dying on the Cross. At Calvary God shot his last bolt in man’s redemption. These are our "Moses and the prophets," for us either to accept or ignore.

Nobody deliberately intends to go to hell. How and why, then, do people go? Almost nobody believes he is going to hell. Those who are not confident in the victory of their faith in Jesus as their personal Savior fall back on the hope and belief that there is no such hellish life after death at all. Maybe Dives felt that way. What a rude awakening!

Now that we have cleared away some of the brush, let’s look at some of the teachings that are in this story Jesus told.

1. Jesus makes it clear that there is a life beyond this world of five senses; that God rules both worlds; and that life in one world affects the other. Jesus’ teaching on heaven and the hungry recorded in Saint Matthew (25:31-46) is an underlining of this same idea. What we do in this life of five senses affects the life beyond them; not because we are making "brownie points" with God, but because each of us is becoming a certain kind of individual who belongs in a certain kind of environment.

For example, here is a person who attends church faithfully, serves his neighbors unselfishly, donates blood, tithes, reads good books - including the Good Book - and enjoys the fellowship of those who, like himself, love the Lord. This person is moved by his employer to a distant community. In his new community he will probably seek the same environment - because he is that kind of person. He has been fitting himself for that kind of environment. That’s where he is at home. That’s where he belongs. It is something like that between this life of five senses and the life beyond. Each of us is creating the kind of person who is at home being with God and the environment of God,or is at home separated from God and the things that belong to God’s environment.

2. Jesus says that between these two environments a great separation is fixed - an unbridgeable chasm, he puts it in our worldly language. Who digs this chasm? Dives himself had driven a wedge of selfishness between himself and his needy fellows, therefore between himself and God. First there is an act, then a habit, then a character trait - until there is a gap so wide that Jesus says even heaven itself could not bridge it.

The clearest evidence of what we believe about God is the way we treat other people. Godly acts of goodness, generosity and compassion - or their opposites - are not simply acts in themselves. They are the outward evidence that the person who performs them is a certain kind of person. If we meanly treat our needy fellows - if we are callous and careless of their condition or their needs - we separate ourselves from them. In doing so, we separate ourselves from God.

Dives walked past Lazarus just about every day, but he did not really "see" him at all. Lazarus’ needs were obvious, but Dives just didn’t care. It was not what Dives did that got him into hell; it was what he did not do.

3. It comes down to this: we are the brothers of Dives, those whose eternal destiny is yet to be determined. What kind of persons are we becoming?

Dives was evidently not actively evil, deliberately devilish or consciously cruel. He was just carelessly heartless. He had lost his compassion. He had buried his brotherhood. Rags and ulcers left him unmoved and uncaring. They were merely a part of the other man’s tough luck, and no concern of his.

There are people who don’t care what happens as long as it doesn’t happen to them. Either we are men and women of compassion, of caring and concern, or we are men and women of hell. That’s pretty blunt, but on the basis of this story, how else would you put it?

We can be concerned about poverty, ghetto conditions, disease, injustice, fear and loneliness (even though these things do not happen to us), or we can shrug our shoulders and say, "What is that to me?" The difference between those two attitudes is not a minor matter. Here Jesus makes it the difference between heaven and hell.

The sharp point of Jesus’ story is this: we need not be actively evil or deliberately devilish to miss the gate of heaven. We need only to be inactively indifferent and thoughtlessly selfish; to go our own contented way; to step over the beggars on the doorstep of our life, unconcerned about their condition and untroubled about their need.

There is a sign series on the West Virginia Turnpike that says, "Driving while drowsy can put you to sleep - permanently." Drowsy, uncaring living can put us to sleep - permanently. That kind of person, Jesus says, is separating himself from God until it becomes permanent, by digging a chasm between himself and heaven that even the love of God cannot bridge.

Open our eyes, Lord, to the needs and sufferings of those around us. Even though we may not have caused the hurts we see, grant us compassionate hearts to respond to them, that we might be the kind of people who belong eternally with you. Amen