Last week, we talked about Jesus’ parable of the shrewd manager and the Jewish idea of “mitzvah,” carrying out God’s commandments to do good on behalf of others, which really is a way of “bonding” with both God and our neighbors in relationship.

As the elite men in the crowd who were listening to Jesus were scowling, Jesus told yet another parable back-to-back with that one.  Today’s scripture continues Jesus’ interchange with the parable of the “rich man and Lazarus.” This is the only time that Jesus uses an actual name of a person in his parable. As it is, the name Lazarus derives from the Hebrew lazaros, which means “whom God has helped.” The word comes from the verb eliezer, which means “God helps.”

This is a story of one “whom God has helped!” I’ll leave it to you to decide (remembe…