Progressive reflections on the lectionary #83

Monday 22nd September 2025

Luke 16:19-31: The rich man and Lazarus - reversing the role of the priest and making the outsider central (a handy rebuttal of Christian nationalism)

In this week’s reading we get the very familiar story of the rich man and Lazarus from Luke’s gospel. I will say that one interpretation of this fable could be to see Lazarus as a redefinition of priesthood - while a view of the story as a whole could be that it is a layered critique of exclusionary systems. I’ll also briefly explore the idea that the central character is a fusion of characters from Hebrew antiquity and will say that all of this leads to a rejection of the (bonkers) contemporary idea of ‘Christian nationalism’. P.S. As far as I’m concerned it goes without saying that it has literally nothing to do with the idea of heaven and hell.

We have come across a character called Lazarus before, in the story from the Gospel of John, where Lazarus of Bethany, a beloved friend of Jesus, is resurrected. In my reflection on that passage I suggested that Lazarus as the Greek form of the Hebrew Eleazar, is a reference to priesthood - which was in dire need of resurrection as ‘it stanketh’.

Here in Luke 16, however, Lazarus is a different, and destitute figure. He is distinguished by the fact that he is the only named character in any of Jesus’ parables - such an anomaly is hardly likely to be an accident.

There are two notable Eleazar’s in the Hebrew scriptures: the first is the son of, and successor to, Aaron as High Priest (Numbers 20:25–28) and the other is the servant of Abraham, traditionally identified with the unnamed steward in Genesis 24, who was tasked with finding a wife for Isaac. Given the presence of Abraham in this tale, we should probably not ignore the latter.

It’s a name with some antiquity then and here seems to refer to a great reversal of priestly status. That would be in keeping with Luke’s agenda - he’s fond of a reversal or two. Here the ritually pure, high status, ‘priest’ has become a poor man, cast out and covered in sores. This downcast one is now the one closest to Abraham.

What this does, effectively, is offers a challenge to the religious authorities of Luke’s time - divine favour, in this story, does not rest with the exalted temple elite, or the rich. Rather it sits with those who suffer - the dregs of society.

One compelling scholarly theory is that Luke’s Lazarus represents a literary fusion of Abraham’s servant and the literary figure of Job (one of the oldest Biblical stories). In Genesis 15 Abraham’s servant is due to inherit his fortune, but is ultimately displaced by Isaac. In Luke 16, however, Lazarus is restored to Abraham’s bosom.

The figure of Job, meanwhile, similarly afflicted but ultimately vindicated, sets a strong pattern on which the physical form of Luke’s Lazarus can be based. A fusing of the two creates a rich symbolism that expresses the idea of faithfulness from the margins - a rebuke to those who find themselves ‘blessed’ materially, but who fail to live according to the ethics of the Torah.

My personal feeling is that the return to the ‘name’ of Lazarus is significant, and it’s hard to separate from the concept of priesthood. Here then is a redefined image of the priestly vocation that moves away from the importance of ritual purity and towards an identification with the poor and suffering. Whether Luke’s Lazarus represents a ritually impure person, or the gentile servant of Abraham, or both, he finds himself acceptable to God - resetting Luke’s readers’, and our, expectations of what is, or isn’t acceptable in God’s sight. In other words he embodies a radical critique of social and religious exclusion.

It doesn’t require an enormous imaginative leap to perceive contemporary applications, particularly as figures who claim to represent Christianity and Christian tradition seek to build new walls of exclusivity based on doctrines of ethnic or religious purity and Christian nationalism.

A progressive lens on this story leads us to challenge any sense of hierarchy within the Christian tradition: the first should be last after all. It proposes that the poor, the disabled, the excluded and the foreign are closest to the heart of the divine. Priesthood, then, is about the embodiment of mercy, justice, and solidarity beyond borders.

Crucially this conflicts with the sense that the extraordinary concept of ‘Christian nationalism’ can, or should, be a thing. Christianity fused with national identity serves to promote a narrow cultural, ethnic, or political vision which make national borders into God given markers instead of the imaginary map lines that they truly are. It runs entirely counter to the message of the gospel.

In Luke’s story it is the poor, downcast and forgotten one who is named and embraced - the outsider is in the centre of the story. Luke’s ongoing project of turning things upside down continues - the good news is for those on the margins, not the comfortable elite.

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