Here's a bit of Bible trivia for you: Only one person in the parables of Jesus is given a name. Do you know who it is? Think about it for a minute.
Lazarus.

Lazarus is a poor beggar who lies at the gate of a rich man's home, hungry, diseased, ignored. The description of Lazarus that Jesus gives in Luke 16 is not very appealing: He was "covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores" (vv. 20--21). Recurring theme here: He didn't look like you and me. Not the kind of guy most of us would want to befriend or invite home for dinner. Why don't the heroes in Jesus' stories look like heroes?
Interesting turn here. It is not the rich man who has a name, but the poor, crippled beggar. Even more interesting, the name Lazarus means "the one whom God helps."

Did Jesus get the names mixed up? At least at first glance, the rich man is the one God helps and Lazarus is the one God forgot. "There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day," we're told in verse 19. By virtually any standard, this rich man has found favor with God. Or has he?

The story takes a twist and the tables get reversed. Lazarus dies and the angels carry him to Abraham's side.

Get this picture. In Jesus' day, a formal dinner was held around a low table, and the guests reclined on their left sides, eating with their right hands, essentially leaning against the person on their left--in their bosom, if you will. That means that the guest of honor, the person to the host's right, was resting on the host's side. Now see it? In the Jewish hierarchy, Abraham was heaven's elite of the elite, the patriarch of the Jewish nation. And in this picture, Lazarus was not just some nameless beggar, lying at a rich man's gate; he was the guest of honor at a heavenly feast. Make that the heavenly feast.

But the rich man dies and winds up "in Hades, where he was in torment" (Luke 16:23).
Oh. I guess Lazarus was the one who God helped.

When we focus on the big picture, this is subversive stuff. You may have the money, the power, and the position now, but that is not how it will work out in the cosmic play. Subversive. Have you heard the old African American spiritual "Rock My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham"? This is where it comes from. The poor slave in the field could sing this song, essentially saying, "I may be the slave now, and you may be the master, but one of these days, one of these days . . ." Do you think the slave owner got it?

Here is a question, though: How does Jesus know the rich man is going to end up in hell? Why is this a foregone conclusion? Obviously God liked him enough to let him be wealthy on earth. He wore all the trappings of blessing. Shouldn't there have been some carry-over? Why hell? Is it just because he is rich? I certainly hope not, because if that's the case, we're all in trouble. If you are wealthy enough to have purchased this book, you are almost certainly among the wealthiest 2 percent of all the people who have ever lived in the world. We are the purple and fine-linen crowd. If wealth condemns to hell, then that's where we are all headed.

The answer has to be something else. Maybe it can be found in some other words of Jesus:
Then he will say to those on his left, "Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me." They also will answer, "Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?" He will reply, "Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me."
Matthew 25:41--45

The least of these. The Lazaruses of the world. Maybe the kid under the overpass. Or the man in the subway. Peripheral people. Tertiary lives.

You did not do for me. Tough words.

I have a friend who relates the story of a Sunday school class he was teaching. On one Sunday they studied a particularly difficult passage. A businessman in the class reflected for a moment on the Scripture and then said, "I bet Jesus wished he hadn't said that."

I don't know about your theology, but my understanding of Scripture is that it is a lot more likely that Jesus meant to say exactly what he said in this passage, and if we wish he had not said these words, it's our problem, not his. There are times in God's Word when we're demanded to call on a faith that pushes us to step beyond our level of comfort and encounter a world that is not always pretty, not always easy, not always nice.
Dirty faith, if you will.

Jesus certainly seems to be pretty serious about it. He doesn't toss around words like depart, cursed, and eternal fire for effect. He's not given to hyperbole. Hear what he has to say: It is not just our attitude, but also our action toward the least of these that is the standard of what he deems to be righteous or unrighteous. If we understand righteousness to be the product of God's grace, then what Jesus is telling us here is that it is very easy to determine who has experienced the grace of God that transforms the unrighteous into the righteous. You can always identify the righteous by their attitude and activity toward the least of these.

Always.

It is not an indicator, it is not a sign, there is no gray area here. It is a determinant. According to Jesus, if you have experienced God's grace, this is how you will live in relationship to those in need. So it is easy to know where the rich man winds up. He knew Lazarus--he called him by name--but he really couldn't be bothered to care about him, "to do unto him." So that's where James gets it: "Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, 'Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,' but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead" (James 2:15--17).

A question: Do we take Jesus seriously today? When the least of these are hoping to pick up the crumbs that fall from the Church's table, I wonder what kind of gospel we are preaching. Let me say this as clearly as I can: The gospel of Jesus Christ cannot be separated from caring for the widow, the orphan, the hungry, the sick, the prisoner.

John says it a bit differently: "But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did" (1 John 2:5--6).

Must live as Jesus did. That's a tough one--one I'm not sure I have completely worked out. But I do know it starts with relationships, both with God and with others--and not just those who look like us. John's point is that we cannot claim that our walk with God is where it should be, or perhaps even that we have a walk with him at all, if every other part of our life doesn't reflect that relationship. Preaching the good news of eternal life while ignoring present pain is an emaciated and impoverished gospel. True righteousness means that we feed, we heal, we touch.

Dirty faith.

It's the kind of faith that cannot be practiced in isolation. To truly love the orphan, the child prostitute, the widow, and the prisoner requires relationships, and perhaps this relationship aspect is what we have lost as a Church. Far too often we want to hire someone to do our Christianity for us, to pay the pastors and missionaries--the "professional" Christians--to do the work we are all called to do. Our financial gifts are the salve for our consciences that tell us we are really being faithful to our Lord's commands. We live in comfortable homes and rarely encounter the lives of the least of these. We are practitioners of a sanitized faith.

Is that the way God designed his work? I remember a line in one of my Christology texts from seminary. The author is long gone from my memory, but his words stay with me: "Wasn't it just like God to become man?"

Yeah, it was.

Because even for God, coming face-to-face with the reality of our humanity--struggling alongside us, feeling the pain we feel, feeling need--was absolutely essential to the gift of himself. How much more true must this be for us?

Living as Jesus did demands relationship with those we are called to serve. Isolation, even if we write big checks to support a ministry, cannot be an option for us. True biblical Christianity means that we get down--in the dirt, if necessary; that we experience life as they experience it; that we view the world from their perspective. How does it feel when the world steps over you, when the only eye contact you make with the drive-by people is when they are trying to pick you up? The New
Testament knows nothing of an arm's-length Christianity.

Truth be known, my experience is that those who have met the child of the streets face-to-face, those who have hugged the orphan in the slum, those who have looked into hungry eyes, those who have held the child of the prostitute become far more generous. I know it impacted me that way; tithing simply wasn't enough anymore. But true Christian charity--in the 1 Corinthians 13 usage--begins not with our pocketbooks, but with our hearts. Bottom line: You cannot be intimate with God and distant from those he loves.