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REVERSALS OF FORTUNE

Some of the unlikeliest people are going to end up in heaven when the final bell rings. AND . . . some of the unlikeliest people are going to wind up a good deal farther south. Rich people. Prominent people. Church-going people. ‘The first shall be last, and the last first.'


It's one of the most wrenching and wonderful stories to be found in Tom Brokaw's earth-shattering book, The Greatest Generation. He describes a young "Nisei" – second-generation Japanese American – named Danny, who came of age during World War II and ended up in combat under the Stars and Stripes. At first he was 4-C, "enemy alien," unfit for service, but the government later capitulated when thousands of young men insisted they wanted to serve. They ended up forming the heroic 442nd Regimental Combat Team, "the most heavily decorated single combat unit of its size in U.S. Army history," Brokaw writes.

This brave young lieutenant went up a hill in Po Valley, Italy, determined to take out a fortified enemy position. A German bullet caught him in the abdomen and exited his back. He kept charging toward the machine gun nest. Then a rifle-launched grenade shattered his right arm. With his left hand, he pried a grenade out of his useless right hand, pulled the pin, threw the grenade, and kept going. Now another bullet whined through the air and nailed him in the leg, and he finally went down. But before the sortie was over, 25 enemy soldiers had been killed, and Danny received the Distinguished Service Cross.

He got back to the States and spent months in a veterans' hospital in Oakland, California, before finally being able to get on a plane and go home to Hawaii and his family. He wanted to look good for the reunion, so, dressed in his U.S. Army attire, and with that empty right sleeve dangling in the breeze, he walked into a barbershop there in Oakland.

Now, friend, brace yourself. The barber took one look at this young man who had nearly given his life for the American cause. His right arm was gone. He had both the Distinguished Service Cross and Bronze Star on his chest. And the man running the barbershop put up his hand and said just five words: "We don't cut Jap hair." That's all. And the young Japanese-American war hero, with his decorations intact, quietly said to the man: "I feel sorry for you," and walked out.

Well, half a century later, we recoil at such ugliness. And maybe it comforts us a little bit to read in Brokaw's book how Mr. Daniel Inouye went on to become the first ever congressman elected to the House of Representatives from Hawaii and later a distinguished Democratic senator from that state, where he has now served with high distinction in our nation's upper chamber for seven terms and 40 years. One of his fellow senators, Lowell Weicker, who happened to be a Republican, part of the loyal opposition, said very simply about Senator Inouye: "There is no finer man in the Senate."

And the barber? I have no idea. He's probably gone by now, but one would like to think that this small little man, with his prejudices and his fondled hatreds, just got smaller and smaller and was finally never heard from again. "May he rot in . . . wherever," you might say.

We draw courage, don't we, from these kinds of stories where the downtrodden person finally ends up on top, while the persecutor gets his just rewards. We like stories of role reversal, a la The Prince and the Pauper or Trading Places. And here in the book of Luke there's an intriguing story told by Jesus that goes along these very lines. It's generally titled "The Rich Man and Lazarus," and there are some hugely important lessons we can draw from studying it.

Here's the story.

"There was a rich man," Jesus said, "who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores."

So already we have the stage set: poor man and rich man. Hero and villain. Not that the beggar, Lazarus, does anything so heroic, but the fancy-pants guy takes on the antagonist role almost immediately. Let's go on:

"The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried. In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus at his side."

Now friend, regardless of your own personal theology about death and heaven and hell and so on, bear with me. Remember, this is Jesus Himself telling the story. And He continues as follows:

"So [the rich man in hell] called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.' But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.'"


There's a bit more, which we'll address tomorrow, but already, I've got to tell you, this is one of the most hotly debated – and I should say, "pun intended" – stories Jesus ever told.

One point of controversy we'll have to deal with just for one moment and then let the matter lay. But many people question whether this is actually even a parable at all instead of a true story told by our Lord. Did this perhaps really happen? Never in any other parable does Jesus give a name to one of the characters, and so many Bible scholars believe that this really happened and that there was really a poor man named Lazarus. This "Lazarus," by the way, comes from the name "Eleazar," meaning "God has helped" . . . and it certainly works out that way in this story. Legend, some of you might know, also gives the rich man the name "Dives," from the Latin FOR "rich man," but that part doesn't come from Christ.

"A parable — or NOT a parable" is an important issue, because if you believe this to be a true story, it would obviously have a vital bearing on Christian theology regarding hell and death. We'll return to that later, as best we can, but the Bible commentaries in my own Adventist denomination — which admittedly would have a theological bias regarding Luke 16 — suggest that Jesus might have used a name here, "Lazarus," simply because this story had so much dialogue in it. The conversation goes back and forth with six segments in it: Rich Man, Father Abraham, Rich Man, Father Abraham. And instead of having to stay eight times over, "the beggar," "the beggar," "the poor man," "the beggar," and so on, perhaps Jesus decided for this one and only time to give a character in a fictional parable a name. Just for good storytelling. But friend, greater minds than ours have dissected this point and will disagree until we meet Jesus and Abraham and Lazarus — if he IS real — in person. It's interesting that in this marvelous study book, Four Views on Hell, our featured gift this week, Dr. John F. Walvoord, who argues very capably for the traditional view of an eternal, literal hell, calls this Luke 16 story a parable. But for now let's leave it there, and try to make just our one point for today.

Which, of course, is that when Christ comes again, friend, everything is going to be upside-down. "The first shall be last, and the last first." This rich man had his luxurious purple robes, purple being about the most expensive thing there was, coming from the shellfish murex. His undergarments were of fine linen — again, the finest thing you could have. So Jesus was painting here a picture of Frasier and Niles Crane, so to speak, living in the most exclusive Seattle high-rise apartments, with their wine-tasting clubs, their designer furniture, their catered parties, their unpronounceable French brand names for everything but their dad's recliner chair. And also their haughty fixations with self and greed. Outside the gate of the rich man's palatial estate was this beggar, Lazarus. And day after day, he vainly hoped for just a few crumbs from the rich man's table.

Leon Morris, who prepared the Luke section of the Tyndale New Testament Commentaries, describes the rich man's sin — and bear in mind that Jesus told other parables about people who ignored the poor and suffering in their midst.

"This man had all he asked in life," he writes, "and lived a life of enjoyable ease. He is not said to have committed any grave sin, but he lived only for himself. In that lay his condemnation."

"Am I my brother's keeper?" is this man's theme song, just as it was outside the gates of Eden. And when eternity arrives, Morris points out, the rich man gets his reward.

"He had had what he chose," he writes. "He could have spent time with the things of God and delighted in the word of God. He could have engaged in almsgiving (Lazarus had been close enough!) For him good things had been purple and fine linen, daily merriment and feasting. He had chosen what he wanted as his good things and now he must abide by his choice."

So friend, if you're poor — but have Jesus — then take heart. Paradise is waiting. If you're a millionaire living next door to Frasier — and don't have Jesus, and also are prone to ignore the destitute people on Seattle's Skid Row — then take warning. Because purple robes and Pierre Cardin tuxedos can very quickly melt in the flames.