Building Longer Tables

There was a meme that made the rounds on social media a few years ago, I believe it was also featured in TV advertising. You’ve probably seen it. It usually shows a long, welcoming dinner table at an outdoor party, stretching almost out of the frame. The caption reads: “When you have more than enough, build longer tables not higher fences.”

I thought of that saying as I read our Gospel passage for this morning from Luke. I pictured Lazarus, lying at the rich man’s gate, and I wondered: did the rich man build up the fence and gate so high that he couldn’t see Lazarus on the other side? Or worse, did he see him every single day and simply choose to do nothing?

This parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus is a stark and unsettling story. It draws very real parallels between the gap—the great chasm—that exists between the wealthy and those who dwell in poverty. It is a parable that demonstrates the values of the kingdom of God, values that so often stand in direct opposition to the values of our world.

In this story, Jesus does something unique. He names one of the characters. Lazarus is the only character Jesus ever names in any of his parables. This makes his name significant. Lazarus is a form of the Hebrew name Eliezer, which means “God is my help” or “God helps.” In a world where no one else would help him, where he was invisible to the man of wealth just beyond the gate, God saw him. God knew his name. The rich man, for all his earthly importance, remains nameless, defined only by his possessions.

After they both die, their situations are dramatically reversed. Lazarus is carried by angels to be with Abraham, a place of comfort and peace. The rich man finds himself in Hades, in torment. And between them is a great chasm, a fixed gap. This physical gap in the afterlife signifies the vast difference they experienced in life—a difference the rich man was content to maintain.

It’s crucial to understand why the rich man is where he is. He isn’t in Hades simply because he was rich. He is there because he completely ignored the plight of Lazarus. He saw the suffering at his gate and did nothing. It is what he failed to do with his wealth that was so displeasing to God. As our reading from the prophet Amos reminds us, God takes issue with those who are at ease in Zion, those who lounge on their riches and are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph. The rich man was at ease, and he was not grieved by the ruin of Lazarus.

From his place of torment, the rich man calls out, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me!” Notice the family language. He still sees himself as an insider, a child of Abraham. But as John the Baptist warned earlier in Luke’s Gospel, simply claiming to be a child of Abraham is not enough (Luke 3:8). It isn’t enough to talk the talk; God calls us to walk the walk.

The dialogue reveals something chilling: the rich man knows Lazarus by name. He asks Abraham to send Lazarus to bring him water. Even in death, he sees Lazarus not as a fellow human being, but as someone to run his errands. He never speaks to Lazarus, only about him.

Abraham’s response echoes the very words of Jesus in the Beatitudes and Woes: “Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner his painful things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony.” It’s a direct reflection of Jesus’s earlier teaching: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God… But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort” (Luke 6:20,24).

Desperate, the rich man then begs Abraham to send Lazarus back from the dead to warn his five brothers, so they don’t end up in the same place. But Abraham’s reply is the pivot point of the entire parable: “They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.”

What does this reveal? It speaks to the utter sufficiency of God’s word for our lives. The instructions for compassion, for justice, for loving our neighbour as ourselves, are not hidden. They are laid out plainly in the scriptures. We don’t need a miraculous sign, a ghost from the afterlife, to tell us how to live. Ebenezer Scrooge needed the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future to learn compassion. But Jesus says that’s not necessary for us. We already have our guides. We have been told what is good and what the Lord requires of us: to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God (Micah 6:8). For a person of means, the implication is obvious: get to sharing those riches. Build a longer table.

The final words of the parable are perhaps the most haunting, especially as Jesus is heading toward Jerusalem, where he himself will die and rise from the dead. Abraham says, “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” It is a damning sentence that reminds us that God expects us to act on the truth we have already been given.

Tuesday is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, a day we observe in the church as Truth and Reconciliation Sunday. And as we sit with this parable, we are forced to see another great chasm—one that has existed in our own land, at our own gates. For centuries, the Church in Canada often positioned itself as the rich man: comfortable, powerful, and culturally dominant. And at the gate were Indigenous peoples—named and beloved by God, but rendered invisible, impoverished, and harmed by the very institutions that claimed to follow Christ.

The Presbyterian and United churches both operated Residential Schools. We cannot look away from this truth. The harm caused was deep, and that intergenerational trauma continues to ripple through families and communities today. Like the rich man, the church of that era was guilty of a catastrophic lack of compassion. It was a failure to see the Lazarus at our gate.

In its 1994 confession, the Presbyterian Church in Canada admitted, “In our cultural arrogance we have been blind… we have demanded more of the Aboriginal people than the gospel requires, and have thus misrepresented Jesus Christ.”

Similarly, the United Church in 1998 committed to a journey of repentance, stating, “We commit ourselves to work toward ensuring that we will never again use our power as a church to hurt others with attitudes of racial and spiritual superiority.”

Arrogance. Insensitivity. Abuse of power. Spiritual superiority. These are the sins of the rich man. He built a high fence of indifference around his heart. The church built high fences of cultural and racial superiority.

This parable from Luke’s gospel reminds us of where God’s heart is. God’s heart is with Lazarus. It reminds us that true wealth is not found in possessions that you can’t take with you, but in a living, active relationship with God that is expressed through compassion for others.

On this Truth and Reconciliation Sunday, we acknowledge the chasm of how we should live and how we have. We acknowledge the ways the church failed. And we reaffirm our commitment to be better, to listen well, and to take meaningful action towards reconciliation. We have been warned. We have Moses and the Prophets. More than that, we have the witness of Christ, who rose from the dead to show us a new way of living, a way of reconciliation and justice. We cannot say we did not know.

Through this parable, Jesus invites us to examine our own lives, our own gates, our own chasms. He asks us today: How will you respond? Who is the Lazarus at your gate? What fences have you built, and what tables could you be lengthening?

This work is not about one grand gesture, but a lifetime of commitment. It is not about a quick fix, but a long journey. In closing, I share the words of the poet Gwendolyn Brooks (Gwendolyn Brooks, “Speech to the Young.” BLACKS, Chicago, IL: Third World Press, 1991):

Live not for battles won.

Live not for the-end-of-the-song.

Live in the along.

May we learn to live faithfully “in the along,” in the ongoing work of justice, healing, and reconciliation.

Amen.