Today's Devotion
Wednesday of Easter 6, May 13, 2026 - Luke 16:19-31
In the name of + Jesus. Amen.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Our Lord is disputing with the Pharisees, who were “lovers of money” (Luke 16:14). So it stands to reason that in His next parable, Lazarus and the Rich Man, we see a warning about the spiritual condition of those who are not only “lovers of money,” but those whose lives are, as a result, centered on self-righteousness and a lack of mercy to their neighbors.
The story is one of a reversal of fortunes in the afterlife. The one whom the world despised, the poor beggar Lazarus, who sought mercy in this life and found none, “is comforted here” in eternity. At the same time, the rich man who mercilessly ignored Lazarus, who enjoyed “good things” in this life, is now “in anguish” in eternity. And Jesus makes it clear that there is no escape from this reality. And the only way to avoid this fate is repentance here and now, in this life, as the Scriptures: “Moses and the Prophets” – as well as the Gospel of Jesus (“someone [going] to them from the dead”) – bid us to do.
As is often the case, our Lord tells this story with an ironic twist in the plot to show how the temporal world and the eternal kingdom are different. As the old saying goes, Jesus comforts the afflicted, and afflicts the comfortable.
Then, as now, “the world seeks after wealth and all that mammon offers” (LSB 730:3). This is partly due to hangers-on who want a piece of the action, but it is also a kind of escapist voyeurism, a lustful desire to live this way as well. And this worldview leads to the cult of celebrity. And that, in turn, drives the celebrity, the one whom everyone is watching, into a kind of hypocrisy, if not narcissism. To be constantly admired and lauded leads people into the danger of believing their own propaganda, into thinking more highly of oneself than one ought (Rom 12:3).
The Pharisees were so blinded by their own “success” that they failed to believe in the Messiah who fulfilled the very Scriptures that they knew so well, the Christ who came to save them. We see this when Jesus healed the man born blind. Even though the evidence was visible to everyone, our Lord referred to the unbelieving Pharisees as themselves being blind. As usual, they understood Jesus’ words, but were blinded as to how His words applied to them: “’For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.’ Some of the Pharisees near Him heard these things, and said to Him, ‘Are we also blind?’ Jesus said to them, ‘If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, “We see,” your guilt remains’” (John 9:39-41).
Let us rejoice that we do have “Moses and the Prophets,” as well as the “someone” who did “rise from the dead,” who has warned us to repent, and has promised us the “comfort” of “good things” in the life to come!
Amen.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.