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In our Gospel today, Jesus tells us a tale about two men whose lives could not have been more different. One is clothed in purple and fine linen, feasting every day. The other, Lazarus, is laid at his gate, hungry, sick, and covered in sores. The first has everything; the second has nothing.

And yet they both die, and the roles become reversed. The rich man finds himself in torment, while Lazarus is carried by angels to Abraham’s side. Between them, Jesus says, a great chasm has been fixed.

The story is not so much about the afterlife as it is about this life. Jesus is warning us about the chasms we create—chasms of wealth, privilege, and neglect—that keep us from truly loving our neighbour. He’s telling us to mind the gap.

Dr Martin Luther King Jr understood this parable. He repeatedly spoke about the dangers of ignoring whoever might be our own Lazarus at the gate.

Caricature

Dressing in purple and linen and feasting sumptuously every day was a very visible, over-the-top caricature by Jesus of someone with great wealth. Yet outside that man’s front door lay Lazarus, hungry, sick, apparently invisible. He’s in such bad shape that he can’t even beg. He just lies there, wishing.

Usually, in a parable, we associate ourselves with one character or another. Here Lazarus is also a caricature of someone who is a polar opposite of the rich man. He’s deliberately made so poor that we find it as tough to see ourselves as being Lazarus as we do the rich man. Neither position is particularly attractive. We’re left adrift somewhere in between.

Now the rich man did not deliberately attack or hurt Lazarus. He didn’t go out of his way to oppress him. He simply ignored him. He walked past him on the way to dinner, stepped over him on the way to the banquet. The sin was not cruelty but apathy.  It was a sin of omission rather than commission.

Martin Luther King once said: “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”

Comfort

The rich man’s tragedy was his silence. He had the means to help, but he never bothered. He built a chasm with his indifference, and in the end that gap became unbridgeable.

We might be quick to judge, but how many ‘Lazaruses’ lie at our own gates today—those living in poverty, those seeking refuge, those struggling in loneliness—while we figuratively step around them or over them on the way to our own metaphorical feasts?

The rich man’s daily feasting is a picture of comfort. Comfort is not evil in itself, but it can lull us into blindness. Comfort narrows our vision until we no longer see the suffering outside our door.

Dr King warned: “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

The danger is not simply ignorance, but wilful ignorance—a refusal to notice Lazarus because noticing him might disrupt our comfort.

We might do well to ask ourselves: Where is my comfort keeping me from seeing the Lazarus at my gate?

Upside down

This short story turns the world upside down. The one who seemed blessed ends up in torment; the one who seemed cursed is lifted into glory. And that makes me wonder what conversations Jesus had with his mother as he was growing up, since this reversal directly echoes Mary’s song from earlier in Luke’s Gospel, the Magnificat: “He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.”

Martin Luther King put it this way: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Jesus’ parable embodies that arc. The injustice of this world is not the final word. God’s justice will prevail. The question to us is: will we now live in alignment with that justice, or will we resist it? Because the moral universe doesn’t arc on its own. We have to actively engage to pull it towards justice. It’s up to us.

Injustice

In the story, the gap between the rich man and Lazarus becomes permanent after death. But Jesus tells the story so that in life we may act differently. The chasm we create by neglect can still be bridged—by compassion, generosity and justice. Dr King famously said: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

There is no chasm, no gap, too wide for love to cross in this life. But if we wait too long, if we silence the seers, if we shut our ears to Moses and the prophets, as the rich man’s brothers had done, then the opportunity slips away.

The rich man begs Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his brothers. Abraham replies: “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.” In other words, the warning has already been given. The law and the prophets have already told us to love our neighbour and love the stranger, to care for the poor, to seek justice.

Transformation

Martin Luther King was one of those prophets in our own time. His words still ring with urgency about another of Jesus’ parables, which is relevant to ours today: “We are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed, so that men and women will not be beaten and robbed as they make their journey through life.”

King understood that helping Lazarus means not only charity but transformation—changing the very structures that left him lying outside the gate in the first place.

Known by name

But I want to draw your attention to the fact that Jesus gave the poor man a name. This is the only parable in any of the gospels in which a character is given a name. We might speculate why Jesus did that.

Firstly, the rich man knows Lazarus by name. Which means the rich man cannot plead ignorance. The man at his gate is known to him.

Secondly, the name Lazarus translates as “God helps”- but the only way that God will help our Lazarus is if those who claim to follow the law of Moses do their bit and look after him as they should have done.

But thirdly, by using his name, the storyteller draws us to the man too. We too are forced to notice him.

Response

So, how do we respond? First, we must see Lazarus. The first conversion is of the eyes. To look up from our comfort and notice the one at the gate. The author and poet, Jan Richardson, wrote ‘that perhaps the greatest gift we can give, is to see each other.’

Second, we must listen to the prophets. We can’t say we’ve not been warned. The Gospel, the prophets in the Bible, and the witness of people like Dr King have already spoken.

Third, we must act—with generosity in our personal lives, with advocacy in our public lives, with love in every encounter.

As Dr King said: “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: ‘What are you doing for others?’” Mother Theresa phrased it differently but to the same end: “The highest form of worship is to find the least among you and treat them like Jesus.”

At the heart of the Gospel is the one who crossed the ultimate chasm. Jesus Christ entered our poverty, our suffering, our death, so that we might share in his riches, his life, his resurrection.

The rich man didn’t even think of going to his gate to meet with Lazarus whilst they were alive. But Christ crosses every boundary to meet with us. That is our hope, and that is also our calling.

What will define us?

So, let’s not leave Lazarus lying outside our gates. Let’s bridge the chasms of our time—of wealth, race, indifference, division—with the love of Christ. For in the end, it will not be our comfort that defines us, but our compassion. It will not be our banquets that endure, but our willingness to engage with those at our gates.

As Martin Luther King declared on the night before he was assassinated, perhaps with some premonition of what was to come: “I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.”

Justice will come. The chasm will be crossed. The gap will be minded.

The question left with us is will we walk with Christ across that chasm now, today, to help the Lazarus at our gate, before it’s too late? Amen.

‘Mind the Gap’ was delivered by Ian Banks at Christ Church Walmersley on Sunday 28th September 2025. It was based on Luke 16:19–31

References:

• Levine, A-J. (2015). Short Stories by Jesus. Harper Collins.
• https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/18870-the-ultimate-tragedy-is-not-the-oppression-and-cruelty-by
• https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/23924.Martin_Luther_King_Jr_
• Richardson, J. (2020). Sparrow. Wanton Gospeller Press.
• https://shontelbrown.house.gov/media/in-the-news/arc-moral-universe-will-bend-toward-justice-only-if-we-pull-it
• https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/ive-been-mountaintop