The Rev. Brandon C. Ashcraft
Trinity Church in the City of Boston
Luke 16:19-31
16 Pentecost / Proper 21C (September 28, 2025)
Extinguishing Hellfire with Grace
The encounter took place in 1990, in Tupelo, Mississippi, on a middle school playground. Few events in my life have inspired as much theological reflection as this one. More than three decades later, the question my classmate asked me still rings in my ears: “Have you been saved?” I had no idea how to answer her. Had I been saved? Saved by whom? From what? For what? My failure to supply an affirmative answer quickly steered the conversation toward talk of condemnation and hellfire. What I’m describing is my first brush with “fire-and-brimstone” theology — the first of many for this son of the Bible Belt. And my aversion to this brand of evangelism is as strong today as it was then. My 12-year-old mind couldn’t make sense of a God who leads us to faith by fear. All these years later, I still can’t.
As much as I’m inclined to avoid any talk of eternal damnation, Jesus doesn’t let me off the hook so easily today. The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, found only in Luke’s gospel,
confronts us with one of Luke’s favorite themes: a reversal of fortunes. The writer of Luke’s Gospel
first sounds this note at the beginning of his story, in the song of Mary’s Magnificat, where our Lord’s mother sings of a God who “fills the hungry with good things” and “sends the rich away empty.”11 Luke 1:53.
The picture Luke paints in today’s parable leaves little to the imagination. The Rich Man, clothed in purple and fine linen, feasts sumptuously every day behind his protective gate. Lazarus, meanwhile, covered in open sores, is laid at the very same gate, longing to be fed by what falls from the Rich Man’s table. In the afterlife everything changes — while the barrier between the two men hardens. Unlike Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, the Rich Man receives no midnight
visitation urging him to change course before it’s too late. By the time he realizes that his choices have consequences, “a great chasm has been fixed.” Misery is now the Rich Man’s lot, as he trades his comforts for torment. Lazarus, meanwhile, is carried to the place of honor at Abraham’s side, to an abode of intimate belonging to feast at the kingdom’s banquet.
There’s no denying it; the Rich Man’s negligence of Lazarus is appalling. And yet, I cannot reconcile his consignment to an eternal den of fire. I therefore find comfort in considering this helpful historical context: there was no settled doctrine of hell at the time Luke’s Gospel was written.2The Christian “doctrine of hell” crystallizes only gradually in the early centuries. Bernstein’s classic history traces a long, contested formation rather than a settled first-century teaching. There was, instead, a rich history of diverse images and ideas about the afterlife. In Israel’s earliest imagination, “Sheol”3Psalm 16:10, Psalm 139:8, 1 Samuel 2:6, Hosea 13:14, Ecclesiastes 9:10. was the name given to a shadowy realm that was the destination of all the dead, righteous and unrighteous, sinners and saints alike.4See Gen 37:35; Num 16:33; Job 3:17–19; Eccl 9:2,10; Job 10:21–22; and Philip S. Johnston, Shades of Sheol (2002); AYBD, s.v. ‘Sheol’; N. T. Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God (2003).” By Jesus’ day, many within Judaism pictured two distinct destinies— one of comfort, “Abraham’s side,” and one of torment, “Hades,” but not all agreed.5In addition to the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31), Second Temple Jewish precedent for “compartments” of Sheol are found in 1 Enoch 22, which describes multiple hollow places for the righteous and the wicked, kept apart until judgment. Elsewhere in the New Testament, when Jesus describes a final place of judgment, he uses the word “Gehenna,” which was a valley outside Jerusalem.6Gehenna (Greek: γέεννα, geenna), is translated “hell” in many English translations of the Bible: Matthew 5:22; 5:29; 5:30; 10:28; 18:9; 23:15; 23:33; Mark 9:43; 9:45; 9:47; Luke 12:5. The scriptures, therefore, give us multiple images, all of which serve to convey a sense of urgency, rather than providing us with a road map of the afterlife. So the point of the parable’s hell-talk, I suggest, is not to inspire fear, but to convey urgency.
The parable pleads with us to place the Word of God at the center of our lives. For if the Rich Man had taken the words of “Moses and the Prophets” to heart, which is to say if he had lived by the scriptures, he would have cared for the poor in his midst. Had the Rich Man anchored his life in the scriptures’ teachings, he would have known to look up from his banquet table, to see the neighbor lying at his gate and to share generously of his bounty. The severity of the Rich Man’s fate could instill a certain fear in us about sharing his destiny. A fear that could motivate us. And perhaps that would be a good thing. But for all that fear can motivate us to do, there is something that fear cannot do. Fear cannot form love. Only grace can do that. But the thing about grace is that we can’t earn it. Not even through acts of kindness or charity. Grace is not a wage that is meted out for good behavior. Grace is a gift, wholly indifferent to questions of merit. A gift wholly undeserved. We simply cannot earn it. So where is the grace in this parable?
Today’s parable is located in the 16th chapter of Luke’s Gospel, which means that as Jesus tells it, he’s well along the road to Jerusalem. And on this journey, Jesus tells parables to interpret his mission. The “fixed chasm” described in today’s parable, then, sheds light on the meaning of the cross. Jesus’ pilgrimage to Calvary is indeed God’s response to a chasm: the chasm created by Sin. The chasm caused by that malevolent force which “[distorts] our relationship with God, with other people, and with all creation.7The Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer (New York: Church Publishing, 1979), 848, “An Outline of the Faith (‘Catechism’), ‘Sin and Our Redemption.’”” Jesus is on a mission to bridge that divide once and for all. To conquer the sin that alienated humankind from its Creator. To overcome the architect of the gate that alienated the Rich Man from Lazarus. To overcome the sin that still works to construct gates that alienate us from the neighbors we’d rather not see. The sin that still instills the apathy and indifference, the vitriol and vindictiveness, that widen the fissures that keep the human family apart.
But as we hear the parable this morning, Jesus’ journey is complete. Even as we await its final consummation, the victory has been won8My thinking on the cross as “victory” influenced by two idea: the use of τετέλεσται in John 19:30 (“It is finished,” from τελέω, “to complete/fulfill/accomplish”), see Walter Bauer et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed., s.v. “τελέω”; D. A. Carson, The Gospel according to John, on John 19:nd 30; and the work of Fleming Rutledge, namely, her magnum opus, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015).. Jesus has forever closed the chasm between Creator and creation and empowers us by his grace to continue his ministry of healing and reconciliation. My friends, on this side of Calvary, at this end of Jesus’ journey, it’s never too late to start over, to repent, or to turn around. Grace is always on offer. Amazing, abundant grace that overflows today in this sacred space, in the Word of God proclaimed, and in the holy food and drink served from this Table. The grace by which we can say, with full and wholehearted conviction that yes, indeed, we have been saved. Amen.