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Why did Jesus give that poor beggar the name Lazarus, inquiring minds want to know. This is just a parable by which Jesus was addressing the Pharisees about how their love of money and consequent neglect of the poor was disqualifying them from being true descendants of Abraham and they needed to repent. Jesus could have just stuck with saying there was a poor man who daily sat begging outside a rich man’s door, but instead Jesus named him Lazarus and on top of that he doesn’t name the rich man. Why? Obviously, there must be something about that name, Lazarus, that informs the parable? Bear with me a minute and I’ll tell you what I think.
Right off the bat some would say it was the Lazarus that Jesus raised from the dead in John’s Gospel. Afterall, Jesus mentions someone being raised from the dead there in the last verse. I don’t think that’s it, because neither Luke, nor Matthew nor Mark seem to know of that event for some strange reason. It is more likely Jesus was referring to his own resurrection which the Pharisees, who were responsible for his crucifixion, dismissed as a hoax.
The name Lazarus as it appears in our Bibles is a Latinized version of the Greek name Lazaros which is a Greekized version of the Hebrew name Eleazer which means “God has helped”. In the Old Testament, the most famous Eleazer was the son of Moses’ brother Aaron who became High Priest after Aaron died. Yes, a good many to most of the leaders of the Pharisees would have been from priestly families, albeit wealthy priestly families. But I don’t think this Eleazar is the Eleazar Jesus was calling to mind. There’s another more recent in memory to Jesus’ day that’s worth a long hard squint, but first there’s some armchair history you’ll need to know.
In Judea during the mid-100’s B.C., the Greeks had been ruling in Judea for about 150 years. The leader of the Greeks at that time was Antiochus Epiphanes who was a twisted, sick individual. He sacrificed a pig in the Temple as well as put a statue of Zeus on the altar. He burned Torah scrolls and banned circumcision and all forms of observance of the Law of Moses. His favourite pastime was publicly forcing Law-observant Jews to eat pork or be tortured to death.
During his tenure, there arose a loosely configured resistance movement of faithful Jews known as the Hasideans. It’s not really fair to say they were a resistance movement though. Their devotion to keeping the Law of Moses was due to their unwavering faithfulness to God. It was not simply a way of resisting Greek rule. Antiochus, for some reason, hated their devotion to God.
From among the Hasideans there arose the brothers Maccabeus who in 167 B.C. started a three-year-long revolt that drove the Greeks out of Judea resulting in a period of Jewish independence that lasted roughly forty years. The festival of Hanukkah arose out of that revolt. Oddly, the majority of Jews at the time opted to just keep their heads down and their faith private and took up the Hellenistic or Greek way of life. Thus, the Hasideans were tortured for their faithfulness while the Hellenists lived comfortably. Just so you know, a pretty convincing argument can be made that the Pharisees of Jesus’ day traced their origins back to the Hasideans.
The Hasideans had some key teachers, some very devoted men. One of them was an elderly scribe named Eleazer. He was probably in his 80’s at the time of the revolt. There is a very well-known account of the day Eleazer and Antiochus Epiphanes met up (see 4 Maccabees 6). Antiochus actually quite respected Eleazer for his intellect, his ability to speak eloquently, and his rationality. He just didn’t understand why a rational person would keep such strict adherence to such a strict Law out of devotion to a god, especially a non-Greek god. After a bit of debate, Antiochus decided to get on with testing the old man’s faith by threatening to have him tortured to death if he didn’t eat a piece of pork. They debated some more and then with a bit of reluctance; Antiochus had the guards take him away to be flogged with a scourge. That’s a whip made with many straps that is effective at ripping the flesh open. They stripped him naked to humiliate him, tied his hands, and commenced scourging him. He stood there bravely and took it for longer than expected. Eventually he fell and then one of the guards started kicking him in the side trying to make him stand up but he couldn’t due to his age.
The guards soon started to feel ashamed of what they were doing to this old man and pleaded with him to just eat a piece of meat and say it was pork so that they could stop the atrocity. Eleazer’s answer was basically, why should he let his long life of faithfulness end in such an act of cowardice. What sort of an example would that set for the young. It would be shameful to do such a thing just to gain a few more days which he would spend being mocked, particularly by the tyrant Antiochus. He finished saying, “O children of Abraham, die nobly for your faith! And you, guards of the tyrant, why do you delay?”, i.e., “Are you ashamed of what you are doing?”
The guards then got on with it. They took whatever metal things they could find and made them red hot and burned him to the bone with them all over. Then they poured stinking liquids into his nostrils (sewage probably). While they did this he looked towards heaven and said to God, “You know, O God, that though I might have saved myself, I am dying in burning torments for the sake of the Law. Be merciful to your people, and let our punishment (there were seven brothers and their mother being martyred too), let our punishment suffice for them. Make my blood their purification, and take my life in exchange for theirs.” Then he died. (Some serious theology there.)
If you remember, Eleazer means “God has helped”. That may not seem to have been the case for Eleazer but not long after his death the brothers Maccabeus defeated the Greeks and drove them from the land. For forty years the Jews enjoyed independence. That was the last time until 1948 that they enjoyed that.
Eleazer (Lazarus) suffered for his faith in God and his faithfulness to the Law. The Pharisees, his theological descendants, were on the other hand getting rich off of keeping the Law, one could even say they were being tyrants about it and that they were persecuting fellow Jews with it. Actually, they were more like the Hellenist Jews in Eleazer’s day than the Hasideans from whom they originated. I think Jesus used the name Lazarus (Eleazer) in this parable to truly convict the money-loving Pharisees of their hypocrisy. Eleazer died for his faithfulness by being undeservedly tortured with flaming things.
The rich man in the parable was also being tortured with flaming things, flames. He was himself a Jew and should have gone to “Abraham’s bosom” where faithful Jew’s went to await resurrection. But instead, he was in Hades, the afterlife that the Greeks believed in, where he was being tortured with flaming things because he deserved it. He was a self-absorbed money-lover who neglected the poor right outside his door. Even in death he thought that poor beggar Lazarus ought to be waiting on him. So, it was with the Pharisees. They missed what was at the true heart of the Law – the mercy that that rich man never showed to poor Lazarus and instead were using to Law really just to make people serve them and their hunger for power.
Let me try to lighten the mood. I knew an elderly man up until a couple of years ago when he died. He had been a banker by career. We all make assumptions that bankers are wealthy, but with this man you would never know if he was or wasn’t. He and his wife kept things pretty simple. He was a devoted Christian, husband, and family man. Everywhere they lived they always found and attended a church. When I first met him, he was treasurer of his church. When I came on board, within just a couple of weeks he had me over to his house under the auspices of catching me up on the financial situation of the church. The real reason was that he wanted to strike up a relationship, a friendship with me. He thought a minister ought to know his people and their struggles and pray for them. He wanted me to know that his wife had periods of not being well and he was afraid of losing her. Whenever she got sick and went to the hospital, he would call me so that I could pray.
He was a faithful man, but I do have to admit (as he would) that after having to live separated from his wife through Covid after a bazillion years of marriage, her death, his own health issues, and great untreatable pain there in his last two years, he was tempted to eat the pork so to speak. He was also anxious that I was going to take a call somewhere else, so I had to routinely assure him that I would not take a call away from here before he died, that I would be here to bury him. Number three on my list of reasons for not taking a call elsewhere is that there are so many of you just like him who have been faithful all your lives and deserve to be buried by someone who knows you. He was a faithful, humble, generous man.
On a number of occasions his last couple of years, he had me over to talk about his funeral because he believed death was imminent or at least he hoped it was. When it came to what if any particular Scripture he wanted read, he was adamant about one verse in particular, Micah 6:8: “He has told you, O Mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” This man was Mac Elliot. He passed away two years and nearly two months ago. Whenever I come across the story of Eleazer (which is more often than you would think), he is one who comes to mind. Mac knew what was at the heart of what God expects from humanity. He was faithful all his life but had his faith tested there at the end, but still he endured…a just, kind, humble man before God.
Many small churches such as our four today are like Eleazer (Lazarus) keeping the faith and keeping the doors open and the lights on though it seems pointless. On top of it all, the churches that are growing seem mired in the false beliefs Christian Nationalism, hating the immigrant, making the poor help themselves, (“The good Lord helps those who help themselves” is found nowhere in the Bible.) patriarchalism if not outright misogyny…and at the root of it really does seem to be the love of money. But you folks, stay faithful, beloved of God. Continue to listen to Jesus, the one who was raised from the dead. The love, the friendship, you have here is an embodiment of him. Keep the faith. Amen.
