Sermon 28 September 2025

Saint Margaret’s

Anglican Church

Budapest, Hungary

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15; Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16;

1 Timothy 6:6-19; Luke 16:19-31

There was a rich man…

Comprehension of the Beatitudes of our

Lord has been called the foundation of a

good Christian life and understanding of the world and of the Gospel itself. Found

most famously in the Gospel of Matthew as part of our Lord’s first and arguably

greatest discourse, the Sermon on the Mount, they are instantly recognisable, for

each of the Beatitudes begins with the word blessed, which in the original Greek

could as well be translated as happy. Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the meek.

Blessed are the merciful. And so on. If you want to be happy, in other words, live

the beatitudes.

And while Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes gets the spotlight and all the

attention, the Gospel of Luke also has a version of the Beatitudes set forth in

Chapter Six, as our Lord descends a mountain after a night of prayer and addresses

his disciples at a level place, as the text tells us, with a multitude of ordinary

people gathered around, presumably listening in. Matthew’s majestic nine

Beatitudes are replaced by Luke’s four direct and spare beatitudes followed

alarmingly closely by four no-nonsense woes.

Whether Luke’s short and to-the-point version of Jesus’s words of beatitude came

first and were later elaborated upon by Matthew, or whether Luke summarised and

condensed Matthew’s original version, we shall have to leave to the seminary

professors to sort. Blessed are you who are poor, hungry, and weeping, says Jesus

in Luke’s version of the Beatitudes. And woe to you who are rich, well-fed, and

laughing. Period.

Now, the Parable Jesus tells us today, the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, is, I

think, a picture-perfect, or parable-perfect, illustration of our Lord’s words of

beatitude and woe. Blessed are you who are poor, hungry, and weeping. Woe to

you who are rich, well-fed, and laughing. The narrative is unique to Luke, by the

way, and found nowhere else. And the story is told not on Matthew’s Mount, but on

Luke’s plain or meadow; not on Rózsadomb, but in Józsefváros. Right here in the

Eighth District, come to think of it. Spoken among the masses of people we will all

bump into on our way home from church this morning.Now, keep in mind that our Lord and his disciples, as we catch up with them today,

are on a long and presumably arduous journey from Galilee, where Jesus spoke the

Beatitudes in the first place, to Jerusalem and death at the Cross. So, it should

probably come as no great surprise that our Lord’s Parable is also a story of journey

and death, a story of the crossing over we shall all make, from this life to the next,

from the world we know to the world which knows us.

A poor and hungry beggar named Lazarus, not to be confused with the Lazarus our

Lord raises s from the dead in the Gospel of John, a beggar no doubt miserable in

his poverty, dies and is carried to bliss and beatitude at Abraham’s side.

Meanwhile, a nameless rich man, well-fed, jovial enough, and satisfied with his

vast financial empire, dies and finds himself, low and behold, tormented in Hades,

the ancient Greek term for what we today might call hell, though not exactly the

same.

The Rich Man calls out to Abrahem for mercy and relief, but alas there is none to be

had. He asks that Lazarus in turn be sent back on yet another journey, it seems,

specifically to his brothers, to warn them of the woe to come, the woe he is living.

But this, it turns out, is a voyage too far, one which cannot be made. No flights

apparently between Hades and ancient Israel. Not for any price. You cannot go

home again.

This dramatic reversal of fortune, which is in itself at the heart of this Parable, tells

us something of the Kingdom. It is an illustration, if we ever needed one, of God’s

upside-down marketplace of salvation, a place where things are not always as they

seem; a world in which justice prevails, even when it seemingly does not. It is a

cautionary tale but yet also a parable of hope, just as the Gospel story of our Lord’s

journey to Jerusalem and the Cross is itself a tale of redemption and rising from the

dead, of resurrection.

Stewardship is the main work of the Church. So ran a slogan popular in the US

Episcopal Church decades ago. Maybe still today. And while I am always skeptical

of turning the Gospel into bumper or car stickers and decals, I must admit I have

always liked this one. Stewardship is the main work of the Church. Stewardship, or

the lack of it, is the main point of our Lord’s Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man.

Not that the Rich Man should divest himself of his great wealth, although it could

be argued perhaps that he should; but that he should care and does not; that he

should care not just for the bliss and beatitude of himself and his brothers; but that

he should come to know that the Beggar Lazarus is his brother, too. Despite Cain’s

cynicism, all of us are indeed our brothers’ keepers.

No wonder then that this poor Lazarus, this nobody, this beggar at Kálvin tér or

Corvin negyed, is the only character in all of Jesus’s stories or parables to be

dignified with a name. He is somebody, our Lord is telling us. He is your brother

and mine. He is named Lazarus, a name which means, God helps, which indeed

God does. And which implies that, if God helps, so must we. If God cares, so must

we. That is the challenge of the Beatitudes, whether found in Matthew or Luke. Itis the challenge of this simple yet multifaceted parable. And stewardship, my

Friends, is in fact the main work of the Church, of the Kingdom. The main work of

you and me.

Amen.

The Revd Canon Dr Frank Hegedűs