• Amos 6:1a, 4-7
• Psalm 146:7-10
• 1 Timothy 6:11-16
• Luke 16:19-31

We shall not get our Christianity right unless we recognise that there is a profound contrast between the way we look at things and the way God sees them. To us, if we are unreflective, it can seem all too obvious that what we most need is a comfortable existence, and a few simple pleasures. God, it seems from next Sunday’s readings, does not quite see it that way. The first reading has Amos in a mood for some uncomfortably sharp political satire, well suited to a consumerist society such as our own. “Woe to those who are at ease in Sion”, he bellows. Then he describes their “ease”: “those who lie on couches of ivory”, which sounds like materialist extravagance to rival anything in our culture. They have a diet of lamb and veal, and even idle their time away with playing the guitar! They “improvise to the sound of the harp”, he says, darkly. And that is not all, for “they drink wine by the basinful, and with first-rate oils they anoint themselves”. And all this means they don’t care for the things that really matter: “They do not grieve over the fall of Joseph”. The result is chilling: ‘they shall be first-rate in exile, and they shall leave their wines of revelry”.

The psalm for next Sunday, as always, turns the hearers’ attention to God. And what kind of a God is this? No ivory couches nor vats of alcohol here. This is a God “who does justice for the oppressed, gives bread to the hungry, YHWH who sets prisoners free, YHWH who opens the eyes of the blind”. This is a God of the marginalised, who “looks after strangers, restores the widow and orphans”. So it is not the celebrities and the wealthy that rule the roost: “YHWH shall reign for ever, your God, O Sion, from age to age”.

This fits quite nicely with what Paul suggests in the second reading. “Flee these things”, he says, meaning the love of wealth. Instead we are to pursue the things that matter: “justice, piety, faith, love, endurance, gentleness”. What matters is not the luxury of our homes but to “fight the good fight of the faith” and to put at the centre of our lives “the blessed and sole Ruler, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, who alone has immortality”.

This leads admirably into the gospel for next Sunday, which contains some rather alarming teaching. We start with a rich man, and in Luke’s gospel that means trouble. Worse that that, “he used to put on purple and linen, partying conspicuously every day”. We are already uneasily aware that he is going to come to no good end. Then it gets worse, because there is a poor man outside his house; and we know that this character is going to be on the right side, even if we had not observed that he has a name (“Lazarus”,  which means, significantly enough, “God has given help”), whereas the rich man is anonymous. Worse still, he is “flung at the door, riddled with sores”; and he is “longing to be sated from what fell from the rich man’s table – but instead the dogs came and licked his sores”. We repress a shudder and move on. Both of them die, and the poor man is carried “by angels into the bosom of Abraham”. The rich man, on the other hand, is buried (he has the money for that) and finds himself in Hades, and in agony. He has not lost the habit of command, however, for he starts giving orders to Abraham, and, indirectly, to Lazarus, about quenching his thirst. So Abraham has to teach him the facts of life: “You got your goodies in your lifetime; and likewise Lazarus got bad things. Now he is being comforted here; and you’re in agony”. When the rich man realises the impossibility of what he is looking for, he has the grace to worry about his family, but it turns out that not even this stratagem is feasible: “They have Moses and the prophets” – and if they won’t listen to them, “not even if someone rises from the dead will they be persuaded”. God (who is not actually mentioned in this story, you notice) does not see things in quite our way.