Galatians 1.11 – 19

Luke 16.19 – 31

There was a certain rich man, it says, who dressed every day in purple and fine linen and feasted sumptuously. ‘A certain man’ is equivalent to our English ‘Everyman.’ He is each one of us and all of us at the same time.

And there was a poor man whose name was Lazarus. My English translation says, there was a certain poor man; but the Greek simply says: there was a poor man whose name was Lazarus. This small detail may reflect the early Christian reading of this parable: Lazarus is the one Man, Jesus Christ, the Son of God incarnate. And, it says, he was laid at the gates of the rich man.

Reading this in the Semitic mind of the Bible, one recognizes the gates of the rich man immediately as the gates of his heart. The heart, in biblical understanding, is infinitely more than a physical organ or a pump. It is the natural center of the person. ‘The heart,’ says Jeremiah in the LXX, ‘is deep, beyond all things, and it is the man’ (Jer 17.9). Our heart, our true ‘self,’ is beyond all thoughts, all feelings, moods, emotions, concepts, sentiments, beyond ‘consciousness,’ beyond comprehension or understanding. In short, our true self is beyond all things because, having been created in the image and likeness of God, its source is in God. In the Bible, the heart has eyes, ears, stomach, even knees. In St Paul, the heart is the center of the will and emotions. The heart, then, in biblical understanding, is both physical and spiritual. It is both the physical and spiritual center of the person.

Did you know that the heart is the first organ that is formed in us? It is formed within 16 days in the womb. By the 22^nd day in the womb, when we are no bigger than the tip of our finger, our heart already is beating. Heart cells do not regenerate. At the age of 110, for example, we will have the same heart we had in our mother’s womb. Moreover, each cardiac cell is beating its own rhythm, but they are coordinated to beat together in one rhythm. Physiologically, then, the heart is the seed out of which the whole person grows and develops. The brain, on the other hand, is not fully formed until much, much later, if it is ever fully formed. The heart is the first organ to be formed; it is the last organ to die. The brain, on the other hand, is one of the last organs to be formed and the first to die.

In biblical understanding, the mind is the outgrowth and outward manifestation of the heart. All the activities of the heart, wrote St Nicodemus, compiler of the Philokalia in the 18^th cent., proceed from the heart. The heart, not the mind, is the root of the person; not only is the heart our physical or natural center. It is also the spiritual and the supranatural center of our whole being. The source of our mind’s thoughts, disposition, and orientation is the heart – not in its physicality but in its spiritual depths.

The notion that we are identified with the mind comes from the so-called Enlightenment in the 18^th century. The enlightenment is the seed of today’s ‘wokism’. The seed as well as the bloom hate the Christian religion. They deny the existence of God to make man the measure of all things. They replace theology with their own humanistic philosophies and sciences and political and social agendas. It is no coincidence that the philosophy of nihilism and the suicidal despair it engenders on both its prophets (Nietzsche, e.g.) and its adherents, followed directly on the heels of ‘enlightened’ thought and social agendas.

Obviously, if one rejects God and denies that man’s source is spiritual, then to put our personal center in a physical heart makes no sense. As a consequence, European man has come to identify himself with his physical brain. His ‘spirituality’ goes no deeper than his thoughts, his ‘consciousness’, or a romantic sentimentality, driven not by a spirit but by chemicals and electrical impulses. The spiritual consequence of identifying ourselves with our mind and its activities has been a devastating spiritual fragmentation. In terms of this morning’s parable, a chasm has opened between our mind and our heart, between our outer man and the personal center of our inner man; and it is unbridgeable so long as we are like the rich man imprisoned in our mind on this side the gates of our heart, the side of this world that is passing away, feasting sumptuously on the ‘lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life,’ images of erotic and sexual perversions that the world is making ever more easily accessible to our aching ‘heart’ looking for an escape from her inner agony, seeking to keep depression and suicidal despair from overwhelming her in the many schools of psychology and psychoanalysis, the narcotics, the drugs, the pharmaceuticals, the hypnotherapies, the alternative life-styles and religions – until we attain the final escape of death. And where do we find ourselves then? Our parable this morning tells us: we find ourselves in Hades.

The word means, unseen. We find ourselves in the unseen, spiritual depths of our heart where we are far beyond all things. We find ourselves in agony, it says, for we find ourselves in the emptiness of this world that we sought to escape in the lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. All these are of the world that is passing away, says St John. That is, there is no life in them. We therefore find ourselves in the unseen depths of our heart where we are dead in our sins and trespasses; we find ourselves in the spiritual darkness of the world’s so-called ‘enlightenment’ whose idols we gave ourselves to.

Look closely, now, at the parable. It says: there was a poor man, Lazarus by name who was laid at the gates of the rich man. Lazarus, of course, is the name of Mary and Martha’s brother who died and who was laid in a tomb. And, to say in the parable that Lazarus was laid at the gates of the rich man evokes the image of the LORD being placed as a corpse in His Tomb which, drawing again from ancient Christian understanding, is the physical image of the tomb of our own heart where we are dead in our sins and trespasses (St Macarius Hom 11.11). And, the LORD, longed, it says, to be fed the scraps falling from the rich man’s table. This takes us to Rev 3.20: Behold, I stand at the door [of your heart, your personal center], and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will dine with him, and he with me.

As I pointed out, the rich man’s agony in Hades does not begin in his death. It begins in this life when he chooses not to draw near the LORD at the gates of his heart. When we, the rich man, choose to follow the mind of the world, we are drawn away from the spiritual depths of our heart. We are ensnared by the conceit and reasonings of our own wisdom. We may proclaim that there is no God because all we see will be ourselves. Or, if we do see a god, it will be but the image of our own ego. Either way, we remain in delusion until our death. And then we find ourselves in the godless emptiness that we were in all along in this life.

But do you understand that in coming to Church this morning, you have drawn near the gates of your heart on the physical plane? And, on the spiritual plane beneath the veil of the physical, Christ is in our midst, as we say: Lazarus, Our LORD Jesus Christ, is before us, unseen but every bit as real, in fact more real, than our own unseen ‘self.’ And He longs to come in and dine with us, to abide in us, and to carry us with Him into Abraham’s bosom and into His Holy Resurrection that is the ‘heart’ of the Biblical proclamation. By His will, He has closed the chasm between us, descending into His Tomb at the gates of our heart. He longs for us to close the chasm on our side. Our purpose in this life, says St Isaac of Nineveh, is to repent, to orient all of our thoughts, words, deeds, thoughts, and desires to the Christ who is in us. This is the movement of faith. We have acted out that faith physically this morning in coming to Church. What remains is for us to draw near the LORD in our inner man with faith and love, in the fear of God. We do this not by arguing or talking about God, but by striving to keep the LORD’s commandments; that is, not by being hearers or arguers of the WORD, but by being doers of the WORD, by striving to keep His holy commandments. For if we abide in the LORD’s commandments, the LORD tells us, we will find ourselves in the love of His Father (Jn 15.10). The gates of our heart will open, and He will come in to dine with us and we with Him in His Holy Resurrection in the bosom of Abraham. Amen!