Worship on Orange Shirt Sunday
10:00 am September 28, 2025
Minister: Rev. Brad Childs Music Director: Binu Kapadia
Vocalist: Linda Farrah-Basford Welcoming Elder: Darlene Eerkes
Children’s time: Vivian Houg Reader: Helen Ross
We gather to worship God
Music prelude
Greeting
L: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you
P: and also with you
Lighting of the Christ candle
Welcome and announcements
Preparation for worship
Call to worship:
L: Here God gathers us, calling us to remember and to act with truth.
P: We remember the children who were taken, and we hold survivors in our prayers.
L: Here Jesus stands among us, calling us to acts of mercy and repair.
P: May we listen, learn, and respond with humble hearts.
L: Even now, the Holy Spirit moves in our midst, giving courage to confess and strength to reconcile.
P: Fill us with hope and inspire us to faithful and just action.
L: Let us worship the God who calls us to healing and to love.
P: Let us praise God and commit to the way of reconciliation.
Opening praise: I surrender all
Prayers of approach and confession
Creating God, beauty and harmony mark your creation.
As the seasons change, we see you are still at work in the world, transforming hearts and situations.
We praise you for all you do to repair injustice, to bring peace to places of war, working for goodness to prevail in all nations.
You offer us new possibilities day by day, and so we place our trust in your redeeming power.
Renew our energy for the mission this autumn nd open our eyes to new opportunities to reach out in Jesus’ name.
Through the power of the Spirit, make us participants in your work, bringing justice and joy into the world you love. Amen.
Compassionate God, you open your heart to those in need, and to your aching creation.
We confess we often turn away so that we do not have to see pain, suffering, or injustice, right before our eyes.
We don’t like to feel uncomfortable or pressed into service.
Forgive us, and give us courage to love others as you love us and reach out with the care we have witnessed in Jesus. Amen.
Response: Glory, glory hallelujah
Assurance of God’s pardon
The prophet Micah declared that God requires of us three things: to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God. To all who repent, who act for justice and seek to serve God and neighbour in kindness, God offers forgiveness and peace. The peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
Musical Offering: Dayspring Singers
We listen for the voice of God
Response: Jesus we are gathered (514)
Children’s time
The Lord’s Prayer (535)
Song: There’s a spirit in the air (764: vss 1,2,3,5
Scripture readings: 1 Timothy 6:6-19 and Luke 16:19-31
Response: Behold the lamb of God
Message: “Godliness with contentment”
The biggest question about the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, for people who study the New Testament, is: Is this story a description of an event Jesus is relaying (meaning we have a literal description of eternal punishment), or is this a parable – a story told to convey a particular lesson?
To be clear, this is a pretty weird story that Jesus told. Is Jesus talking about an event, or is he creating a lesson?
The style of story he is using is not wholly unique. There are Egyptian (Setme) and Hebrew stories (Bar Ma’jan) that are pretty similar to this one. These are stories about reversed fortunes in the afterlife. They were a fairly well-known archetype and exist all over the world. Not surprisingly, however, I believe this one is unique and has many layers to it (if it’s just a parable that is). Maybe it’s not.
The story comes to us from Luke, who was a physician and a kind of early feminist. His accounts of Jesus are packed with calls to care for the ill, women, foreigners and the poor.
If Jesus is relaying an event to us, then this is a story we have to see as a literal depiction of Hell. And while the story certainly does speak to an eternal destiny, this story begins the same way that most of Jesus’ parables do – with a nameless character introduced by the phrase “de tis en” (δέ τις ἦν) / “There was a certain [rich] man” which was sort of like saying “once upon a time”.
It sounds like a parable. If this is a parable, as many might argue, that introduction makes perfect sense. At no other place in the entire bible does a character in a parable have a name. And there is the rub. The rich man is simply described as “wealthy.” He has no name – just like a parable.
But Lazarus has a name. It’s Lazarus. Characters in parables don’t have names – ever!
Again, if naming Lazarus means this isn’t a parable, then we know what Hell looks like. If it’s a parable, then it’s our only example out of about 50 parables where a name is given.
I know I’ve said this before, but all parables are intended to be strange. Farmers don’t indiscriminately throw seeds onto poor soil, mustard plants don’t grow into giant shade-providing trees, Samaritans are never good, wealthy Hebrews don’t run to give jerk kids new credit cards, and Kings don’t get stood up for parties and invite the homeless instead. Parables are always odd. But this one is stranger than the strangeness Jesus tends to add to his parables. Yet, still, please keep in mind that just like my name, “Brad,” means “broad meadow” – and can be traced to its root, Barak, which means “blessed”… names have meaning.
Well, Lazarus means God Helps. And so, you have to ask: Does this guy have a name, or does Jesus create a character name destined to be helped by God? That’s different. Still, and let’s make an assumption here: why does Jesus give his guy a name? But we shall return to that later.
BRIGHT COLOURED CLOTHES WERE NOT NORMAL. That’s a new thing. Creating dyes is a challenging, expensive, and rare process.
First, it’s worth noticing that the rich man is dressed in purple and fine linen. Now purple is the colour of royalty. It came from a rare and expensive Phoenician dye made from mollusks. Fine linen is actually a reference to an inner tunic and is probably best understood to be underwear. More to the point, it’s the same kind of underwear that we are told Moses and Aaron wear for priestly garb (which is one of my favourite things in the Hebrew bible. I love that it explains exactly what Moses and Aaron’s underpants look like, “purple with fancy pink embroidery”. Even with limited information available, it appears that this robe is worth around 50,000 Canadian dollars, though it could be more. The cheapest estimate I found suggested a minimum cost of what translated to $28,000 – at least.
In contrast, Lazarus is said to be lying (and so is likely not able-bodied) at the outer gates of what is assuredly a large estate home (“Pylona is used”). And much as one might expect, Dr. Luke makes sure to record the fact that this Lazarus is also “covered with sores,” meaning that he is in absolute degradation. He is longing for table scraps from the rich man’s table, and dogs are licking his sores. And while I have a couple of pets at my house, and maybe you do too, dogs were not pets at this time.
This rather nasty image is also quite frightening because dogs were not kept as pets. Instead, they were dangerous scavengers (1 Kings 14:11), and so what is happening here is that the dogs are tasting their soon-to-be meal and checking to see if he can fight them off (which apparently, if they are licking him, he can’t).
Next, we are told that Lazarus, called “the beggar,” died and that the “angels carried him to Abraham’s side.” Notice it doesn’t say he was buried. Probably he was not. Most likely, the implication here is that the dogs eventually devoured the body. The narrative, however, quickly switches to a description of a heavenly feast where the guest of honour, Abraham, reclines on a pillow, just as Jesus does at the Last Supper. Next, we are told that the rich man also died and was buried. And then the story makes an odd turn. It says the rich man is tormented in Hades. Not hell mind you, but Hades.
The ancient Hebrews had traditionally held a view of the afterlife that stated that under the earth was Sheol, the realm of the dead. The idea was that it was where everyone went after they died, and it was a pretty dull place where nothing particularly remarkable or awful happened. There was good and some bad, but nothing like heaven or hell, exactly. This is the understanding of the afterlife that the Pharisees had. The Sadducees, by the way, did not believe in any afterlife. However, we will return to that later.
In the New Testament, when Jesus speaks of Hell, he almost always uses the word Gehenna. He gives it a name, and he uses the name everyone else does. But the thing is. The word he uses is a real place. It was an ancient site of child sacrifice turned “burn pit” outside the city, where they later dumped sewage and waste and constantly set it ablaze to be rid of it. Saying “Gehenna” or “Hell” in the New Testament is like a Ukrainian mother telling her kids that if they do a bunch of stupid things, they’ll end up in Chernobyl in the afterlife.
Gehenna / Hell is a real place, on earth, right now. It’s known today as the valley of Hinnon, and there is a lovely little park there. But it wasn’t in Jesus’ time.
Still, if you want to, you can visit the actual Hell that Jesus spoke of. You need a plane ticket. But you can go, and it will be pretty nice.
At the time of Jesus, it was the perfect word for Jesus to use to describe a place that was the opposite of a Kingdom of life. But oddly, Jesus doesn’t use the Gehenna here. Instead, this Hebrew and travelling Rabbi strangely uses a decidedly Greek word and concept – that being Hades.
Hades is, in fact, much more akin to the concept of Sheol, where both good and evil reside. And it’s a lot closer to what older Jewish religious leaders might have considered the afterlife to be like. Hades was thought to be the dark counterpart to Mt. Olympus, located somewhere beneath the ground, but it was also a place where people were sent to be thrown into the fire. It’s like Jesus is dumping his typical illustration and understanding of heaven and hell and using an older one. Why?
The rich man is in torment, but not too bad a torment, obviously, because… he talks. Right away, he calls out to Abraham from far away. How the rich man recognizes a guy that’s been dead for two thousand or more years is beyond me, but he recognizes him. Clearly, both Lazarus and the rich man are Jewish. And so the rich man calls out to Abraham and asks Abraham to send Lazarus to give him a drop of water (which I can’t imagine would do much), although he claims to be “in agony.”
Interestingly, Abraham rejects him while at the same time accepting him. Abraham calls the rich man “son,” a term of endearment and recognition. He is, in the day’s popular jargon, a “son of Abraham.” It is not questioned whether the rich man is Jewish or not. He is. It’s a question of whether or not he is a good son of Abraham. “But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony.”
Next, Abraham throws out this crazy line saying, “Besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to here. Now I understand why someone would prefer to leave the side with the fire on it for the side with the dinner party, but I’m at a loss to understand why anyone would want to hang out on the side of the place that’s associated with torment. So this is another odd part of the story.
In any case, the rich man answers back, begging, “Father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them so that they will not also come to this place of torment.”
Once more, Abraham rejects this, saying that they have Bibles, but they are just ignoring them. “They have Moses and the Prophets,” he says.
And then with one last impassioned plea, the rich man says, “But if someone rises from the dead, they will repent,” and for one last time, Abraham replies, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”
Now for a bit of history. In Jesus’ day, there were four main Jewish denominations. There were the Essenes, who lived in the desert and sought to separate themselves from Rome, as well as from the temple, which was under Roman control. John the Baptist is almost certainly one of these. Think of them sort of like the Amish. Next, there were the Zealots. The Zealots wanted the violent overthrow of the Roman government, and they carried daggers with them wherever they went, just in case they got a chance to kill a Roman. The apostle Peter was one of these. Next, there were the Sadducees. Sadducees were the liberal elitists. They believed in moral teaching and rejected the oral traditions. They also hobnobbed with the Romans and were the liaison between Rome and the Hebrews. They looked after the temple and ran the courts and political positions. And fourth, there were the Pharisees. These were the religious conservatives, the ones who took care of the money for people with low incomes and the most respected group of their time. But above all these, there were the High Priests.
But remember, at the time of Jesus, the Jews had been conquered. The temple now sat on occupied land. And while Rome was alright with letting them do their thing to some extent, they also took over the official religion of the Jews.
Annus was the first Jewish High Priest after Rome’s takeover. And Annus was the first High Priest appointed by the Romans after the city of Jerusalem was occupied. Rome took over and installed Annus as a puppet High Priest who actually worked for Rome.
Now, Annus (the puppet priest) had one daughter who married a man named Caiaphas (who would later hand Jesus over to Pontius Pilate). After Annus was deposed, Caiaphas took over as Rome’s newly appointed High Priest, along with his five brothers (the sons of Annus), who divided up the daily responsibilities and political corruption geographically (into five tax areas). In their priestly work, Caiaphas and his five brothers wore a scarce set of clothes. They wore “purple and fine linen”. Oh yeah, and one more thing… If you would (I’ve been doing this a lot lately), please open your Bibles to John 12:9-11 (it’s page 991) for me. Now, this is, oddly enough, a story about another guy with the same name as our guy. This is a story about Jesus’ friend Lazarus, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Suppose you would read along with me. It’s John 12:9-11, page 991.
It reads, 9 Meanwhile, a large crowd of Jews found out that Jesus was there and came, not only because of him but also to see Lazarus, whom he (Jesus) had raised from the dead. 10 So the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus… as well, 11 for on account of him many of the Jews were going over to Jesus and believing in him.
When Jesus tells this story, he is sticking it to the religious leaders who may well have been “Sons of Abraham,” but they sure weren’t good sons. Jesus was saying that they wore creative clothes and ate great food, but hoarded the money meant for people experiencing poverty. He was saying that being “sons of Abraham” wouldn’t be enough. He was saying that they didn’t really follow the teachings of Moses and the Prophets. And he was also saying that they wouldn’t believe what the scriptures said about the Messiah either, even if someone named Lazarus came back from the dead to tell them. Jesus was saying that he was going to be coming back from the dead, too, and they wouldn’t believe that either.
That is what this story meant when Jesus told it to its original audience. Now, what does it mean for you?
I’m going to leave that last part for you to figure out. But I do want to make just one last point:
The rich man knows Lazarus’ name. And yet at no point in the story does he speak directly to Lazarus. He knows him, and yet even in death, he ignores him, does not speak to him, but instead only to Abraham about him, and he tries even in death to use him for his own personal gain – all without ever acknowledging him in the slightest.
Amen.
Song: When the poor ones (762)
We respond to serve God
Our time of giving
Loving God, we bring you our gifts, grateful that we have something to share, and glad to be part of a network of mission and mercy which circles the earth. Bless the ministries supported by Presbyterians Sharing as well as the mission of our congregation. Use our gifts to multiply their impact in the world you love through Christ our Lord.
Prayers of thanksgiving and intercession
… silence
L: God of all creatures great and small
P: Make us stewards of what is precious to you
God of mystery and wonder, we look around at the beauty of this world and the worlds beyond us, and sense that you have given each precious thing its place
and a way to sustain itself.
Thank you for the care you hold for your whole creation.
We also look around at the aching of the world and sense that many precious things are under threat.
Too many pieces of your creation have fallen out of balance with each other.
Show us how we can help restore that balance and protect what is at risk for the health of your whole creation.
God of all creatures great and small,
Make us stewards of what is precious to you.
God of energy and life, We look around at the peoples of this world and see your image and dignity in every variety of face and culture.
Thank you for the care you hold for all humankind.
Yet we look around at the people of this world and see the aching of the hungry and hurting; we hear the groans of parents whose children die in their arms and feel the tears of children whose parents die too soon.
We know neighbours who are suffering and hear of strangers who can’t imagine how to make it through tomorrow.
Awaken our generosity to offer what healing and hope we can to the lives you cherish in every neighbourhood and nation.
God of all creatures great and small,
Make us stewards of what is precious to you.
God of promise and possibility, We look around at places where people collide with each other
We hear the grumbling of nations locked into old rivalries and grievances.
We watch the jousting of leaders impressed more by polls than effective policies.
We worry about the future of our communities and our children.
We hear your call to do justice and live generously.
Guide us as citizens to act for justice that brings peace and well being to communities near and far.
Bless the ministries supported by Presbyterians Sharing across Canada and around the world, and grow in us the interest and intention to contribute to this outreach .
God of all creatures great and small,
Make us stewards of what is precious to you.
God of faithfulness and surprise,
We look at ourselves and sometimes doubt we can make a difference or have an impact.
Challenge us to recognise the kinds of power we do have:
The love and compassion,
The courage and commitment,
The laughter and friendship,
The generosity and mercy You inspire within us.
In all these gifts we know your power.
Through all these gifts, our lives have been changed.
Using these gifts in our lives, bring Christ’s love and mercy to the world you love. Amen.
Song: Jesus, Jesus, Jesus in the morning (378: vss 1-5)
Sending out with God’s blessing
Go from our gathering with confidence in your hearts, for God’s Spirit goes with you to give you strength, God’s Son walks beside you to see you through each day, and God’s holy presence will bless you with grace and mercy now and evermore. Amen.
Response: Go forth into the world
Music postlude
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Numbers in brackets after a song/hymn indicate that it is from the 1997 Book of Praise of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Those and other songs are being used in accordance with the specifications of Dayspring’s licensing with One License (3095377) and CLC (A735555).
The Rev. Brad Childs retains the copyright (© 2025) on all original material in this service. As far as Brad Childs is aware, all of the material that has not been attributed to others is his own creation or is in the public domain. Unacknowledged use of copyrighted material is unintentional and will be corrected immediately upon notification being received.
Video recordings of the Sunday Worship messages can be found here on our YouTube Channel.