28/9/25
Who is Mr Nobody?
Over the last three Sundays, we’ve had three stories, all exclusive to Luke and all talking about the misuse of cash.
On the 14th of September, we had the parable of the lost coin. Last week, we had the dodgy steward who got caught with his hand in the till and set about to win friends and influence people. In today’s gospel, we have a very clear contrast between the guy who has a truckload of cash and the beggar who has nothing. Clearly, Luke sees our hard-earned currency as an integral part of who we are and what the Christian life is all about.
Luke is at pains to point out the whopping and stonkingly sized discrepancy between the poor man in the gutter and the rich man. Purple clothes in Luke's day were the Prada and Gucci of today. Purple dye was expensive to get, so if you dressed in purple as our good friend in the story does, then you knew that you had made it. You were in.
But there is a quirk in this story that I learnt only this year in 2025. The poor man’s name is Lazarus. He is a specific, quantifiable knowable person for Jesus. His name, “Lazarus,” is very appropriate, for it means “God has helped.”
But there is a prize of a cherry ripe bar to anyone who can tell me the name of the rich guy in today’s story. His name … is … well… he doesn’t get a name. He’s Mr Nobody. What is Luke trying to tell us here?
Here’s my guess. That in his repetitive and belligerent disregard for Lazarus and all the poor at his gate, the rich man becomes an anonymous, unknown Mr. nobody. His character and that which should make him who he truly is are diminished. Ultimately, he disappears in the mirage of ostentatious self-entitlement. I should hasten to add that His failing is not being wealthy. It’s not a sin to have a boatload of cash. The question is what you do with it. The flaw in Mr Nobody is that he consistently, consciously chooses not to share his wealth. The spot on his soul is his blind spot to the impoverishment that is on his doorstep. And the real tragedy is that he not only fails to see the poor man and what he might become, but in his lack of vision, his own potential is unfulfilled. He would flourish if he became generous and actually enhanced someone else's life, instead of pushing out his own girth. Thus, he is visionless to his own self-worth. He not only lets the poor man down but, more poignantly, lets himself down. This is why Luke does not give our entrepreneur a name. The guy in the purple Gucci shirt has become a nobody.
And so the trick is that the rich man in the purple shirt is actually poor, and Lazarus gets his name in print for all eternity, to say nothing of his comfy place in Abraham’s bosom in heaven.
This dynamic is not only true of the relationships and people we don’t know, but also the people and relationships that we do know.
We must always say no to the relationships that exclude. Our relationships can be suffocated through indifference, neglect and unwillingness to engage. It is not the cutoff who become nameless and anonymous, it is us because we diminish ourselves and cut ourselves off from the potential that the Master offers. With his pierced hands, the wounded, the neglected, the lonely and the hungry, God offers us continuous opportunities to become wealthy.
In 604, a gentleman called Gregory gave us this insight.
“When we give to the poor what is essential for them, we are not doing them a personal favour, but rather restoring to them what was always rightfully theirs. More than an act of charity, we are fulfilling a duty of justice”
We do the right thing because it is the right thing, not just to make the other person feel better, or to make ourselves feel all yummy inside, but because it is what the Master asks of us, and that is enough.
It is something we can choose today and every day along our journey. If we can see or sense his living presence in the fragile, broken bread and outpoured wine, it should be an easy step to see him clearly in the fragile and broken in our community.
We choose this journey of selflessness. And sometimes it will seem smooth and dandy, and sometimes it will seem nothing less than just plain hard work. We will rub shoulders and encounter the unglamorous and those who have never made any sense to us. But if we persist and look afresh upon the face of the unlovely, one day we will arrive.
And we will know we have arrived when we confront our insecurities, when we are challenged by that which seems uncomfortable and disagreeable. When we gaze upon those whose wounds are licked by dogs and who are on our doorstep… those who will sleep rough and cold and hungry whilst we feast sumptuously.
‘Go and learn what this means, ’ said Jesus.