The Chasm Within

A Contemplative reading of the Lectionary Gospel Text Luke 16:19-21 for Sunday 28th September, the 16th Sunday after Pentecost and 15th Sunday after Trinity or Proper 26 in the Season of Creation.

Luke 16:19-31

¹⁹ “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. ²⁰ And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, ²¹ who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. ²² The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham.^[a] The rich man also died and was buried. ²³ In Hades, where he was being tormented, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side.^{[b] 24} He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in agony in these flames.’ ²⁵ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things and Lazarus in like manner evil things, but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony.²⁶ Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’ ²⁷ He said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house— ²⁸ for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.’ ²⁹ Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’³⁰ He said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ ³¹ He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’ ”
NRSV Bible Version

There are many passages in the Gospels that can be triggering of alarm and anxiety, passages that do not simply share wisdom but pierce through our defences, unsettling the places within us that we often avoid. This is tough, as so often we just exist at the surface of ourselves, and this parable of Jesus was skillfully communicated in a way to wake up the listener. The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19–31 is one such text. It does not allow the reader to escape into abstraction or sentimentality. Instead, it confronts us with uncomfortable truths about wealth, poverty, human blindness, and the eternal weight of our daily choices.

Yet for the contemplatives, this text is not simply a moral warning; it is also a call to a deeper way of seeing, a summons to attend to the subtle and sacred currents of love that flow through the world, currents we so often miss because of distraction, self-absorption, or fear.

In the parable, Jesus paints a vivid contrast between two lives lived side by side yet utterly disconnected. There was a rich man, clothed in purple (rare and expensive dye) and fine linen, who feasted every day. And at his gate lay Lazarus, covered with sores, longing to eat the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table, licked by dogs that had more compassion than his neighbour. Here we have the brutal simplicity of Jesus’ storytelling: a man of abundance and a man of destitution, and yet no bridge, no relationship, no act of recognition or mercy linking them in life. They lived adjacent, but apart, separated by indifference.

When death comes, the roles reverse. Lazarus is carried by angels to Abraham’s side, a place of intimacy and comfort, while the rich man finds himself in torment, pleading for relief. A great chasm has opened, fixed and uncrossable, reflecting in eternity the separation that was lived out in time. The rich man, who once ignored Lazarus, now sees him clearly but too late. The blindness of privilege has turned to the torment of regret, and yet even in his pleas there lingers a vestige of entitlement: he asks Abraham to send Lazarus as if he were still a servant to do his bidding. The parable closes with the haunting words that even the miraculous rising of the dead will not convince those who refuse to listen to Moses and the prophets.

It is tempting to read this parable as a stark warning about wealth, and certainly that is one of its dimensions. But for the contemplative, there is more here than a moral lesson about economics. What is being revealed is a deeper reality: the nature of blindness, the way in which self-enclosure prevents us from perceiving the divine image in the other, and the way that choices of attention in the present reverberate into eternity. Yet again economics is the organising principle of society, where peoples humanity gets lost, and the equality of all people bearing the ‘imago-dei’ is diminished. How so much this relates to the societies I have lived in! Jesus’ teaching presses us to recognise that the chasm that finally opens between the rich man and Lazarus is not a sudden judgment imposed from outside, but the natural consequence of a life lived turned inward, insulated from compassion, inattentive to the cries at the gate.

Contemplative practice is, at its heart, the slow training of attention. It is learning to see beyond surface appearances, to become attuned to the presence of God in the ordinary, to allow our hearts to be tenderised by silence and prayer so that we no longer live imprisoned by the illusions of self and ego. When we sit in silence, consenting to the presence of God, we are learning to cross the chasm within ourselves - the separation between head and heart, between ego and and our won true-spirituality, between our defensive postures and our true self in Christ. In this sense, the parable is not only a social critique but also a mirror of the contemplative path. If in our daily living we are inattentive to God, inattentive to the cries of those who suffer, inattentive to the wounds of our own hearts, then we are already living within a chasm of separation.

The rich man’s blindness is not primarily that he was wealthy but that he did not see Lazarus. He did not attend, did not notice, did not respond. How many Lazaruses lie at our gates unnoticed? The beggar on the street corner, yes, but also the colleague quietly sinking into despair, the neighbour whose loneliness gnaws unseen, the earth itself groaning under exploitation. A contemplative way of life does not make us immune to these realities, but more sensitive to them. It does not always give us solutions, but it awakens us to recognition, to compassion, to a willingness to be present where before we turned away. Contemplation is the cultivation of a seeing heart.

There is another subtlety here. The parable reminds us that the capacity to see is not automatic. The rich man, even in torment, still does not fully see Lazarus as a brother. He speaks to Abraham, not to Lazarus, and asks for Lazarus to serve him. His imagination remains captive to hierarchy. This is a chilling detail, because it reveals how tenacious our blindness can be. It is not simply about deeds but about perception, about the very way we see reality. Contemplation is precisely the re-education of perception, the slow unmasking of the ego’s distortions, the graced capacity to see the other not as object but as neighbour, not as resource but as beloved child of God.

When Jesus concludes that even the resurrection will not convince those who refuse to listen, he is saying something profound about the hardness of the human heart. Miracles alone cannot change us if we remain unwilling to listen. Contemplative listening is the opposite posture. It is the willingness to sit in silence, to allow the Word of God to pierce us, to let reality speak rather than drowning it out with noise or distraction. Listening to the prophets, listening to Christ, listening to the cry of the poor—this is the discipline that trains the soul for heaven. To ignore is to drift into the great chasm, to listen is to move toward union.

There is also something here about memory and imagination. The rich man wants to warn his brothers. He wants to send Lazarus back as a messenger. But Abraham’s reply is clear: they already have what they need in Moses and the prophets. The issue is not information but transformation. We live in a culture drowning in information yet starving for wisdom. Contemplation helps us to dwell with what we already know in Christ, to descend from information into wisdom, from awareness into love. The parable is a call to inhabit the truth we have been given, to allow it to shape us deeply enough that we cannot ignore the Lazarus at the gate.

In prayer, we discover that the chasm is not ultimately external. It is within us, between the divided parts of our being. Christ descends into that chasm, into death itself, to raise us up. The parable leaves us with the image of an unbridgeable divide, yet in the larger sweep of the Gospel, Christ himself becomes the bridge. He is the one who crosses from riches to poverty, from life to death, from heaven to hell, to seek out and to save. Contemplation is our participation in that crossing. When we consent to God’s presence, we allow Christ to cross the chasm in us, to heal the divisions, to draw us into communion.

The contemplative life, then, is not a turning away from the Lazaruses of the world but a turning toward them, grounded in prayer. Silence and stillness do not insulate us from the cries at the gate; they attune us more deeply to them, and they give us the courage to respond not from compulsion or guilt but from love. To pray contemplatively is to practise seeing Lazarus, to allow his face to become transparent to the face of Christ, to allow our hardened hearts to be softened by mercy. Without this re-education of perception, we may live our days clothed in purple, feasting well, yet blind to the kingdom unfolding in our midst.

In the end, this parable is about urgency. It is not a story meant to be admired at a safe distance. It presses upon us with immediacy: now is the time to see, to listen, to act. The contemplative knows that the present moment is all we truly have, and in the present moment Christ is always passing by, often disguised as Lazarus. If we postpone compassion, if we defer attention, if we numb ourselves with distractions, then we are rehearsing blindness. But if we turn now, in stillness, in prayer, in humble responsiveness, then we are rehearsing heaven.

The great chasm is not inevitable. It is the outworking of choices of indifference. But in Christ, even the chasm of death is crossed. For the contemplative, this parable is not meant to terrify but to awaken. It is a summons to look again, to see more deeply, to listen more carefully, to love more freely. To practise contemplation is to stand at the gate with Lazarus, to refuse to pass by, to discover that in the wounds of the poor and the wounds of our own hearts, Christ himself is waiting. And when we allow ourselves to be drawn into that recognition, the chasm narrows, communion deepens, and eternity begins even now.

Photo by Max Böhme on Unsplash