The parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) has a powerful and challenging message for our time. We get to hear about someone who feasted sumptuously every day.

Outside his door was a poor man who was starving. The dogs would come and lick his sores. 

This looks like a mirror of our own time. Thirty-six million American people are living below the poverty level. Even more can’t afford health insurance, and the number is increasing. Every night 1000 people are turned away from homeless shelters in Minnesota because there is no more room.
In this parable, we don’t hear that the rich man mistreated the poor one, beat him or was deliberately cruel to him. 
In fact, he didn’t do anything at all. And that was his great sin: He never noticed! He accepted as part of his landscape that the poor man suffered outside his door while he himself had a luxurious life. But the Bible makes this very clear: 
We are our brother’s keeper!

It is our obligation to help the poor, the homeless, the ones who are left without healthcare. In a modern society, there’s no way this can be done only through programs of charity. Politics is about—among other things—the way in which we help the needy. Poverty needs to be on the political plate when we vote.

Politics is not the business of the church, but our conscience certainly is. God’s word urges us to speak out for the poor and to take our responsibility as citizens earnestly.
Jens Arne Dale, Pastor
jens@mindekirken.org