Luke 16.19-31 The Parable of the Rich man and Lazarus

A few days ago I was reading about someone who had won a huge quantity of money on the national lottery. This particular person worked at a supermarket stacking shelves and on the checkouts.

When asked what the future held now, the person said that their life wasn't going to change and he would keep his job at the supermarket.

Now call me a cynic if you like, but I suspect that this may not be the case and I have little doubt that even if this person does not change the externals of his lifestyle, the attitude that other people have towards him will change and that will have a profound effect on him.

Winning the lottery is a dream to which many people cling, or at least that's how it appears to me when I see people queuing up to by their tickets. And the reason why so many people do it is because they want their lives to be different, and money makes a difference.

Money certainly made a difference to the rich man in the parable that Jesus told on that day. Dressed in purple, the cloth of kings and royalty, sumptuous feasts and no doubt, luxurious living. It was a parable targeted directly at the Pharisees, who had, according the gospel a love of money. It was a parable that was told in order to highlight the futility of such a love.

One of the joys of being parent to young children is that it gives an opportunity to read lots of children's books and stories. I once read a story about a caterpillar. This was a hungry caterpillar, a caterpillar who liked to live the good life. His name wasn't Cecil, like the famous one that you may have heard about, who kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger until he blew up. This was a different caterpillar.

One day he was wandering around the garden looking for something tasty to eat when he came across a row of bright yellow canes. Well to a little caterpillar, they looked very interesting, and with their bright yellow colours, looked as though they might have something interesting at the top, perhaps some tasty leaves. So the caterpillar started to climb up. It was a long way, and very hard work for such a little caterpillar, and when he got to the top he reared up as only caterpillars can, trying to reach the fresh young leaves that he thought would be there. There was nothing. And so he began the long and tedious climb back down to the bottom. He moved on to the next cane and did exactly the same thing, and the next one, and the one after

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