Scripture Study for

The prophet Amos does not denounce wealth itself, but the complacency that often accompanies it. He is distressed because the affluent entertain themselves with wantonness while the social structure of the northern kingdom of Israel disintegrates. He censures the habit of self-indulgence at feasts. The wealthy dine on the meat of lambs and calves, the very animals that were used for sacrifice. Their fastidious tastes expose their arrogance. Perhaps the most excessive example of dissolute dining is their manner of drinking wine. Not content to sip from goblets, they guzzle from wide-mouthed bowls. One can only imagine the result of such drinking. 

Paul’s address to Timothy contains a fourfold message. He exhorts him to pursue virtue, to fight for the faith, to grasp eternal life, and to keep the commandments. While these are responsibilities of all Christians, Paul expects that Timothy will fulfill them in ways that reflect his pastoral office. He employs an image from athletic competition in order to illustrate the struggle that being faithful often entails. The prize that Paul has in mind is eternal life. Underscoring the seriousness of his admonitions, he charges Timothy, before God and before Christ, to obey the commandments in anticipation of Christ’s glorious manifestation.

The Gospel paints a picture of radical reversals. The man who was treated as a castoff enjoys the bliss of heaven, while the one who savored life’s pleasures ends up in great torment in the netherworld. The reversal of the rich man’s fortune was not the consequence of the lack of moral rectitude; it resulted from his indifference to the needs of the covenant brother who lay at the gate of his home. When he asked that Lazarus be sent to warn his brothers to change their way of life (metánoia), he was told that if they did not heed the religious tradition that charged the wealthy to meet the needs of the poor, they would not listen to a resurrected Lazarus.