Can You Have Your Cake and Eat it Too?

This was the sermon preached on September 28, 2025 based on Luke 16: 19-31.

Quino’s Parables

During our vacation, I had the chance to watch a documentary about Joaquín Salvador Lavado Tejón, better known as Quino. He was an Argentine cartoonist, most famous for creating the comic strip Mafalda. Quino lived through tumultuous times in Argentina, and he used his comics to criticize the world around him with humor—humor that was not always appreciated by those in power or with wealth. In 1976, after a military coup established a dictatorship, Quino left Argentina. The new regime imposed strict censorship and persecuted artists it perceived as political dissenters. Quino, whose work often critiqued authoritarianism, inequality, and social injustice, felt unsafe and left for Milan, Italy, where he lived for many years.

I have been thinking a lot about Quino while looking at the world today. Even before watching the film, I had been rereading some of his work. You see, many people have been looking toward Europe to make sense of what is going on in the United States, but I have been looking at the Americas—where U.S. influence has shaped much of what has unfolded to the south.

Here is one of Quino’s comic strips—not one featuring Mafalda—that illustrates his views on the wealthy.

Quino: Qué presente impresentable. Editorial Lumen, S. A. Travessera de Grácia, Barcelona. p. 55, 2005

In it, people who are poor and hard-working provide bread for a fancy restaurant, where rich men gather to eat… only to end up using the bread for a food fight.

Such was Quino’s view of the rich and powerful in his visual parables. The wealthy, in his critique, are those who live in a bubble of ignorance and ingratitude, lacking any awareness of what is happening around them. We might even say that this vision echoes Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus.

There Was a Rich Man… and Lazarus

Jesus’ parable begins with the words, “There was a rich man…” These are the same words used to start the parable that precedes this one in Luke. In his book Proclaiming the Parables, Tom Long explains that for Luke, the word rich is not a neutral term. In fact, the Evangelist uses it several times:

• Mary sings that God has “sent the rich away empty” (1:53).

• Jesus proclaims, “good news to the poor” (4:18) and warns, “Woe to you who are rich” (6:24).

• Jesus says, “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” (18:24).

According to Long, whenever Jesus calls someone rich,

“the chances are excellent this is one who lives outside the sphere of the kingdom of God.… So when this parable begins as the story of a ‘rich man,’ we aren’t merely being introduced to a character; we are being invited to enter his world—a world alien to the kingdom.” 

Then comes the contrasting figure: a man described as poor. The Greek word does not simply mean “someone with little money.” It conveys destitution, beggary, and complete dependence on others—someone who has nothing and must rely entirely on mercy. Lazarus is so poor that, as Long points out, he is not just lying at the gate but has been placed there by others. That is the depth of his dependency and vulnerability. He seems to be ill, covered with sores, longing to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table. He is so weak that he does not move even when the dogs come to lick his sores. The description is deeply ironic for someone whose name means “God has helped.”

The rich man and the poor man face what makes us all equal: death. Yet even here the contrast remains. The poor man is carried away by the angels to be with Abraham, while the rich man goes to Hades. Although we often think of Hades as “hell,” it is more broadly the realm of the dead. In this parable, however, this is not a place to rest in peace. It is a place of torment and separation from God, where you can see what you are missing—since the rich man looks up and sees Lazarus with Abraham, one of the most important figures in Israel’s history and faith.

Father Abraham, Have Mercy On Me!

The rich man sees Abraham—an important man—yet still does not seem to see Lazarus. Or at least it has not dawned on him why Lazarus is with Abraham. He says: “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.”

Leah Shade in her Feasting on the Word commentary interprets this attitude as presumptuous. It reflects the same posture of the wealthy toward the poor that Quino exposed in his comic strip. She writes:

“Even in the fiery depths of Hades, where it should be obvious to him that his position in relation to Lazarus is no longer one of superiority, the rich man continues to make demands and attempt to negotiate, his attitude insulting Abraham and Lazarus alike.”[1]

The context of this parable is Jesus speaking to men who loved money. In verse 15 he tells them: “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others; but God knows your hearts, for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God.”

This parable reminds us that there is no mercy for those who love money so much that they forget basic decency and love toward other human beings. Ignorance is no excuse. We are not meant to live in a bubble of privilege. We have lived long enough on this planet to know that people are being oppressed by systems that keep them from having enough to eat and from truly living. As John Sobrino declared:

“Poverty means death. Our people are not poor due to their own fault or bad luck. They are poor because the economic systems that create your wealth make them poor.” 

Those who deliberately deny the existence of the poor harm not only people like Lazarus but entire communities and generations. And sadly, not even seeing dead people is enough to convince some of the error of their ways. We have seen enough deaths already to know what works—and, more importantly, what does not. If something works for the few but not for the many, then it does not work at all. If we continue to deny the poor intentionally, we will keep on living in a world alien to God’s kingdom.

Quino’s Parables II

As I mentioned, Quino was best known for a character called Mafalda. She is a six-year-old girl surrounded by family and friends. Yet through her questions and comments, she becomes a voice of wisdom, conscience, and critique. She is recognized for her social concerns, her big questions, and her humor. Quino uses her as a mirror to the adult world, reminding us of our moral responsibilities with humor, tenderness, and biting insight. (aguda percepción)

I want to finish the sermon with another of Quino’s parables. Here, Mafalda appears with her friend Susanita.

Quino. From the Internet

Here is the translation:

Panel 1

(Mafalda and Susanita walk past a poor person sitting on the street.)

Panel 2

Mafalda: “It breaks my heart to see poor people.”

Susanita: “Me too.”

Panel 3

Mafalda: “We should give the poor a roof, work, protection, and well-being!”

Panel 4

Susanita: “Why go that far? It would be enough just to hide them.”

This is an old comic strip, but Mafalda reminds us that the temptation to hide the poor rather than give them the place God grants them is still with us. Jesus’ parable makes it clear: God does not hide Lazarus. God sees him. God knows him. God lifts him up, names him, and seats him at Abraham’s side. Lazarus has a name. The rich man does not. God has indeed helped him.

The gospel calls us to see, to care, and to act—not to look away. You cannot live ignoring the poor as the rich man did and then expect to be served by them in the afterlife. You cannot live in this world having your cake and eating it too. You cannot live applauding when someone speaks of forgiveness and then applauding again when someone speaks of hate. You cannot live worshiping the wealthy and blaming the poor—demanding that people pull themselves up by their bootstraps when those in power do not even want them to have boots to begin with.

Let us pray, act and strive that we may live as people who notice the Lazaruses at our gates and embody the kingdom of God where no one is hidden, and all are loved and embraced in God’s mercy. Amen.

[1] Jarvis, Cynthia A.; Johnson, E. Elizabeth. Feasting on the Gospels--Luke, Volume 2: A Feasting on the Word Commentary (p. 303). (Function). Kindle Edition.