Purple and red are my favourite colours. Last Sunday when I saw Paul Hangartner wearing a purple T-shirt I decided that I would wear purple this week. This is not because I identify with the rich man in today’s parable, although I do confess to some similarities. I decided to wear purple because my wearing it illustrates a difference between our times and the ancient world.
In the ancient world purple was an exceedingly expensive dye, and only the very wealthy could afford it. More than 3000 years ago the Phoenician peoples of the Mediterranean discovered that the mucous secretion from a genus of sea snails could be turned into a reddish purple dye through a long, smelly – and secretive – process. The colour was particularly prized because it intensified with age rather than fading. It was called Tyrian purple, after the Phoenician city of Tyre. Mucus from another sea snail produced a more bluish purple. Tyrian purple was more valuable than gold because it took tens of thousands of snails to produce enough dye for a full robe. The leading magistrates of ancient Rome wore white toga with purple border. By the 4th century only the Emperor was allowed to wear a completely purple gown. At about the time that Jesus told our parable, the notorious emperor Caligula had a north African King executed because he dared to wear a magnificent purple robe when visiting Rome.

Here is one illustration: a mosaic in Hagia Sofia of the Empress Theodora, wife of the Christian Emperor Justinian, with Mary and the Christ child – wearing purple embroidered with gold – obviously a symbolic rather than realist representation of the baby. With the Christianization of the Roman Empire, Bishops and later Popes began wearing imperial purple.

People like me and you have been able to wear purple only since new methods of synthesizing dyes were discovered in the mid 19th century.

RICH MAN, POOR MAN
So, when we are told that the rich man in this parable wore purple we know he was exceedingly wealthy, Elon Musk-type wealthy. He is a caricature rather than a real person. Lazarus similarly was a caricature – not a real person. Some of us here today are much richer than others, and some are much poorer than others, but none of us come close to the wealth of the rich man or the poverty of Lazarus.

Lazarus was in a bad way. He had sores on his body, and he could not walk as he was carried to the gate of the rich man’s house. It was a contemporary custom for friends or relatives to carry the poor to places where they might be given food and water. Lazarus hoped for food dropped from the table, but he didn’t even get that. Possibly the dogs got it first. The dogs licked his sores. There was, and still is, a widespread belief that dog’s saliva has healing qualities but the current opinion of veterinarians is that although dog’s saliva has some healing qualities it is mixed with bacteria which are likely to cause infection, so don’t use this parable as a medical guide. Also, one scholar said the parable is not intended to teach us the geography of heaven and hell (and I will spare you mediaeval imaginings of the horrors of hell). Today I want to consider the parable in relation to the environmental issues of our time, in particular, I want us to think about money and possessions.

The rich man had everything – plenty of food, the best clothes made of the finest fabrics, and he feasted every day. Fine linen, no scratchy rough underwear for him, purple robes and, I assume, good furniture and many servants.

In the Gospels rich men get a poor press. We are told that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven but not impossible. This exceedingly rich man was not condemned for his wealth, but because he ignored the poor man at his gate. Although he had ignored Lazarus in life, he must have noticed him because in Hades he recognized him from a great distance, as the man who had lain at this gate. Here is a 13th century representation of Lazarus – in Abraham’s arms, being held, comforted, like a baby.

It represents the Sermon on the Mount, blessed are the poor, the hungry and the sorrowful for they shall be comforted. The rich man now wanted Lazarus to do a message for him. Bring me water; warn my brothers so that they do not come here. Abraham refused both requests. Your brothers have the Law and the Prophets, they know all they need to know. By implication, you also knew all that you needed to know. The Jewish scriptures, make it very clear that the rich are to give to the poor and the hungry, and to assist the stranger. In today’s reading Amos condemns the wealthy who spend all their time and money on their own satisfactions. Other prophets tell the rich “share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house” (Isaiah 58:7). Today’s Psalm makes it clear the God cares for the poor and needy. There is no way that the rich man did not know what God wanted of him.

Probably none of us have beggars at our gates, but if we walk down Queen Street, or read, watch or listen to any news we know about increasing numbers of people with insufficient food and without safe and healthy housing in our own city. Even worse for our peace of mind, we know only too much about the starving and displaced and dying in far-off parts of the world.

The parable reminds us that we should give to the needy. Given the enormity of the many needs we know of, it is difficult to decide just whom to give to and certainly giving money is not the limit of our responsibilities – we need to use our lobbying power, our votes, our skills and, as Nicola reminded us last week, any political shrewdness that we have.

MINDSETS AND LIFESTYLES
I want to think about more indirect ways in which our relative wealth and comfort affect our neighbours. Two weeks back, the Sunday morning after Petra’s sermon, I listened to a radio programme about house renovation. The interviewer and interviewee were reminiscing about the bathrooms of their childhood. The entire family managed with only one bathroom in the house! A second bathroom would have been an unheard-of luxury – they agreed. Now said the interior designer, most houses in central Auckland have two bathrooms and an ensuite for the master bedroom; even townhouses have two or three bathrooms. Kitchens often have separate sculleries. The interviewer made a faint attempt to question the need for all this. Are we spoiled now? We could look at it that way, said the interior designer, but this is just in line with our lifestyles in general, we have moved past the one-car family, we have more than one television, and numbers of computers. This is entirely circular reasoning: we need more here because we have more. We expect more convenience to our lives she said, we want more bathrooms and the appliances that will make our lives easier. Yes, said the interviewer, we want these things and the only issue is whether we can afford them. Conspicuous consumption, rather like that of the rich man in our parable, is an honoured way of life in our world.

I have recently started reading a book, A Radically Different World: Preparing for Climate Change. The author, Jonathan Boston, was a member of the Expert Working Group on Managed Retreat which worked through 2022-2023 to advise the Ministry for the Environment. The world has gone so far that we must not only attempt to reduce global warming but must adapt to it. At the beginning Boston writes “mitigation and adaptation . . . will require major shifts in our mindsets, values and lifestyles”. The radio interviewer and interior designer were oblivious to these issues. They expected life to continue on, with more of everything.

Ever since I was a student in Philadelphia I have been aware of this pressure. A family I knew well threw out enough food after each meal to feed at least one extra person. This was a shock after moving from a modest New Zealand home to an elite American environment. After dinner in our apartment I stored left-overs in cups in the fridge, and posted a list on the door of the fridge reminding my two roommates that we should use them. The funniest example of bigger is better from that time was an enormous downtown billboard advertising “the biggest fake diamonds in the world”.

If I had more money I could easily be completely sucked into this way of thinking. I would like a more convenient bathroom; I need a second story on my house for a good view of the sunset. I like watching such TV programmes as Grand Designs and Love it or Leave It. When I am on holiday I like shopping, and I buy things I don’t need; sometimes I don’t even like them when I get them home. Our culture is constantly pushing the line that bigger is better, more will make us happier. It’s easy to cave in and buy if we have the money, and to feel left out or hard done by if we don’t have the money. My house is small by American standards but large by Pasifika standards and by the New Zealand standards of 50 years ago. I fill my entire house with stuff, but two owners back it was occupied by a Pasifika family with 3 sons, a daughter, and a niece.

Nicola and Petra [preachers on the last two Sundays] have both tried to moderate my views on consumerism. Petra tells me we must be able to celebrate – and I agree. Nicola warns me that I am in danger of becoming puritanical and she is right. But conspicuous consumption is not just a matter of money. I want to emphasize that it is also a matter of resources. We live in a world where we throw out our printers because it is cheaper to buy a new one than repair the old. It would be much better to pay more for a repair – wages help the economy and, more important, support other people in work – than to throw out non-replaceable resources.

Traditional economics has strange ways of measuring productivity. Fifty years ago, in a prophetic book titled Small is Beautiful, E. F. Schumacher said the cost of coal should appear in accounts as a reduction in capital, rather than as income. Traditional economics doesn’t take any account of how natural resources are used up. Marilyn Waring, the woman who contributed to the collapse of the Muldoon government by crossing the floor in 1984, wrote a wonderful book called Counting for Nothing, on what is left out of GDP figures. Women’s work in the home is omitted, but if I do your housework and you do mine and we pay each other, then GDP goes up because two lots of wages are included. Road accidents increase GDP because the costs of medical care and car repair are included. There is no measurable value in clean air or water, only in cleaning up dirty air and water.

And we need to think not only in terms of our own country but of the global economy in the long-term. Our over-consumption of non-renewable resources contributes many forms of environmental degradation. Global warming is the one we think most about. Some parts of our coastline are already at risk, for example, it’s hard to see how the roads on the narrow South Island west coast strip of land can remain accessible long term. Our smaller Pacific-island neighbours will be affected to an even greater extent by storms and coastal erosion, and they have less inland space to move onto. If we ignore their future plight we are ignoring a Lazarus at our gate.

TO CONCLUDE
The parable of the rich man and Lazarus has a particularly urgent application in our world: buy local, pay wages rather than throw out materials, ask ourselves what shapes our attitudes to possessions. We must change our mindsets and lifestyles – big is not better, more will not make us happier.