Creation: For the Dogs

Taken from a homily given by Dr Andrew Clark-Howard at Holy Trinity Cathedral during the 2025 Season of Creation programme.

Though I have not been part of this Cathedral community for very long, it is my understanding that our recently departed precentor Fr Ivica had a habit of inviting guests to preach on difficult texts he’d rather avoid. So, a special acknowledgement to Ivica is due today for inviting me here to preach on such difficult readings—and please direct any complaints about this morning’s homily to All Saints, Howick.

Indeed, our gospel reading today is a hard, harsh passage—certainly for readers such as myself. It is the type of passage that calls to mind Kierkegaard’s warning when he wrote: “The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly … Yes, it is dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.”1

Jesus is retelling an old story likely familiar to his audience, a story that is likely familiar to us even today: Those who suffer in this life can expect reward in the next, whereas those who indulge in riches and excess can expect some sort of reckoning. A kind of cosmic karma that both religious and nonreligious folks today might still ascribe.

But from the outset, Jesus is telling this story slant:

• The first striking aspect is that our rich man remains nameless. As one commentator writes, “Normally, it is important people who have a name. They have a recognition … But in this parable, the rich and apparently important man has no name, and the poor and insignificant man does.”2

• The second thing we notice is that this nameless rich man dresses in purple and fine linen (there are no bishops among us today, I hope?) and he lives in luxury. He lives a royal life—we might imagine a great palace with many servants and splendid guests, large banquets and glamorous parties.

The luxury of the rich man stands in marked contrast with Lazarus—whose name means “God helps”—who is described as hungry, begging, covered in sores, and desperate to even receive the scraps that fall from the rich man’s table.

Both these men die, though Lazarus is said to be carried by angels to Abraham’s side—literally, to Abraham’s bosom. This is a strange and unusual image—extremely rare in biblical and wider Jewish writings. What we are told, however, is that Lazarus has been carried to the loving embrace of this great patriarch of the Jews.

The rich man, by contrast, is said to be buried—put six feet under—and is being tormented in Hades. To the Greeks, Hades, meaning “the unseen place,” was the destination of all souls after death, regardless of virtue or vice. It was seen as a shadowy, subterranean place of separation and judgement, where the wicked may be punished and the righteous may live in bliss.

Clearly, our rich man is not in bliss. From his postmortem torment, he cries out to Abraham: “Send Lazarus to comfort me! Even a drop of water from the tip of his finger may soothe and cool my tongue!” Abraham’s reply is hard and harsh: “Remember the life you lived on earth; this is what you shall receive after death.”

The rich man cries out: “At least let Lazarus return to my brothers, for they do not realise the fate that awaits them!” Abraham remains staunch: “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”

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In this season of creation, many parallels from this parable are hard to resist.

First, we must notice the rich man’s overconsumption. Like the rich today who live in luxury, burning our earth’s finite resources, living on more than they could ever consume, discarding their waste while the world’s majority must fight for scraps—we know what overconsumption looks like.

We might think of a luxury resort, pilling food in the buffet every night. At the end of the evening, staff sweep trays of uneaten meals into bins while families down the road go hungry. The banquet table of the rich man is here today.

We might think of our brothers and sisters in the Pacific whose homes are under threat climate change. With rising sea levels caused by the emissions of the world’s elite, our Pacific neighbours risk the loss not just of their livelihood but their very life source: the history and vitality of the land that has sustained them generation after generation.

Climate change is the undeniably existential threat we face. 2024 was the world’s warmest year since record keeping began in 1850. “The ten warmest years in the 175-year record have all occurred during the last decade (2015–2024). When the new century started in 2000, the first year to set a new high-temperature record was 2005. Now, 2005 is just the 13th-warmest year on record.”3

The thing is, almost all of us know this information. In 2018, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that we had twelve years to act decisively to avoid catastrophic warming which will result in millions displaced from their homes and the destruction of entire ecosystems.4 Yet our politicians and corporations—even the general public—nod politely and carry on as before. As the Tuvaluan theologian Mania Talia writes: “Why is it possible for those who enjoy the benefits of ‘climate privilege’ to maintain indifference, apathy, and ignorance about what is happening to the world’s climate? Why does a cognitive knowledge and localized experience of ‘troubling events’ not lead to greater public engagement or action?”5

Talia suggests that the one of the reasons for our inaction is that we have failed to consider the victims of climate change as a neighbour, our tuakoi (neighbour, in Tuvaluan). We fail to see the climate refugee as a friend worthy of hospitality and respect.

We have much in common with the rich man, then, who in his life on earth chose to ignore Lazarus lying outside his gates. In rich nations like Aotearoa New Zealand, we participate in a way of life that is unsustainable—though this word does not quite capture the horror of it. We participate in a way of life that leads to the destruction of people and planet. Yet this death, this destruction of our common home, largely occurs outside the city gates; in the far-off places that don’t need to dominate our imagination.

Even in his suffering in the afterlife, the rich man reveals that he still not has learnt his lesson. We see that even as he calls upon Abraham for mercy, he treats Lazarus as his servant to bring him water. So too do we patronise Pacific nations asking them to suffer the consequences of our actions, refusing to see their full dignity and humanity.

Second, then, we must witness Lazarus’ sores and poverty. While the rich man lives a life of luxury, Lazarus is hungry and begging, desperate for even the crumbs from the rich man’s table.

No human comfort comes for Lazarus during his life—but notice who does care for him. “Even the dogs,” our passage reads, “came and licked his sores.” We notice, then, a communion occurring between Lazarus and creation, between human beings and other creatures living on this earth. In contrast to the rich man whose life is full of waste and consumption, Lazarus is one who communes with creation, who receives the care of animals.

We are presented with two very different portraits, in this parable of Jesus, a story which comes at the end of a string of parables about the dangers of rich men and their money.

• On the one hand we have the rich man, whose life is spent in complete disregard for his fellow creatures. His greed and excess condemn him to a terrible fate.

• On the other hand, however we have Lazarus. Though he suffers here on earth, his life is marked by a simple embrace with creation. This embrace blesses him with an embrace in the next life.

We have a lot to learn from Lazarus. We often feel overwhelmed when facing such enormous issues like climate change or ecological destruction. The weight of these realties can be paralysing. Lazarus’ example offers a simple first step. What creatures are we surrounded by? How does the earth and its inhabitants—of which we are part—care for us? How do we understand ourselves as part of this world, not separate from? The African American theologian Willie Jennings writes:

These days I am trying to understand how to be Christian in the dirt. Which means I am trying to think theologically from dirt and trees, sky and water, ocean and animals—not as background to life but as the reality of connection that prepares us for the living of life together. I believe [the Christian life] must be reframed inside a more expansive and invasive ecological awareness, one that magnifies the sinews of our connectivity—to plants, animals, the built environment, and each other.6

Here is an important lesson: We are not so separate from creation and the natural world as we assume. Indeed, we are not so separate from the changing climate we have so greatly affected as a species. What might it mean to learn from Lazarus, for while he receives no comfort from other human beings is still cared for by creation? What might it mean, as Jennings writes, to reframe our Christian lives in a way that “magnifies the sinews of our connectivity—to plants, animals, the built environment, and each other”?

Certainly, it must mean rejecting the way of the rich man, whose greed will gradually consume the earth. It means rejecting ways of life that are built on the mindless consumption of cheap goods and exploited land and labour. It means rejecting an economic and political system hell-bent on consuming all resources that future generations will bear the cost of. And it means listening to the prophets who continue to speak today—not from the centres of power or in the places we are often told to look, but from outside the city gates of our imagination.

Dr Andrew Clark-Howard

University of Auckland

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1 Søren Kierkegaard, Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, 201.

2 Justo González, Luke, 195.

3 Rebecca Lindsey and Luann Dahlman, “Climate Change: Global Temperature,” NOAA Climate.gov https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature.

4 Valérie Masson-Delmotte, et al., “Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C (SR15),” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/D7455D42B4C820E706A03A169B1893FA/9781009157957AR.pdf/Global_Warming_of_1_5_C.pdf.

5 Maina Talia, “Beyond the Tautologa,” in Unsettling Theologies, 227.

6 Willie Jennings, “Caught Up in God,” Christian Century, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/how-my-mind-has-changed/caught-god.