Sermon

“All praise be yours, my Lord,” for Sister and Brother Creatures

by the Reverend Shirley Smith Graham, St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, October 7, 2007

Today is the Sunday after the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi. This St. Francis was a monk living in the 13^th Century, following the Benedictine tradition. Francis became the founder of the Franciscans, and he inspired many with his acts of Gospel preaching, self-sacrifice, advocacy for the poor, and care for animals. To St. Francis was attributed the legend of stopping the wolf of Gubbio from terrorizing the sheep, livestock and human population of northern Italy. Francis explained to the wolf that he must live peaceably with humanity, and so compelling was his explanation that the wolf stopped its violence, and in return the previously irate and terrified villagers lived peaceably with him.

At St. Martin’s church, our story has resonance with St. Francis, who harkened back to our own St. Martin of Tours in his willingness to deprive himself of clothing or goods in order to take care of the needs of the poor. Both men saw their fellow creatures, human and animal, as signs of God’s grace in the world. For Martin and Francis both, each creature was like a sign-post advertising God’s radical care for the world and God’s eternally self-giving acts, personified ultimately in the self-offering of Jesus Christ on the cross. Both saints looked at the creatures in the world about them, and saw in those creatures good reason to respond to God with thanks and praise.

To Francis of Assisi, praise of God, in thanks for the creatures, sounded like this excerpt from The Canticle of Brother Sun:

Most high, all-powerful, all good, Lord!

All praise is yours, all glory, all honor

And all blessing …

All praise be yours, my Lord, through all that you have made,

And first my lord Brother Sun,

Who brings the day; and light you give to us through him.

How beautiful is he, how radiant in all his splendor! …

All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Moon and Stars;

In the heavens you have made them, bright

And precious and fair.

All praise be yours, my Lord, through Brother Wind and Air,

And fair and stormy, all the weather’s moods,

By which you cherish all that you have made.

All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Water,

So useful, lowly, precious and pure.

All praise by yours, my Lord, through Brother Fire

Through whom you brighten up the night.

How beautiful is he, how gay! Full of power and strength.

All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Earth, our mother,

Who feeds us in her sovereignty and produces

Various fruits with colored flowers and herbs ….

In his song of praise, Francis sees each creature – sun, moon, wind, fruits, flowers – as sign-posts that point to God’s care for us and reminds us to give thanks to God for the earth and all created things.

St. Francis’ appreciation for animals and all creatures has led to the practice of “blessing” the animals, a tradition that we will observe at the 9 a.m. service today. Although many people have for years heard of such a blessing or experienced it themselves, what is not much talked about is what we really mean when we say that we are blessing the animals. In fact, strict theologians draw a line at blessing anyone other than a person. They will offer God’s blessing of the inhabitants of a house, for example, but not for the house itself. They will offer a blessing for the sailors on a ship, for example, but not for the ship itself. Their reasons for drawing that line have their root in fully valuing created things for their usefulness to humanity but not putting them on a par with human beings. So where then, does that leave us with the animals in our care, who so often are dear companions in our lives?

Animals can be signs of God’s own fidelity and steadfast love. God, who is invisible, becomes known by character traits, in the natural phenomena of life: because the sun is radiant and warm, we learn something about the brightness of God’s glory and the warmth of God’s care. Similarly, because our dog or cat, is consistently affectionate and comforts us, no matter how badly our day may have gone, we learn something of what faultless, constant companionship can be like, and therefore have learned something about the faultless fidelity of God. No matter how late we are in putting down the food dish, no matter whether we leave our pet at the kennel for five days while we’re on vacation, our pets teach us something about the persistence of God’s favor toward us, favor which, like grace, is “unearned and undeserved” (BCP 858). I find it intriguing that our catechism’s definition of grace articulates what our animals often do for us: in a good bond with a pet, we can experience forgiveness, feel our minds to be enlightened, feel our hearts to be stirred, [and] know our wills to be strengthened” (BCP 858). Of course, our animals are not always vehicles of grace; they are not sacrament, which is defined as the “outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, give by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace” (BCP 857). I have yet to meet an animal which I would certify as a “sure and certain means” of grace – in other words, at every time and in every situation the animal is a sign of God’s care. But I do not think it too radical to suggest that animals can be signs of God’s care for us, and as such, they can have a sacramental effect on us.

In this way we can think of our pets as being vessels through which we learn about characteristics of God – such as steadfast faithfulness and forgiveness. We can think of our pets as being practice for caring for all the creatures of God’s world, as we protect, serve and care for them. We can think of them as jewels in the treasure that God has put under our stewardship. We can think of our pets as being reminders to practice justice in the world, forgoing recklessness and promoting kindness.

I think it’s helpful to get some clarity about what we think we’re doing when we offer a blessing of the animals. A clue toward answering this question might come through a Reformation/Protestant interpretation of what blessing is. In classic terms, God’s grace (of God’s care for us) is prevenient – or coming first. God’s grace is always coming at us first, or going before us to light our path. So any reaction we have is in response to God’s care. Thus, thinking about the image from today’s gospel lesson, the mustard seed of faith grows because God’s care has gone before it. God’s grace comes first, so that we might come after and flourish, like the prodigious mustard tree.

So then, our animal friends and pets are creaturely responses in the natural world, to God’s care, care which originally set in motion the physical planet, this earth, our island home in the cosmos. Perhaps this is why the mistreatment of the dogs found across the river in the dog-fighting ring seems so appalling. Animals, creatures of the world, which in itself was created to sustain lie, were trained to attack one another and destroy life. This was a perversion of God’s intention.

In a very different way, animals as creatures can be dedicated to God’s service in a special way, just as we might dedicate the altar book, or the candle stands or a chalice, or ourselves for a particular ministry. All of these instruments are part of the world and have value in themselves. But sometimes we further specially assign them to God’s service as a sign of our intention to ourselves be in God’s service. For example, when this church building was dedicated, or consecrated, it was done not so there could be a “holy place” (after all, God has given ample testimony that God doesn’t need a tent to dwell in!). Rather, this church was dedicated so that it could serve as a spiritual home to us who want to be disciples of Jesus.

We present creatures of the world as oblations. The word oblation is powerful in our spiritual vocabulary. An oblation is an offering which we present to God with the belief that God will bless it and do good through it. Such is the money you put in the offering plate; such is the person you are as you stand before the Eucharist; such is the bread and wine as they are offered for God’s service; we are each oblation as we offer ourselves. You may hear this sense of oblation being emphasized as I say the offertory sentence, “Let us with gladness present the offerings and oblations of our life and labor unto the Lord.” And in this invitation to bring what we have to God, we come with the profound and well-founded hope that God will indeed bless so that blessing increases in our lives and our world.

To offer an illustration of how our pets can work as sign-posts of God’s care, I’d like to offer a story about our family dog, who is 3 years old and some kind of collie, husky, retriever mix. I’m sheepish about telling you that our dog’s name is “Angel.” I tried hard to name her something else like sunshine, happy, smiley, Margaret, or Ladybug, but I was outvoted and, by family assent, the dog’s name became “Angel.” You see, it’s a little embarrassing for me as a serious student of the Bible to have my dog’s name be “Angel.” In Hebrew, the word “malach” as it appears in the Old Testament, translates as messenger. So then, biblical angels are God’s messengers, rather than rosy-cheeked cherubs, a divine form of Transformer/X-Men, or God’s protective body-guards. However, despite my embarrassment, it turns out that Angel’s name – even as messenger – is quite appropriate.

There was a period of our family life that was particularly busy and stressful, one of those seasons when we were managing all we could and probably couldn’t take on one thing more. We were living in Alexandria, and there was – in the middle of the night -- a torrential rainstorm. It wasn’t Hurricane Isabel, but it was something comparably in the amount of water that was dumped and carried in rivers across our yard – while everyone slept. Well, everyone except Angel, the dog. About 2 o’clock in the morning, Angel bounces onto the bed, panting, and pawing, and dancing around in a circle, waking us up. And, as we got out of bed, to explore what could possibly cause her such distress, we saw the water seeping under the door and beginning to flood our downstairs. So quick was Angel’s alert, that we didn’t have to wade through the water or watch it cause any damage – all the water was clean-up-able and a few sandbags outside and clearing the drain behind the house prevented any further problems. But at such a stressful time in our lives, when flood-damage to our home would have been the one thing to tip us over the edge, it was a sign of God’s care for us to have an alert dog, who would prevent a sure headache. Although this affectionate but terribly shedding family dog of ours is far from being a perpetual sign of God’s favor, that day she certainly did stir our hearts and strengthen our wills, reminding us of God’s care.

For all the animals that are dear to us, may God bless them, protect them from cruelty, and grant them to be for us signs of God’s care. Amen.