St. Francis Day Oct 6 2024 (Blessing of Pets at 10:30)
Penelope Bridges
Given the theme of the day, I want to share a story about my visit to the Zoo the other day. As is my habit, I headed first for the orang utan enclosure, where Kaja, who was born about 3 months after my grandson, lives. I have enjoyed watching the two babies develop in their unique ways. On Monday I watched Kaja, now close to 3 years old, as he puttered around, finding berries to eat, avoiding the siamang who likes to tease him, climbing with confidence, and hanging from ropes by various limbs. He was utterly unself-conscious despite the adoring crowd on the other side of the glass. I doubt if he has even an inkling how dependent he and his family are on the good graces of humanity to preserve his species and his habitat.
As I watched Kaja I was reminded that the nonhuman creatures around us depend on us for their continued existence. Even the most annoying ones are worthy of preservation – after all, who’s to say that the substance mosquitoes inject into us that makes us itch won’t some day be found to provide some kind of curative substance? Scientists now know that many of the bacteria that used to be the villains of any biological narrative are in fact essential for maintaining our health. Some of them can even be harnessed to eat plastic and so help us deal with the mountains of trash that we produce.
Closer to home, the creatures that mean so much to us – the Zoo inhabitants, our pets and our service animals – are undeniably innocents. They have no consciousness of the ways we have damaged our shared home. They are relieved from the anxiety of wondering what the future holds. They don’t have to shoulder the responsibility for healing the earth and its atmosphere. But we do.
Millions of our neighbors in the southeastern part of this country have had a rude awakening to the reality of climate change, as hurricane Helene became a monster of unprecedented proportions. Who would have thought that mountain towns would suffer catastrophic flooding? And yet the Episcopal Cathedral of All Souls in Asheville is uninhabitable today and will be so for many weeks, while whole communities have been washed away and thousands of people have lost homes and livelihoods, if not their lives.
As we close out Creation Care month today, will we simply forget what we have been praying about for these last six weeks, or will the words we have used in our worship stay with us as goads to move us to action?
The prayers we will offer in a few minutes call on us to be grateful for places of restoration and healing, to be alert to our dependence on God’s bounty; they challenge us to stand for what is right, to act for the protection of God’s creation, to become beacons of hope to the world, as Francis of Assisi was a beacon in his time.
St. Francis lived in harmony with nature. He was an extremist, to be sure, and I doubt if any of us could emulate his minimalist lifestyle for more than a few days, even if we wanted to. I am deeply grateful for the many ways in which our life differs from his for the better. But his Canticle of the Sun, a version of which you can find at number 406 in our hymnal, stands as an enduring anthem for creation care, weaving us in close relationship with Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Mother Earth, Brother Fire and Sister Death. To honor and care for Creation is to honor and care for our God, who created all things.
To be a pet owner is to receive the gift of experiencing both great love and great loss. Unless you share a home with an African parrot or a giant tortoise, it is almost a given that you will outlive your pets and that you will have the responsibility of both giving them the best life possible and of facilitating their departure from this life when their time has come. For those who don’t have human children, and for those who live without other human beings, a pet is family. A pet is the one who greets you with delight and demand when you walk in the door; who cuddles up to you on a cold evening and amuses you with its playful antics. Our pets may be the only creatures that we can count on to love us unconditionally.
There are cultures where pets are not common, where domestic animals are seen only as unpaid labor or a food source. But those of us who have pets are blessed, because we can experience God’s love through these creatures that trust us and rely on us for their every need. And, in their innocence, these animals remind us of the whole of God’s glorious creation, the billions of creatures that inhabit the earth and who are dependent on humankind for their continued existence. God has entrusted us with their care and with the care of the terrestrial home we share with them. What an extraordinary blessing and burden.
Another spiritual gift of being a pet’s human is that it teaches us how to care for the world beyond ourselves. Human beings have a tendency to be selfish, and our consumer culture encourages us to be very self-focused. I believe this can lead to serious consequences for our communities and the world about us. If we always prioritize our own comfort and convenience, we contribute to the degradation of the environment and the ever-widening wealth gap.
If we elect leaders who focus entirely on their own immediate surroundings, we allow oppressive governments elsewhere to flourish and wars to persist. If we restrict our charitable giving so that we can live in relative luxury, our less fortunate neighbors will suffer and our faith communities will decline. Caring about the animals we share our homes with exposes us to the needs of other beings and opens our hearts to what is beyond our own immediate existence.
Accompanying a beloved pet through the last moments of its life teaches us how to live through grief and loss, expanding our capacity for compassion when we come across others dealing with similar challenges.
And participating in worship together, hearing the names we read out in the prayers of the people, listening week after week to the story of salvation and the sacrificial life and death of Jesus reminds us that we too could be on that prayer list next week, that life itself is a sacred gift, that Jesus submitted willingly to a terrible death in order to save us from the fear of death.
And even though we expose ourselves to the pain of the world, we are not defeated by it, because there is good news: God does not fail us when we are in need, and the burden laid on us is light and easy to bear, because love surrounds us, love lifts us up, and love never ever lets us go. This is what Francis of Assisi knew and trusted, and this is why we celebrate him today, as we give thanks for the pets we love and the privilege we share of enjoying God’s dazzling, splendid, extravagant world. Amen.
