Sermon: God is Green: Care for God's Creatures
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Sermon: God is Green: Care for God's Creatures Texts: Job 12:7-10Psalms 104:10-30 Date: August 17 , 2008 Rev. Emily Tanis-Likkel, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church
This is my final sermon in the God is Green series. When I began preparing for the first sermon, called “We are God's Gardeners,” I was surprised by how challenged I felt through the reading, thinking, and writing about the topic. It only intensified when I worked on the next two: Trust God, Restore the Earth and Creation Reveals God. All along, I imagined that this final sermon, Care for God's Creatures, may be anti-climactic, and may have the possibility of seeming more contrived, because, you see, animal rights has never been among my primary passions, I didn't have many pets as a kid and none as an adult. I've never had an animal friend, per se, and would rather observe a dog from afar than have one come up and lick my leg. And yet . . . I really shouldn't be surprised that even more than the other three, preparation for this sermon would provoke me to re-think many of the choices I make on a daily basis, that the study would grace me with an honest passion for an incredibly important part of life. A few years ago, when my cousin Julie commented that she became vegetarian after looking at the web-site for Peta, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, I have made a point not to look at it myself, because over the last several years I have heard an internal whisper to consider vegetarianism, and chose to ignore it. Preparing for this sermon meant that I could ignore those whispers no longer. Please don't misunderstand me: I am not trying to convince anyone else to give up meat. We can see in Scripture that God clearly gave permission for the eating of meat, and Jesus likely dined on fish regularly in his fishing town of Nazareth. So let's journey through some Biblical texts that tell us of God's compassion for animals, and what God intends for our relationship with animals. You may not come to the same conclusion as I, but even so, perhaps it can be some food for thought. We'll begin at the beginning: the book of Genesis. A few weeks ago, I spoke about how a non-literal understanding of the Adam and Eve story does not unravel the deep truths in it. The first telling of creation emphasizes the intrinsic worth of animals, and the second telling demonstrates the interdependence of animals and humans. Genesis 1:21 says, “And God said, ‘Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.’ So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.’ In this first creation account, animals were created before humans. This tells us that they have intrinsic worth in and of themselves, that they give glory to God apart from humanity. Animals fulfill their purpose of glorifying God, just by being. Yet, common practices deny animals the right to “be” how they were created to be. Take one example: chickens. Chris Evans, who studies animal behavior and communication at Macquarie University in Australia, says that “chickens can recognize and remember each other by their facial features. They have 24 distinct cries that communicate a wealth of information to one other, including separate alarm calls depending on whether a predator is traveling by land or sea. They are good at solving problems.” He says, ''As a trick at conferences I sometimes list these attributes, without mentioning chickens, and people thing I'm talking about monkeys,'' Mr. Evans said. 1 Yet the billions of chickens raised on factory farms each year in the U.S. Spend their entir lives in misery, without ever a breath of outdoor air, without ever having the ability to spread a wing, and without the ability to brood over or cluck to their young. Their beaks are burned off, their legs become unable to support their hormone-enlarged bodies, and they live in their own excrement. Is this why God created chickens? According to Genesis 1, the dominion given to humanity included the giving of plant-life for food, It reads, ‘See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And it was so. God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.” Some Christians take this to mean that God's ideal is a vegetarian world; that when God gave permission to allow for the eating of meat, it came with consequences—that animals would no longer be humanity’s friends: “The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal…” (Gen. 9:2). Yet the plethora of God-instructed animal sacrifices and lamb dinners does not seem all that consistent with a vegetarian ideal. Hmmm. What do you think? In Genesis 2, we read that animals were created as helpers, which has a meaning of mutuality, interdependence and companionship. In this second telling of creation, animals were made after Adam. Genesis 2:18-19 reads, “Then the Lord God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.' So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.” According to Genesis, humans and animals are of the same essence – nephesh, or soul. Throughout the Old Testament, people were instructed to live as harmoniously as possible with creation. For example, Exodus 23 includes the law of extending mercy to a donkey that is over-burdened. Laws in the book of Deuteronomy instruct people to refrain from muzzling an ox while it is treading out grain, and taking only the birds they need for nourishment, and leaving the rest. The Psalms have much to teach us about the place of animals in God's Kingdom. Psalm 36:6 sings to God, “Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your judgments are like the great deep; you save humans and animals alike, O Lord.” Psalm 104 says that animals are an expression of God's wisdom. “In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.” God cares deeply for animals. Psalm 104:16 reads, “The trees of the Lord are watered abundantly . . . In them the birds build their nests.” God nourishes the trees, which provide for the animals. Psalm 104:27 reads, “These all look to you to give them their food in due season; when you give to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.” This is reminiscent of the Israelites gathering manna in the desert. Truly, animals are signs that point to God. My Aunt Marilyn and Uncle Mark refer to their two cats as their bundles of grace. Their companions are always accepting, non-questioning and trusting. We hear in the book of Job, “But ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you. In God’s hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being.” The Psalmist extols the interconnectedness of all of life: plants and animals, soil and water, stars and air are all interdependent. We humans often forget our roots, that we are as much a part of this earth as a potato bug. Calvin Dewitt said that humans act like aliens on planet earth. We don't act like we are part of it when we treat our surroundings recklessly. The majority of grain that is grown is harvested to feed livestock, taking sixteen pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef, and more than half of all the water consumed in the US is used to raise animals for food, According to the 2006 United Nations report called Livestock's Long Shadow, demonstrating in over 400 pages the enormous impact that livestock has on the environment, says that the meat industry causes more global warming than all the cars, trucks, SUVs, planes, and ships in the world combined. 2 So the switch to a hybrid car is great for the environment, but cutting down on meat consumption goes much farther. The story of Noah teaches us that we are responsible to ensure the protection of species. The choices made by humanity either support the lives of animals or cause their mistreatment or even extinction. The Psalmist wrote that in wisdom God has made all of creation, and continues to create and renew the world. Life is from God, so the choices we make every day have an effect on God's world, and on the Creator. As one Biblical commentator put it: “Ecology and theology are inseparable.” 3 Why is there mistreatment of animals? Two weeks ago I preached a sermon in which I said that our part of restoring the earth is based on our ability to trust that God provides all that we need. Humanity's tendency to mistrust, to reach for the apple, desiring that which we don't need, also leads people to forget that we are not to lord over animals, but to serve and love them, to live in mutuality and interdependency with them. Another reason that we do not do a better job caring for animals is shown in the Job text, “Ask the animals, and they will teach you.” We have a hard time caring for animals when we do not listen. When factory workers are advised to not think of pigs as animals, so that they will have an easier time killing them, when we choose not to be informed about puppy mills, or species extinctions, or horse races, or rodeos, or circuses, when we choose not to think of where our food comes from, when we do not bend down and look into the eyes of an animal friend and listen, it makes it much harder to fulfill our vocation as humans to tend the garden. Jesus said that “whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me.” Animals are the “least of these”, our closest biological and spiritual kin. As we do to the least of these, we do to Jesus. Dominion as used in the creation story means to Serve. We are to love our neighbors as ourselves, to live in peace with others, peace in the garden. This past week I visited the animal sanctuary, Furry Tale Farm, where animals that have been abandoned or mistreated by humans wait for loving adoptive homes. The farm's founder, Suzannah Sloan, walked me and Eva around and introduced us to some of the animals. When meeting the pot belly pigs, she told us that they make great pets, and a few years ago it was all the rage to have one. But what happens to the cute little pigs? They get bigger, and owners don't know what to do with them. Many pot belly pigs have been left to die. Peaches is a pot belly pig that was put in a shed after the owner tired of her. She never had contact with her humans or any other creature, except when the door was occasionally opened and food thrown in. She was found by a neighbor after she had scratched her way under the shed, and was taken in by Furry Tale. It is a miracle that she lives, because pot-belly pigs die of loneliness. The horses at the sanctuary have been rescued from families who bought them for their children, then had no idea what to do with them. All of the puppies became terminally ill after a disease was brought in by a family who had just visited a puppy mill. The day I visited, volunteers where ministering to puppies, lovingly holding them and caring for them. The farm is quickly running out of money and it's future is unknown. Those animals are the “least of these.” What will we do for them? As one scholar notes, the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, would not, “keep animals that normally lie down to sleep standing in cages their entire lives, nor would he leave lights on twenty-four hours a day with the sounds of machinery and animals in pain ringing in their ears.” 4 He would not, in the words of the Pope, promote the “degrading of living creatures to a commodity.” God incarnate reconciles all things to God, as Colossians reads, “in him all things hold together.” Jesus taught in Matthew 2:12, “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you.” The Hebrew prophets describe the vision of all creatures living in harmony. Isaiah describes a restoration of Eden in chapter 11, saying, “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den.” If the restored earth is what we put our hope in, wouldn't we work for this peace now? Do we trust that God will renew the land, harmonize disordered relationships, and bring all things together at the end of time? Hosea 2:18 - “I will make a covenant for them on that day, with the beasts of the field, with the birds of the air, and with the things that crawl on the ground. Bow and sword and war I will destroy from the land, and I will let them take their rest in security.” The reign of God has begun. We can help bring about this peace on earth beginning with this very moment. So, what now do we do? You'll need to listen to God's whisperings in your life to discover what changes, if any, you are called to make. Some may be called to sponsor an animal at Furry Tale farm. Others may adopt a companion animal. You could take more time to listen to your own animal friend, to hear what it is that she has to teach you. Perhaps you may decide to eat less meat, or none at all. You could advocate for more legislation to protect animals from cruelty, or support organic farming. Maybe some of you are already doing all of these things, and may decide that what you are called to do is educate others on animal rights. It is a theological issue. It is a Biblical issue. It is a Christian practice that rarely gets recognized as such, but caring for animals is crucial in our human vocation to tend the garden. Each Sunday we pray, “Your will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.” There will be no factory farms in heaven. According to Revelation 5, at the end of time “every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them [will be] singing.” We will all be praising and glorifying God forever. When we sing, Praise God from whom all blessings flow, Praise God all creatures here below: let us allow, in whatever ways we are able, the freedom for the animals to sing.
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