Blessing of the Animals service. Leighmoor UC, October 4, 2020
-Rev Barbara Allen
Suggested hymns
TIS 100: All creatures of our God and King
TIS 107: Sing praise and thanksgiving, let all creatures living
TIS 156: Morning has broken
TIS 155: O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder
TIS 135: All things bright and beautiful
TIS 175: Did you ever see a kookaburra laugh?
TIS 690: Beauty for brokenness
TIS 650: Brother, sister, let me serve you
TIS 626: Lord of creation
Prayer of Adoration, Thanksgiving and Confession.
O Loving God,
Creator of all creatures, great and small,
we celebrate the gift of life-for all.
We give thanks for our fur friends, our feathered friends, our friends with scales, and fins and wings,
our friends who have the breath of life as we have,
for those non –human friends who share our lives, or have in the past.
For the ones who give us a reason to get out of bed, or go for a walk.
For the wild ones who amaze us with their beauty and power,
we thank you.
Creator God, thank you for the gift of animals, those in the wild, on farms, in our homes.
You brought into being that which we could not imagine for ourselves,
life we cannot see without the aid of microscopes,
animals we can only see in pictures and on screens, from remote regions of this planet earth.
We thank you for abundant life;
for the birds we hear in the morning, for the drone of the bees when we are outside,
for the vast tapestry of life which is interwoven.
We thank you for the gift and blessing of our own animal companions;
for the joy they bring us,
for the unconditional love and forgiveness which teaches us about you;
for the confidant, the listener, the stress-releaser,
for the benefits they are to our health and to our Spirit,
we give you thanks.
As we celebrate their God-given lives, we pray for compassionate hearts, we pray that we may care for them, be good stewards of this earth, and care for all creation.
As we come together to thank you for the blessing and gift of other creatures,
we know that we have not always been faithful caretakers of the animals.
Forgive us when we have dirtied their environment, erased places of shelter, polluted the waters, killed off their food supplies, or neglected to feed or tend animals in our own communities.
Forgive us when we have neglected our own animal companions;
when we have said we are too busy to play,
when we have shooed them away,
when we have made excuses, saying we are too tired…too busy…more important engagements have come up…so that we do not walk them, cuddle them, or spend time with them.
Forgive us.
Forgive us when we have not considered the wider picture, when we have neglected animals in the wild, ignored cruelty inflicted in the name of ‘sport’ or in the name of food production.
Forgive us when we have focused on our favourite wild creatures, and neglected the care of the supposedly less beautiful, those who hold a lower public profile.
Each year, more animals become extinct or are added to the endangered species list: forgive us for allowing your creatures to disappear from the earth.
Forgive us when we neglect to see all animals as part of your creation,
forgive us when we neglect to acknowledge that your love beats in all hearts,
and that you give breath to all creation.
In a time of silence we remember other things for which we seek forgiveness.
(Silence)
God is love.
Through Christ our sins are forgiven
(thanks be to God).
Take hold of this forgiveness,
and live your life, knowing that you are forgiven and deeply loved.
Know that the Holy Spirit will enable you to love fully, richly, and deeply.
Amen
Bible Readings
Genesis 1: 20-31
Job 12: 7-10
Psalm 104: 10-25, 27-30
Galatians 5: 22-23
Sermon
‘Animals and humans are cut from the same spiritual cloth by the same divine hand and sustained by the same love.’ wrote Linda and Allen Anderson, in their book God’s Messengers: What Animals Teach Us About the Divine.
In the series The Vicar of Dibley, one episode is devoted to a Blessing of the Animals service. In a sense…as with many things Vicar of Dibleyish-it is more of a ‘what to avoid’ than a ‘what to do.’
But, at the end of the day, as Alice and the Vicar sit quietly over a cuppa, Dawn French, ie Geraldine the Vicar, asks Alice why people love their animals so much. Alice…and this is important…for her response is NOT what we expect from this scatter brained, naïve, kooky individual…she replies along the lines of ‘Well…they’re nicer than human beings.’
‘they’re nicer than human beings.’
Blessing of the Animals is an old festival, it dates back to an ancient Roman celebration of a pre-spring fertility festival to honour the goddesses Ceres and Terra, during which a pregnant animal was sacrificed, and garlanded oxen were paraded by the crowds. By the 8th century, this Roman festival had endured to the point where the work animals were given a symbolic ‘day off’, while their owners sought the church’s divine protection for their work animals (ie so they could perform the work needed, rather than out of fondness or love).
Although we tend to celebrate the Blessing of the Animals on October 4th, or the Sunday closest to that date, because it is the feast day of St Francis of Assisi, Patron saint of animals (and the date the secular world has procured and deemed ‘World Animal Day), in some communities a different date is observed, that of January 17th, the feast day of St Anthony the Abbot (also known as St Anthony of Egypt). Services that used to be held in Catholic churches, that were part of the Franciscan order, are now conducted in many Protestant churches in the West, as well as adapted for use within inter-faith gatherings.
Blessing of the Animals is grounded in theology.
Scripture is clear about our relationship and responsibility towards our fellow creatures. We have been granted the gift of stewardship, a responsibility to be taken seriously and exercised with care and compassion. To be caretakers of the earth includes the care and protection of animals, for all things are connected.
In Exodus and Deuteronomy, instructions are given concerning care of animals, to rescue those who have strayed, EVEN if they belong to your enemy.
In the Ten Commandments, animals are to rest on the Sabbath: ‘…you shall not do any work, you, or…your livestock.’
This is probably the first written record of animal welfare in history.
Animals are not to be harnessed or yoked to an animal different in size, strength or nature:
‘You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together.’(Deuteronomy 22:10)
Another form of animal cruelty is forbidden-that of teasing: ‘You shall not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.’(Deuteronomy 25:4-in other words, don’t excite the animal’s desire for food when it is unable to satisfy the craving).
In Leviticus 22:28, one is prohibited from killing an animal and its young on the same day (to prevent one witnessing the death of the other).
In the New Testament, the parable of the lost sheep is the basis for an understanding of God’s care and love for humanity. Jesus is known as ‘the good shepherd,’ and as ‘the lamb of God.’ In Colossians 1: 15-17, all of creation is under Christ:
‘He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation…he himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.’
So…if we need a rationale for a Blessing of the Animals service…there it is!
BUT
Such a service (which we can’t hold in these covid 19 times) should be more than an hour or two of warm fuzzies.
The service should motivate us to step out of our human-centric thinking so that we become blessings for our non-human brothers and sisters.
Animals-if we let them-can be (indeed, ARE) our teachers, but sometimes we are deaf, or hard of hearing.
‘But ask the animals, and they will teach you;
the birds of the air, and they will tell you.’ (Job 12:7).
Teachers.
What do they teach us?
First and foremost, they teach us unconditional love.
-unconditional love.
We hear about unconditional love most Sundays…God’s unconditional love for us, BUT our animal companions, our pets, show us too (well, most of the time-sometimes cats are more discerning!)
Our companion animals love us regardless of what we are wearing, what we have done, how much we have in our bank account, where we live.
They think we are the best thing on two legs!
A constant full time cheer leader.
Think about when you leave the room, perhaps to make a cuppa. Does your spouse notice when you return? Bet your dog does! Families- be more like your dog!
They can love unconditionally-we humans cannot do this! We aim to, we try…but we humans always fall short
BUT
our animals can love unconditionally…and they remind us that God loves us unconditionally too-(perhaps it is not a mistake that God is Dog spelt backwards?)
A reminder.
The other lessons they teach us include: forgiveness (not holding on to a grudge!), faithfulness, trust, gentleness, living in the present (or mindfulness, being present/in the moment)
BUT I want to go a little deeper, and suggest that other lessons are taught by non-human teachers.
They can stand next to Martin Luther King Jr, because they can teach us about civil rights-about not judging another because of the colour of his/her skin (or fur).
They stand next to Gandhi, Gandhi who said: ‘the moral progress of a nation and its greatness should be judged by the way it treats its animals.’
Gandhi, who, when he died, left behind few possessions: his glasses, loin cloth, and sandals.
We do not need much (I think we have learned that during lockdown)…love is worth more than possessions.
Animals must look at us strangely at times…putting on other clothes, or ‘skins.’
Teachers.
To love one another…regardless of colour, creed, religion, fur…
To make do with less (aside from food, clothing, shelter-‘things’ are not that important).
Animals teach us about the breadth of creation: to embrace our differences, rather than seeking to find similarities. I cannot run as fast as a cheetah, I do not have oval shaped blood vessels like the camel, I do not have a pelvic girdle like the sloth.
Learning new facts about God’s creatures also has the follow-on benefit of crushing the modern and rampant disease of ‘boredom.’ This disease has also increased during covid 19.
This time of Blessing can teach us another valuable lesson: to watch what we say
-to watch the words we use.
How often do we hear people put others down, deriding them for being ‘as drunk as a skunk’, ‘as dirty as a pig’ or talk about someone being ‘slothful’(ie lazy, inactive).
Skunks do not get drunk, pigs are not dirty-mud is used to cool their skin in the heat, and sloths do not move much because they need to conserve their energy-it takes them up to a month to digest a meal.
We mindful of our words! Words inform our thoughts, and thoughts inform our actions.
What about our much-loved animal companions? Are they signs? Do they point beyond themselves (the well looked after and loved ones) to others, to include the less fortunate?
We have to face up to the ones in need.
Love for our companion animals, the ones we have now, and the ones we were fortunate to share space with in the past-any animal- SHOULD PUSH US OUT OF OUR COMFORT ZONE to consider the cruelty that goes on
-in the racing industry (both horse racing and greyhound racing)
-live export is still going on, brought back into the limelight with the recent capsizing of the Live Export ship New Zealand last month, with 41 crew and 5,867 cows drowned.
-animal experimentation
Animals in ‘entertainment’-rodeos, circuses, aquariums
-factory farming, slaughterhouse cruelty
-saving endangered species.
Many of us wept during the fires that destroyed so many of our native wildlife, and those on farms.
How can this Blessing of the Animals (note, I call this a Blessing of the Animals service, not a Blessing of the Pets service) empower each of us, to be a BLESSING to animals, widening the circle, expanding out from companion animals, and ‘cute’ pin ups for endangered species (such as dolphins and pandas) to the less widely known ones.
Choose a cause. Help an endangered Species. Donate time, or goods or money to an animal shelter.
Find out HOW to BLESS and BE a Blessing!
-Be a Blessing
Anna Sewell, writer of Black Beauty, was a Quaker. This book, her one and only, was written to inform the public of the awful conditions of London’s workhorses. Her book led to legislation against certain equipment being used on horses.
She became a blessing.
She became a blessing.
Anna Sewell wrote:
‘There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to other animals as well as humans, it is all a sham.’
We need to move forward, following in the footsteps of other people in the church: Anna Sewell, William Wilberforce, and Rev. Broome (who set up what later became the RSPCA).
We are stewards, caretakers…let us also become blessings!
To conclude with these words of St Francis:
‘Not to hurt our brethren is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission-to be of service to them wherever they require it.’
Amen
Prayers of the People
Loving Creator God,
today we offer up prayers for those involved in animal welfare and conservation work: for the RSPCA, for Earth Watch, for the World Wildlife Fund, the IFAW, Animals Asia, Animals Australia, and for local animal shelters.
We pray for those who are working at policy and project levels,
for those tending to the needs of animals, and working for better conditions.
We pray for farmers, that the animals in their care are treated with dignity and respect.
We pray for strays; help us not to turn away but to bring them to a place of safety, where they can be fed, given medical treatment, and the chance to find a loving home.
Help us to be generous with money, time and the offer of hospitality within our own homes.
We pray for vets and vet practices, enable your wisdom and compassion to be evident wherever there are sick, scared, or dying animals.
Enable the animals to sense your presence, your comfort.
Comfort grieving owners; allow the many warm memories to break the frost of grief.
In the words our Savour taught us, we are confident when we pray to say:
‘Our Father…’
Amen
Blessing
God, our Creator, help us to love
all creatures as kin,
all animals as partners on earth,
all birds as messengers of praise,
all minute beings as expressions of your mysterious design,
and all frogs as voices of hope. (Rev Normal Habel)
Amen.
Rev Barbara Allen
October 4, 2020
