Sermon for Pet Blessing Rev. Dr. Robert Saler.

The act of blessing, like most acts of worship, involves the potential for danger as well as the potential for grace. On one level, the potential for grace that is present in the act of blessing pets is obvious just from looking around today. It s genuinely delightful to be able to share this chapel space, so often the domain just of humans and the occasional plant, with our companions from the animal kingdom. To bless that which is so clearly one of God s blessings to us that is, the gift of being able to share our homes with a range of God s creatures is the sort of thanksgiving that comes naturally to our lips, especially when we reflect on what life would be like without pets. Were it not for the chance that I have to spend time with my greyhound and two cats at the end of the day, the task of dealing with humans day in and day out would be far more onerous, and I would certainly be less good at it. However, the danger of pet blessing is as real as it is subtle. And that danger, I think, can be put this way. We are all aware that the word pet, especially once it escapes the confines of describing only our non-human live-in companions, carries with it some negative connotations. If, for instance, this service was a wedding ceremony, and if the presider were to talk of one partner becoming a pet of the other, we would rightfully become very uneasy about the integrity of that relationship. Likewise, if we were out West, say, and we had the good fortune of being able to observe a grizzly bear walking through the Rockies a situation that would only be fortunate if we were at a safe distance! there is something within us that would hesitate to envision such a majestic creature becoming a pet in one of our homes. The word pet carries not only the positive connotations of affection, but also the negative connotations of domestication in fact, the sort of domestication that leads to diminution. Understood wrongly, the act of blessing pets or pethood could be taken to be a celebration of our domination over creatures that,

not too long ago in our earth s history, very much had the upper hand over humans as a species. Blessing pets runs the risk of blessing domination, especially if it happens in the name of sentimentality, or worse, cuteness and cuddliness. If we want to see that danger in action in the history of the church, we need look no further than the history of the saint in whose name we carry out this celebration. St. Francis, it seems to me, is generally regarded as one of the cutest and cuddliest of the saints. Icons and statues of him generally feature the episode from his life in which he preaches the gospel to the birds and other surrounding creatures. He is rightly remembered for his humility, as well as the beautiful lyricism of the ecological doxology that pervades his writings about grace and nature. Less remembered, however, and less conveniently remembered, is the fact that St. Francis and the order that he founded were highly contentious thorns in the side of the established church throughout the later medieval period. Mention Francis of Assisi to the average Dominican in the early 14th century and what you would hear about was not a kindly saint preaching softly to the birds, but about the spiritual founder of an order whose existence served as a sharp critique of the material wealth of the church and the institutionalization of a system far removed from the original poverty of Christ and his followers. And because Francis had a highly developed theological sense of the implications of the psalmist s words the Earth is the Lord s and all that is in it he by no means limited the sharpness of his social critique to the ecclesial realm. Politicians and rulers were as likely come under his censure as were wealthy clergy. Which suggests that, if we really wanted to honor St. Francis legacy this day, we might conclude our pet blessing by hopping on the bus and joining the protestors outside of Wall Street in Manhattan, because a Franciscan mode of worship would by no means separate the act of celebrating the fecundity of God s nature with the act of protesting all that would limit access to that fecundity to all but the super-rich of this world. But instead, the church has too often fallen into the trap of making a pet of St. Francis cute and cuddly, to be sure, but only once the dangerous edges are removed and the dangerous instincts tamed by way of selective amnesia.

But if St. Francis exemplifies the danger of the act of blessing pets, then perhaps his legacy also holds the key to understanding what it is we re doing today in a way that deserves the title gospel good news not only for us, but for our animal friends today. St. Francis reason for celebrating nature had very little to do with sentimentality. Instead, his great insight long predating the modern patron saints of ecological theology was that the grace of God only makes sense if its scope extends beyond the human community. Extends in such a way as to form bonds of solidarity the sort of solidarity that wraps up one s own destiny with that of the other. If we follow Francis example, then it might be that, when we extend a blessing to something, what we are really doing is acknowledging that we are in solidarity with that thing in such a way that, if it diminishes, then so too do we. That if its access to grace is limited, then so too is ours. That the act of blessing pethood, far from being a celebration of domination, is in fact a blessing that expresses hope the hope that, by opening our homes and our lives to our non-human brethren, we form ourselves as better citizens of God s earth community the community without which we cannot survive, much less flourish. In that case, our blessing would also be a prayer a prayer to God that the act of sharing our homes with animals might extend out into our becoming better at sharing all that God has made with all the creatures whom God loves the cute, the cuddly, the ugly, the dangerous, the wild all that we cannot live without, at least not if we define life the way the Bible does life abundant. Let us proceed with the hope that, by God s grace, our blessing will be of that sort the sort that forms us to be greater blessings to God s people and God s earth. Amen.