October 2, 2022 + Saint Francis of Assisi + Lectionary 27c + Pr. Craig Mueller
More of us have more pets than ever. We drive to zoos. We watch live-feeds of eagles incubating eggs. We forward cute videos of cats and dogs to our friends. Yet we have an impoverished relationship with animals.
So writes Sam Anderson, who argues that like all of nature, animals have secrets to offer human beings amid their existential loneliness. Yet we are more prone to turn to things, to gadgets, to fast food., to fast everything. Anderson believes we need a mystical, deeper connection with distant animals, whether in jungles or forests, in myths or stories, or as teachers and guides.
What are we looking for? Anderson suggests we are looking to “orient ourselves, to locate ourselves on an accurate map of the universe.” Not with the coordinates of human culture that make us the center of everything. In other words, the fantasy of “a world made for us, in our image.”1
Leave clock time. Enter something like evolutionary time. Look into the eyes of a bison, a parrot, an iguana. And see what you learn.
Now that’s a theological statement for this Feast of Saint Francis: locating ourselves on an accurate map of the universe!
How do we find our place in the universe these days? We can relate to words from the prophet Habakkuk. Destruction and violence are everywhere. Strife and contention are rampant. Florida is reeling from hurricane devastation. Year by year we learn more from scientists about the effects of human carelessness on our planet. We are no longer trying to evade climate change, but learning how to live with it.
One of my favorite authors, Belden Lane, writes how fierce landscapes—like deserts and mountains—reveal that nature could care less about us as human beings. At first this sounds discombobulating. Yet what follows is humility. Finding our place. And then a divine embrace. And then a deep, deep peace.2
Yet for many today, the youngest among us, it is hard to have faith, to have optimism, to have hope for the future. The prophet Habakkuk writes of a vision for the appointed time. If it seems to delay, wait for it. It will surely come. Look not to the haughty and cynical. Rather, in the meantime, look to the righteous who live by faith.
Oh, if we could have such faith, even faith the size of a mustard seed as Jesus urges. We feel guilty or sad that we don’t have enough faith to meet the future that we are fearing.
One of my favorite terms for a congregation is that we are “community of faith”. Together we sing. Together we pray. Together we hope. Together we work for justice. Together we live by faith. Faith that we are not alone. Faith that we can find our place in the universe. And faith that God will meet us there.
Saint Francis didn’t place himself in the center the world. Rather he named the sun, the moon, the stars, the wind, and the air his siblings, his family.
The 2022 theme for a worldwide, ecumenical season of creation is: listen to the voice of creation. Listen! We know the concept of being muted on Zoom. The voices of those most affected by climate change are being muted. Yet we are called to listen to those with generational wisdom about how to live gratefully within the limits of the land.2
Listen to the voice of the earth. The earth is trying to adjust, using its own homeostasis, to the effects of our wastefulness, our carelessness, our lack of faith. We are trying to find our place in the universe. Indigenous cultures and other wise ones are helping to dethrone the sense of human exceptionalism that has been our guiding path for centuries. Instead, we are discovering that we are not the only ones created in God’s image. Surely that is also true for a tree alive with autumn colors, a grasshopper, a fox.
Is not the land grieving? Are not creatures lamenting that they are being displaced? We are singing several very happy creature songs today! But the one that we will next sing is in a different key: the key of lament and grief. If you are a remote worshipper and don’t usually open the bulletin PDF to read along with the hymns, please consider doing so as these texts are as important as the sermon! And especially the next hymn. Can you feel the creatures crying? Can you hear the Spirit sighing? Nature’s poor, the first to suffer, pay the price of human greed.
Give us faith, O God. Give us a vision for the future. For finding our place in the universe may just give us a surprising path forward.
1Sam Anderson, Creature Comfort: What I’ve Learned from a Lifetime of Voyaging with Animals. New York Times Magazine, 25 September 2022.
2Belden Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality.
2 https://seasonofcreation.org/