The Animals
Sermon
Don't Forget The Child
Sermons For Advent And Christmas
Object:
Recently I ran across a lovely old English Christmas ballad titled "The Storke." This ballad was found written in the flyleaf of a prayerbook that belonged to Edward the Sixth, a boy king who died at age fifteen. Edward must have liked this poem.
The old ballad tells the story of a stork on Christmas Eve in the Holy Land. On learning that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the stork leaves her brood with food and flies to the manger. When she arrives, she weeps to see the Son of God laid in such a rude, rough cradle. The stork reaches down with her long neck and plucks the down from her breast to make a warm, soft nest for the baby. The Baby Jesus, now more comfortable, turns in the stork's direction, and smiles. Since then, says the old ballad, the stork is always welcome in every town and village and is known throughout the world as the "friend of babies."
It's a nice old story, one of many that links animals to Christmas. There are a great many animal/Christmas connections, aren't there, from that famous painting of Edward Hicks, The Peaceable Kingdom, to Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, and Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donder and Blitzen, and the "most famous reindeer of all," pulling Santa's sled.
Animals and Christmas seem to go together. So it's interesting to me that no animals are mentioned anywhere in Matthew or Luke's accounts of the birth of Jesus, except sheep. And Luke says that the shepherds left their flocks out in the fields. It was Saint Francis of Assisi, that great lover of animals, who added the ox, donkey, and sheep to our traditional crèche set when he created the first living crèche back in 1224.
Still we can guess that, if Jesus was born in a stable and laid in a manger -- a feeding trough for cows -- there were animals there. Probably oxen, cows, donkeys, chickens, maybe a few dogs and cats. Everything except pigs -- the Jews didn't eat pork and didn't keep pigs.
So along with Mary and Joseph and the shepherds and the angels and the Wise Men, the animals were also witnesses to Christmas. The presence of the animals says something. But what?
That's a theological question. And I'd like you folks to be thinking theologically this morning. That's no big deal, really. After all, the little girl was asking a theological question when she wrote in a letter to God: "Dear God, do animals use you, too? Or is there someone else for them? (Signed) Nancy."
The word "theology" means "God talk" in Greek. I'd like you to be "God talkers" today. A little bit later, I'm going to ask you, "How do animals witness to God for you?" Be thinking about that, please.
But first, let me offer a few roughed-out thoughts of my own, about God and Christ and human beings and animals. One thing I think of when I think of the Son of God being born among the animals is that this is a reminder of the interconnectedness of life. Or, as one biologist, Elisabet Sahtouris, has put it, of the "embed-dedness" of life.
Jesus could have been born anywhere: in a house, in a tent, in a palace, in the inn. The innkeeper could have said to Mary and Joseph, "You're in luck! We just had a cancellation!"
But no! The story says Jesus was born in a stable, out behind the inn. As far as we know, there were no other people there, except his parents.
Was that an accident? Or is it a message? Maybe a message about God's love for all living things. Maybe a reminder of that wonderful image from Isaiah: "The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them" (v. 6 RSV). The child who makes peace in all of creation is Jesus, born among the animals.
And I also wonder, is there a special connection between Christ and the animals? Is Christ to be found, not only in human beings, but also in animals, too? It says in the first chapter of the Gospel of John: "All things were made through [Christ], and without him was not anything made that was made (1:3 RSV). Earlier generations of Christians, living closer to nature, saw Christ in lots of living things.
There's a wonderful, strange book in our church library titled The Bestiary of Christ (Arkana Books). It's by a French scholar named Louis Charbonneau-Lassay. This book is his collection of Christian symbolism related to animals. Animals have often been used as symbols of Christ.
Some of the animal symbols for Jesus are well-known: the Lamb of God (John 1:29), the Lion of Judah (Revelation 5:5). And in the early Church, one of the common symbols for Jesus was the fish. The letters of the word "fish" in Greek was an acrostic for "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior."
But Jesus has also been symbolized as many other animals. Like a bee. The bee, "dying" in winter, "rising" in the spring, was seen as a symbol of resurrection. Or a pelican. The ancients believed the pelican wounded itself with its beak to bring forth blood to revive its young. Christ revives us with his blood. Sometimes Jesus was portrayed as an eagle. Eagles kill snakes, and the snake is a symbol for Satan. Or as a stag, a male deer, because the stag is always on watch. In the early Church in Rome, Jesus was even symbolized by a praying mantis, because Jesus was constantly praying!
Well, why not? As Walt Whitman put it, "A mouse is miracle enough to stagger [many millions] of infidels." Can't the animals represent Christ to us?
And if Christ was born among the animals and might be found in the animals, what does that mean for the way we treat the animals? Lincoln once said that you can tell a lot about a man's religion by the way he treats his dog or cat (paraphrase). What does it say about our religion -- or lack of religion -- the way we've treated the other living things?
We love our pets! And why not? They love us. As G. K. Chesterton put it, "Every man is a god -- in the eyes of his dog. Hence the popularity of dogs!" But we haven't done so well with the rest of creation.
Every one of us average Americans create, on average, more than twice our body weight in garbage and pollution daily. Due to overfishing and pollution, fish stocks are depleted just off of Cape Cod, an area once so rich in fish that they named it after the cod. Sea turtles with huge tumors growing on their bodies, caused by pollution, wash up on our shores. United Nations organizations estimate that by the year 2,000 we human beings will have driven to extinction a million other species.
Human beings are actually the most dangerous animals on this planet. Mark Twain, who loved cats, once wrote that if someone were to crossbreed a cat and a human being, the human being would be improved. But the cat would be diminished!
There's an image in Romans, chapter 8, that I like. Paul writes that all creation is "groaning," groaning in travail, waiting with "eager longing" to be set free from its "bondage to decay." All creation is waiting for the release of the sons and daughters of God, says Romans (8:19-22 RSV). All creation is waiting for us to wake up!
The other day I saw a bumper sticker with a picture of a whale on it. The whale was spouting a saying: Save the humans! It's not just the whales but the whole world that needs to be saved from us. And we from ourselves.
We need to do work on the theology for a small planet. I like what some churches are doing: blessing the animals. Hal Cooper and the Council of Churches do this every year at the West Yarmouth Congregational Church. Some years they have blessed over two hundred pets: dogs, cats, rats, birds, fish, gerbils, goats, ponies, a Vietnamese pig.
I read somewhere that they do the same at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in Morningside Heights. Only there they bring the circus animals into the sanctuary to be blessed -- including the elephants. They bless "all creatures great and small," including, one year, a beaker of algae.
Blessing algae? Silly? Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe that's a first, small step in recognizing our interconnectedness with all of life. "[God] hath put all things under (our) feet ... the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the sea" (Psalm 8:8 RSV). Including the algae. "All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made" (John 1-3 RSV). Including the algae.
I think about the servants in the parable in Mark. The Master left them temporarily in charge of his property. The Master went away for a while. Meanwhile he expected his servants to take good care of his property. And the Master wasn't accepting any excuses. He was coming back. He expected them alert and awake (Mark 13:32-37).
We are accountable to God for God's creation. We are accountable to God for the health of this planet. We are accountable to God for what happens to our world. And we can no longer say we are asleep to the environmental crisis. That's no excuse.
That, I think, is also part of the message of Christmas. Jesus was born among the animals. God loves them and came to save them, too. "For God so loved the world," it says, "for God so loved the world," and everything in it, "that he gave his only Son" (John 3:16a RSV).
There isn't "somebody else" for the animals. Christ is among them, and in them, and for them. And we are held accountable as God's stewards.
That's the message I get from the animals at Christmas. What about you? What do the animals say to you about God?
The old ballad tells the story of a stork on Christmas Eve in the Holy Land. On learning that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the stork leaves her brood with food and flies to the manger. When she arrives, she weeps to see the Son of God laid in such a rude, rough cradle. The stork reaches down with her long neck and plucks the down from her breast to make a warm, soft nest for the baby. The Baby Jesus, now more comfortable, turns in the stork's direction, and smiles. Since then, says the old ballad, the stork is always welcome in every town and village and is known throughout the world as the "friend of babies."
It's a nice old story, one of many that links animals to Christmas. There are a great many animal/Christmas connections, aren't there, from that famous painting of Edward Hicks, The Peaceable Kingdom, to Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, and Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donder and Blitzen, and the "most famous reindeer of all," pulling Santa's sled.
Animals and Christmas seem to go together. So it's interesting to me that no animals are mentioned anywhere in Matthew or Luke's accounts of the birth of Jesus, except sheep. And Luke says that the shepherds left their flocks out in the fields. It was Saint Francis of Assisi, that great lover of animals, who added the ox, donkey, and sheep to our traditional crèche set when he created the first living crèche back in 1224.
Still we can guess that, if Jesus was born in a stable and laid in a manger -- a feeding trough for cows -- there were animals there. Probably oxen, cows, donkeys, chickens, maybe a few dogs and cats. Everything except pigs -- the Jews didn't eat pork and didn't keep pigs.
So along with Mary and Joseph and the shepherds and the angels and the Wise Men, the animals were also witnesses to Christmas. The presence of the animals says something. But what?
That's a theological question. And I'd like you folks to be thinking theologically this morning. That's no big deal, really. After all, the little girl was asking a theological question when she wrote in a letter to God: "Dear God, do animals use you, too? Or is there someone else for them? (Signed) Nancy."
The word "theology" means "God talk" in Greek. I'd like you to be "God talkers" today. A little bit later, I'm going to ask you, "How do animals witness to God for you?" Be thinking about that, please.
But first, let me offer a few roughed-out thoughts of my own, about God and Christ and human beings and animals. One thing I think of when I think of the Son of God being born among the animals is that this is a reminder of the interconnectedness of life. Or, as one biologist, Elisabet Sahtouris, has put it, of the "embed-dedness" of life.
Jesus could have been born anywhere: in a house, in a tent, in a palace, in the inn. The innkeeper could have said to Mary and Joseph, "You're in luck! We just had a cancellation!"
But no! The story says Jesus was born in a stable, out behind the inn. As far as we know, there were no other people there, except his parents.
Was that an accident? Or is it a message? Maybe a message about God's love for all living things. Maybe a reminder of that wonderful image from Isaiah: "The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them" (v. 6 RSV). The child who makes peace in all of creation is Jesus, born among the animals.
And I also wonder, is there a special connection between Christ and the animals? Is Christ to be found, not only in human beings, but also in animals, too? It says in the first chapter of the Gospel of John: "All things were made through [Christ], and without him was not anything made that was made (1:3 RSV). Earlier generations of Christians, living closer to nature, saw Christ in lots of living things.
There's a wonderful, strange book in our church library titled The Bestiary of Christ (Arkana Books). It's by a French scholar named Louis Charbonneau-Lassay. This book is his collection of Christian symbolism related to animals. Animals have often been used as symbols of Christ.
Some of the animal symbols for Jesus are well-known: the Lamb of God (John 1:29), the Lion of Judah (Revelation 5:5). And in the early Church, one of the common symbols for Jesus was the fish. The letters of the word "fish" in Greek was an acrostic for "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior."
But Jesus has also been symbolized as many other animals. Like a bee. The bee, "dying" in winter, "rising" in the spring, was seen as a symbol of resurrection. Or a pelican. The ancients believed the pelican wounded itself with its beak to bring forth blood to revive its young. Christ revives us with his blood. Sometimes Jesus was portrayed as an eagle. Eagles kill snakes, and the snake is a symbol for Satan. Or as a stag, a male deer, because the stag is always on watch. In the early Church in Rome, Jesus was even symbolized by a praying mantis, because Jesus was constantly praying!
Well, why not? As Walt Whitman put it, "A mouse is miracle enough to stagger [many millions] of infidels." Can't the animals represent Christ to us?
And if Christ was born among the animals and might be found in the animals, what does that mean for the way we treat the animals? Lincoln once said that you can tell a lot about a man's religion by the way he treats his dog or cat (paraphrase). What does it say about our religion -- or lack of religion -- the way we've treated the other living things?
We love our pets! And why not? They love us. As G. K. Chesterton put it, "Every man is a god -- in the eyes of his dog. Hence the popularity of dogs!" But we haven't done so well with the rest of creation.
Every one of us average Americans create, on average, more than twice our body weight in garbage and pollution daily. Due to overfishing and pollution, fish stocks are depleted just off of Cape Cod, an area once so rich in fish that they named it after the cod. Sea turtles with huge tumors growing on their bodies, caused by pollution, wash up on our shores. United Nations organizations estimate that by the year 2,000 we human beings will have driven to extinction a million other species.
Human beings are actually the most dangerous animals on this planet. Mark Twain, who loved cats, once wrote that if someone were to crossbreed a cat and a human being, the human being would be improved. But the cat would be diminished!
There's an image in Romans, chapter 8, that I like. Paul writes that all creation is "groaning," groaning in travail, waiting with "eager longing" to be set free from its "bondage to decay." All creation is waiting for the release of the sons and daughters of God, says Romans (8:19-22 RSV). All creation is waiting for us to wake up!
The other day I saw a bumper sticker with a picture of a whale on it. The whale was spouting a saying: Save the humans! It's not just the whales but the whole world that needs to be saved from us. And we from ourselves.
We need to do work on the theology for a small planet. I like what some churches are doing: blessing the animals. Hal Cooper and the Council of Churches do this every year at the West Yarmouth Congregational Church. Some years they have blessed over two hundred pets: dogs, cats, rats, birds, fish, gerbils, goats, ponies, a Vietnamese pig.
I read somewhere that they do the same at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in Morningside Heights. Only there they bring the circus animals into the sanctuary to be blessed -- including the elephants. They bless "all creatures great and small," including, one year, a beaker of algae.
Blessing algae? Silly? Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe that's a first, small step in recognizing our interconnectedness with all of life. "[God] hath put all things under (our) feet ... the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the sea" (Psalm 8:8 RSV). Including the algae. "All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made" (John 1-3 RSV). Including the algae.
I think about the servants in the parable in Mark. The Master left them temporarily in charge of his property. The Master went away for a while. Meanwhile he expected his servants to take good care of his property. And the Master wasn't accepting any excuses. He was coming back. He expected them alert and awake (Mark 13:32-37).
We are accountable to God for God's creation. We are accountable to God for the health of this planet. We are accountable to God for what happens to our world. And we can no longer say we are asleep to the environmental crisis. That's no excuse.
That, I think, is also part of the message of Christmas. Jesus was born among the animals. God loves them and came to save them, too. "For God so loved the world," it says, "for God so loved the world," and everything in it, "that he gave his only Son" (John 3:16a RSV).
There isn't "somebody else" for the animals. Christ is among them, and in them, and for them. And we are held accountable as God's stewards.
That's the message I get from the animals at Christmas. What about you? What do the animals say to you about God?
