May the words of my mouth, and the meditation of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord.

We moved to Marshall in 1971 from my home town of Kalamazoo. We were, once again, disappointed with the Episcopal Churchís penchant for change, controversy, and stretching the limits of what weíve always done ìthis wayî. We did attend a service at Trinity, however, and signed in as visitors. Fr Sam West was the priest then, and he came over to say hi. He said, since we canít excommunicate ourselves and he wasnít going to recommend the Church do it, we might as well come on back.

Change has been the only constant in my life since then. This Season of Creation in the last 8 weeks of Pentecost is only the latest in a long series of experiments in our lives as members of this community of faith. I am grateful to Fr Len for this Season of Creation. I do not know of any other parish in this (or the other Michigan) dioceses who have incorporated it into our worship, but there are a lot of them in the wider Episcopal world.

I am an advocate for animals ñ all animals, including human beings. Todayís First Lesson exhorted the Chosen People to remember their days as aliens in the land of Egypt, and to strive mightily to become a just society. To the extent that you recognize the suffering of others, it is your duty to relieve that suffering, even to the point of returning a pawned cloak before the sun sets on that day, in case that cloak was the only clothing your neighbor had. Failure to treat others justly would earn Godís wrath, so that if you failed to help the widows and orphans, God would kill YOU with a sword, thereby making your wife a widow, and your children orphans.

The Second Lesson is among my all-time favorites, the language we repeat at every service, from Matthew, and in Jesusís words: Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. These two Commandments hold all the law, and the prophets.

This is heady stuff for an animal rights activist, as it is for anti-racism activists and environmental activists and peace activists, among others. If we consider that all life is interconnected and precious to the Creator of all that is, seen and unseen, that we live in a web of consciousness, that we are all on this fragile Earth, our island home, together, we surely cannot survive as the whole Body if we do not protect the survival and integrity of each of us.

If we can define our ìneighborî as all creation, we have infinite opportunities to glorify God in all creation. The outpouring of money, material things, volunteered time and energy in the American hurricanes, the Pakistan earthquake, and the numerous ripples caused by each of them, were glowing examples of what we can do when we allow ourselves to see the Creator in our fellow creatures, and we rush to help. It is more difficult to see exactly the same kind of suffering in our own communities. We have homeless persons, abused children, the naked, the hungry, the prisoners all around us.

There is little difference between the issues involved in animal protection and the issues involved in family violence and mental incapacity and severe physical and medical handicaps. We are called as the Body of Christ to do what can be done for those who are ill-equipped for any number of reasons to care completely for themselves.

The Other Animals ñ that is, those animals not in the species called human ñ are among the most vulnerable, and Christians have a duty to discern the will of God in our relationships with all creation. Many hold that ìdominionî means we can do anything we want with those some of us call ìthe lesser creaturesî. Who called them ìlesserî? Certainly not their Creator, who breathed the same breath into them that He breathed into humans. This Creator gave all His great creation over to human beings, to have dominion over the whole Earth. If we are to carry out the terms of ìdominionî on The Other Animals as God exercises His dominion over us, are we then saying that God chooses the Jew to cherish and the Gentile to perish, as we choose the cat to pet and the pig to poke on a spit?

Or shall ìdominionî be read as ìstewardshipî in Jesusís terms: Jesus came to serve and save His fellow humankind, and not to rule over them as the tyrants and despots that rulers so often become.

I have lately found a kind of comfort with the idea of Christ as the owner of the vineyard. Christ owns the vineyard and provides the seeds and the soil and the water fit to provide a bountiful harvest. He hires caretakers — that is, human beings capable of exercising His gift (to some of us) of free will ñ and He hires servants and slaves ñ The Other Animals and perhaps those human beings incapable of exercising free will, such as the Downs Syndrome child and the person who suffers from schizophrenia ñ and He offers us the opportunity to plow and till and separate the useful from the harmful and to share the harvest with all who are hungry and naked and ill and imprisoned.

In this scenario, Christ comes along periodically to demand of us that which is His ñ it is His vineyard, His original expense, His the taxes with which He pays His help and provides more gifts for His stewards to care for until the day He comes to claim all that is His.

In this scenario, we are the stewards of all else in Creation. For The Other Animals, this should mean Christians know where our food comes from, and how it got to our plates; we should know where our cosmetics and cleaning supplies come from and whether animals were tortured in the race to the store shelves; we should learn how to ask the questions as well as whom to ask; and we should not only make it a point to choose the most humanely-produced products but also to demand that producers meet our standards for products that are safe for us and not cruel to any other species.

In this new millennium, we have unprecedented opportunities to search out the answers to our questions of stewardship and responsibility. We can learn how our individual actions have an impact on our own local community and in the world at large, and we can choose from many options those that best suit our own capacities to share what we have with those who have less.

It is not my purpose ñ or my place — to demand that you, a fellow Christian and an Episcopalian, to become a vegetarian or that you turn in your leather shoes and your rabbit fur coat, or that you call the Fire Department to dispose of the hazardous materials we call prescription medicine. I invite you to add to your prayers the capacity to see the animals, to note their suffering in relation to your life-style, that you recognize the impact your choices make on all the rest of Creation.

In this reading from Jim Willis, you can substitute animals in laboratories, or animals in food factories, or feral cat colonies, or animals whose skins will be ripped from them to become a coat or gloves, or ñ you get the idea ñ fill in the blank with the animal you can soonest choose to help:

ìThe Animalsí Saviorî © Jim Willis 1999
I looked at all the caged animals in the shelterÖthe cast-offs of human society.
I saw in their eyes love and hope, fear and dread, sadness and betrayal.
And I was angry.
ìGodî, I said, ìthis is terrible! Why donít you DO something?î
God was silent for a moment, and then He spoke softly.
ìI have done somethingî, He replied.
ìI created you.î

Amen.