[5/20/24: Sermon writing is a laborious process, and most clergy spend a lot of time, in the midst of hospital visits, countless meetings and emails, and other obligations, getting it just right. I posted my first draft of this sermon, to be given June 2nd, on May 15th. It has undergone a lot of changes, but I think I am hitting the right notes now. **Guiding statement: I propose to preach that we rest from cruel dominion, from thwarting animal justice and restoration, and to the end of becoming compassionate and merciful sovereigns of the earth.** We all need help with (sermon) writing well. Thomas Long is, in my opinion, the best help for writers of sermons.]
I.
Human animals rule the land. We rule the air. We rule the seas. We have dominion over the earth.
I completely agree with Matthew Scully, a Republican, when we argues in his eloquent and moving book, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy—I entirely agree with his argument that “[t]he term dominion carries no insult to our fellow [,non-human animal] creatures. We are all set forth into the world with different gifts and attributes. Their gifts, the ones their Creator intended for them, are good for many things—governing just isn’t one of them. Someone has to assume dominion, and looking around the earth we seem to be the best candidates. . . ” (12).
That truth doesn’t make us better or more valuable or less animal than, say, pigs, octopuses, cows, elephants or bats. Our dominion merely reflects our difference, our unique—yet completely animal—place in the world.
So the question we face today—and every day—is not whether we have dominion over the earth—we manifestly do—the question we face is a much more difficult one: What kind of sovereigns are we?
Are we merciful, compassionate, filled with wonder at the sheer diversity of life all around us and so are sovereigns committed to respecting and protecting the inherent dignity of all animal life?
Or, Are we cruel sovereigns, rulers who thwart animal access to justice and to restoration.
II.
We are so very often cruel sovereigns of the earth.
Our cruel reign is sometimes expressed through our faith in what Martha Nussbaum identifies, in her powerful and life-changing book, Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility—in what she identifies as our faith in a Romantic view of nature.
We enjoy Romantic thoughts of “Natural” spaces—and of “Natural” people, too. We love to imagine that there are, out there somewhere, pristine, self-regulated, balanced places and self-sufficient, rural people.
The Romantic idea of “Nature” intoxicates us, but when we sober up and actually observe nature, I think we start to agree with the 19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill: “Nature is cruel and thoughtless.”
When we sober up, when we are truly in nature, I think we begin to learn what ecologists teach us: “balance of nature” is a nice slogan for fruit and veggie supplements, but no such thing exists in nature.
And rural poverty and isolation from needed resources, like quality healthcare, may be, from the Romantic point of view, the “Natural” order of things, but that is just another reason for us to sober up.
Our faith in “Nature” makes us neglectful; it enables us to ignore the suffering of our fellow creatures. But we are not always neglectful, are we? Sensing that our fellow creatures, including members of our own species, can serve the needs of some dominant group, we force them to serve the free market.
Consider the slaughterhouses throughout our county. Who works there? What do they do all day? And what creatures are killed there? How many are killed there? And how are they killed there? And what’s the big deal? For some answers, read a book like Steven Wise’s An American Trilogy: Death, Slavery, and Dominion on the Banks of the Cape Fear River.
If we open our hearts, we may feel the cries for mercy coming from slaughterhouses all over our country and from those allegedly pristine Natural places. Feeling those cries, we may even be persuaded to rest from our cruel dominion.
III.
God asked us, in the 4th Commandment we read earlier, God asked us to take a break from our cruel dominion. We are asked to rest from cruel dominion on the Sabbath and to remember that God liberated us from the regime of cruelty.
That’s nice—but carefully consider the logic of the Sabbath Commandment: Liberation from slavery in Egypt is the justification for pausing the institution of slavery among those liberated from it. You heard the text: Let your male and female slaves rest on the Sabbath day. I guess you can take the slaves out of Egypt but you can’t take the Egypt out of the liberated slaves—except, maybe, on the Sabbath Day.
But there is a reason the command to let female and male slaves rest on the Sabbath is repeated twice: cruel dominion is all too often the policy of the Sabbath Day.
The story we read from Mark teaches us that cruelty has become a Sabbath Day tradition. Consider this story, another version of the pious cruelty Mark critiques:
All of 17-years-old, I attended a winter church retreat in McCall, Idaho. I managed to get very sick while at the retreat.
I will spare you the details of all the ways my body was trying to expel the sickness.
Anyway, I ended up in hospital, stayed the night on an IV, and returned to the retreat in the morning, in time for breakfast. I walked into the cafeteria and nearly vomited at the sight and smells of sausages and bacon. I consigned myself to hunger.
Later that morning, we gathered for worship and for communion. The chunk of communion bread I ate was so satisfying that, after the service, I went back to the communion table, and I started to chow down on the huge loaf of leftover bread.
It felt so good.
As I was being restored, clergy So-And-So walked over to me and calmly, but with a tone, reminded me that I was eating the body of Christ—and he suggested I stop eating it like a wild animal, by which he meant I should just stop eating it altogether; communion was over.
Being a good teenager, I just completely ignored him. I was not going to be blocked from what I needed to heal.
I hope we have the courage to teach our youth that lesson: sometimes holy trouble will look like totally ignoring religious people. Sometimes, even as your hand is being swatted away by church folks, you just have to keep reaching out your hand and ripping off huge chunks of bread, of justice, of healing. Even on Sundays, in the name of Jesus, you may have to find the courage and tenacity to resist cruel dominion.
Cruel dominion, all the ways, through our inaction and action, we block animals from justice and restoration—cruel dominion is so often a Sunday tradition. But tradition is not destiny. We don’t have to be like clergy So-And-So, blocking people from food, from healing, from justice. We can do something different, if only for one day a week. We can obey the 4th Commandment; we can rest from our cruel dominion.
IV.
Some of you have may noticed a story about the Hurricanes a few weeks ago. I know we have Canes fans in here today. Maybe you saw a story about them entitled, in part, “Hurricanes Use Rest As A Weapon.”
What they did was refuse to practice early in the morning on game day. They went out of their way to get on the ice the day before the game, choosing to rest on the morning of the game. The Canes know what we all know: rest impacts how we perform.
Rest makes us smarter. Rest makes us stronger. Rest makes us patient. Rest makes us merciful and compassionate. Rest makes us woke.
Woke just means that cruel dominion exhausts us. If we’re woke, that just means we want a break from all forms of cruel dominion.
Rested, we may wake up woke, ready to forsake all forms of slavery, all forms of cruel dominion.
Rested, we may even begin to hear that part of the 4th Commandment that asks us to give animals a rest. Rested, we may start to consider animals as something other than property to be used and as something other than food to be eaten. Rested, we may find it in ourselves to liberate animals from slavery to us.
V.
Philosopher Jeremy Bentham was right when he compared our treatment of animals to slavery. Our cruel dominion over animals can even be hidden in practices that are actually good from our fellow creatures. Think about some of the reasons we stop eating meat:
We stop eating meat to save rainforests, as our meat eating habits require more and more land to raise all those cattle. There are 1.7 billion cows on the face of the earth, and all those cows weigh more than all wild land mammals combined.
We stop eating meat because cows produce more greenhouses gases than our entire transportation sector, changing our environment.
We stop eating meat because it is not healthy for us.
We may even stop eating meat because we oppose cruelty to animals, and industrial farming is terribly cruel to animals. We have an intuitive sense that if we are cruel to animals, that if we support such cruelty, we will also be cruel to one another.
But notice: all that concern, it’s all about us.
Rested, we may realize what Aristotle did: animals like pigs, cows, and chickens “are self-maintaining systems who pursue a good and matter to themselves.” Rested, we may grasp that most animals, including all the ones we like to eat, are sentient creatures.
Sentience is about a lot more than feeling pleasure and pain. It also means that you have an opinion of yourself; you see yourself in a certain way, and you see others in your group, and other objects in the world, in a certain way. And you move accordingly, you move in a way that aligns with your sense of yourself and your sense of how the objects in your world conform to your understanding of what is good and what is bad for you.
Rested, we may grasp that the sow is sentient; she was not created to be food for us; she was created to pursue her goods: a long, satisfying life, and friendship, intimacy, family, nutrition, play, secure housing; rested, we may now understand that the sow desires to pursue her projects and to accomplish her goals.
Rested, the smell of sausages and bacon on the Sabbath may make us want to vomit.
Rested, we may come to this table and reach out our hands, not to kill and eat our fellow creatures, but to be restored by the taste of bread and of grapes.
VI.
Now, I understand if you were with me until that last bit about not eating sentient animals, like pigs. I get it.
I became a vegetarian just last November after I read Nussbaum’s book—and by the reactions of many family and friends, you would think being a vegetarian is the most weirdest thing to be in the world!
Yes, of course vegetarianism is weird, especially if the reason you are a vegetarian is rooted in animal studies, in the fact that most animals, including all of the ones we just love to eat, are sentient in the most expansive sense of the word.
Of course vegetarianism is weird; from day one we have been taught that justice is not a thing for non-human animals to enjoy.
Of course vegetarianism is weird; from day one we have been taught that justice is not a thing for non-human animals to enjoy. Humans animals are entitled to justice; cows, pigs, and chickens are entitled to ketchup.
Again, I completely agree with Matthew Scully. He writes, “I am betting that in the Book of Life ‘[They] had mercy on the creatures’ is going to count for more than ‘[They] ate well” (45).
Rested, we may even learn that it’s possible to forsake cruelty and to eat well!
VII.
On the sabbath day, just for one day, let’s rest from our cruel dominion; let’s eat more bread and drink more wine (I mean, grape juice). And if you just can’t, there is good news for you: right now, in Singapore, synthetic meat is on the menu. It’s “real,” and it’s lab grown. And I imagine it will come our way soon.
For today, let’s start simple; let’s embrace the deepest truth of our faith: God liberated us from cruel dominion.
Today, let it be heard and believed that God gave the middle finger to cruel dominion: God delivered the Messiah Jesus, crucified, dead, and buried, from the grave.
So today, let us really rest from cruel dominion; it’s just done day; it’s just one small act—but tomorrow, rested, you may wake up woke, ready to play the game of dominion differently, ready to become the human animals God created us to become: kind and merciful sovereigns of the earth.
May it be so.
Amen.
