The Kingdom of Dogs

Rev. Ben Dueholm

April 18, 2010 (Easter 3C)

Wicker Park Lutheran Church

Sisters and brothers, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the risen Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.

A while back there was a popular series of images circulating on the internet depicting the dueling signs of a Catholic and a Presbyterian church. Unfortunately, it was a hoax, the result of a clever use of the website “church sign generator.” The series starts with a picture of the marquee of Our Lady of Martyrs Catholic Church saying “All Dogs Go to Heaven.” Beulah Cumberland Presbyterian Church then responds, “only humans go to heaven read the Bible.”

This prompts the Catholics to reply: “God loves all his creations, dogs included.” And the Presbyterians: “Dogs don’t have souls this is not open for debate.” Catholics: “Catholic dogs go to heaven; presbyterian dogs can talk to their pastor.” Presbyterians: “Converting to Catholicism does not magically grant your dog a soul.” Catholics: “Free dog souls with conversion.” Presbyterians: “Dogs are animals there aren’t any rocks in heaven either.” And the Catholics get the last word: “All rocks go to heaven.”

Now as I said, this item was a hoax. But it had me snookered, mostly because it was so funny that I wanted it to be real, but also because it represents, however humorously and simplistically, two different views of the natural world.

According to one of these views--the one represented by the bogus Presbyterian church sign--nature exists primarily as a tool. Plants, animals, air, earth, and water exist for our use and benefit.

Some people have gone farther and reached the conclusion that nature is cursed. They see nature as the source of wickedness or temptation. When humans commit great crimes, notice how often we compare each other to beasts, as if animals engage in things like torture or mass murder.

In any case, this view holds the natural world as being empty of religious or moral significance. We are the only thing created in the image of God and only we are subject to God’s particular care. We are the only creatures who pray and worship and write poems and make paintings and go to the moon. We have free will. We have something special called a “soul” that no other animals has and when we die this “soul” goes to a place called “heaven” or “hell” where nature doesn’t exist any more, only other souls.

A lot of Christians feel this way. But you don’t have to be a Christian to hold that view. You could say that our whole civilization and our whole way of life depends on our common assumption that the world exists for our use. The debates in our society between environmentalists and anti-environmentalists usually pivot on the question of whether we are using the natural world in a way that is to our long-term benefit as humans.

It may surprise you to hear that there is not a whole lot of support for this general view in the Bible. The Bible depicts a God whose care for human beings is wrapped up in his care for the larger creation, as the joke Catholic church signs suggest. Consider:

Our lesson from the Revelation to John today takes this line of thinking to a higher level. In this vision of a redeemed world, we see God being worshiped by angels, by the elders of the church, and by the living creatures, which represent the divine power of God. This is probably what we’d expect even if we were the dog-hating Presbyterians. But John saw more:

“Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and int he sea, and all that is in them, singing--

‘To the One seated on the throne and to the Lamb

Be blessing and honor and glory and might for ever and ever.’”

This is not a picture of human beings ripped out of a spiritually dead creation in order to go to an empty heaven. It is a vision of the whole creation redeemed. We may be the crowning achievement of God’s world. We may be more valuable in our Father’s eyes, as Jesus says, than the sparrows or the lilies of the field. But we are still part of the whole. And here we see ourselves restored to our rightful place within the whole--woven back into a universal fabric of worship that echoes from the insects in the earth to the fish in the sea and the birds in the air and yes, the dogs and rocks, too.

Now even if this is a vision we find beautiful and persuasive, it is very hard to unlearn our civilization’s ideas. It is hard to leave behind the assumption that our own welfare and even our convenience is the chief end of the universe. It is hard to see good stewardship of the natural world as a religious duty rather than an optional virtue or a practical calculation. It is hard to accept that God places limits on our will--that we can only extract so much from the world or dump so much back into it before the earth rebels violently against us. It’s hard to take our paintings and our poems and our godlike powers and just get over ourselves for once.

And even if we can do this, it’s still hard to put a healthier view into practice. It’s hard to get up a little earlier in the morning so we can ride our bike or catch the bus to work. It’s hard to spend some extra money and extra time finding food that is produced with the health of all creation in mind. To seal up our houses in winter, air them out in summer, and to moderate our thermostats at all times is tedious. To keep our kitchen scraps and sort our garbage is a pain. I will not dwell on the fact that all of these practices together are far easier than the brutal adjustments we will face if we choose not to think or act any differently than we do.

Rather I would suggest that any action that knits us back into the fabric of the world is an act of worship. However tedious it might be, it invites us into the vision John had of a world at peace. It gives us a glimpse of God’s kingdom, in which we are not reduced to a community of a few blessed souls, but expanded into a truly universal church of praise coming from everything that has breath and life. That is a vision worth changing hearts and our lives for, and waiting, and working, and praying to see. Amen.