Text — Genesis 1:24-31

October 4 is the feast day of St. Francis, so this weekend is a big weekend for “blessing of the animals” services.  We considered holding our own blessing of the animals service this year.  This seems to be a big movement in church life.  It’s not just trend-chasing.

But today I hope to offer a different kind of blessing to animals.  There’s something we don’t talk about, a conspiracy of silence involving animals.  We have a pact with each other not to talk about the feelings of animals too much.  Let’s not talk about their suffering.

I have my theories about why this subject is off limits, including why it’s off limits among men, even among the obviously more highly evolved, enlightened male members of this congregation.

Men tend to enjoy two primal activities.  Let me rephrase that.  Of the many primal activities that men enjoy, two are: making fires, and cooking meat on the fire. 

I don’t want to take away anything from any you women who are handy making campfires, or charcoal fires, or operating the gas grill.  But I suspect that in most households, where there’s a man around, it’s the man who gets to go outside to play with fire and meat.  The fat drips down on the coals, the flame flares up and makes noise.  The meat gets flipped over with a pair of tongs.  This all goes well with drinking beer and talk about football.  This seems to be a testosterone-related activity.  It’s sort of “caveman-like” in a suburban sort of way.

Being a vegetarian, on the other hand, is a little feminine.  And even women vegetarians don’t make a big deal out of it.  Nobody wants to throw cold water on someone’s rack of lamb dinner party by saying, “No thanks, I’m a vegetarian.”

I’m not a vegetarian myself, I hasten to add — in case you were questioning my masculinity.  I do try to keep my diet low on the food chain, meaning that shellfish and fish are my preferred sources of animal protein.  Real men do eat mussels and clams.  I also eat a lot of veggie burgers made with soy-protein.  But I also enjoy — and this is a confession for which I beg for mercy — those juicy, double-decker hamburgers sold by a famous corporation whose name we all know. 

I’m not going to try to convince you to become vegetarians, even though we’d be healthier if we ate less meat.

What I’m focused on here is this way we avoid talking about and thinking about the suffering of animals.  We want this subject hidden.  Why is that?  And what’s the problem with that?

I remember being told, as a child, by my brother, “Animals don’t suffer.”  For a long time I wanted to believe that.  But animals do suffer.  They’re sensitive and perceptive.  Dogs can detect seizures coming on in their human owner’s brain before the human can. 

Some of you know that I was a medical student for a brief time before I dropped out — for a variety of reasons.  But one of the reasons, a reason that had a lot to do with the timing of my drop out, was that the next semester we were going to have to perform practice surgery on healthy dogs, just to see if we pull it off — anesthetize the dog, open it up, look around, take a few measurements, sew it up, and keep it alive for a week or two.  I just didn’t want to do that.

But that’s minor compared to what animals are put through in true medical research.  Most of us feel that medical research is a good thing.  We benefit from it.  And animals are used to test the dangers of household chemicals and cosmetics.

Last spring, I saw fairly close up, as close up as I dared to go, how chickens are raised in Arkansas.  I won’t subject you to all the gory details of this, but believe me, the crowding, the filth, the stench, the noise, the de-beaking done to keep the chickens from killing each other in that dense concentration made me decide right then and there never to buy any chicken product unless I knew it was free-range chicken.  I just don’t want to support inflicting all that pain and suffering on birds. 

And I don’t ‘want to inflict pain and suffering on you by saying all this.  But why is the suffering of these animals not considered worthy of our concern?  It would cost more to do research and raise food animals in ways that do consider and try to minimize suffering.  We have an economic interest in looking away from this pain.  But we also pay a price, maybe a bigger one, for refusing to consider it.

I understand and accept that we are not going to treat animals the same way we treat humans — not that our treatment of humans is so wonderful.  Our Genesis passage, and the whole Christian tradition, and western civilization does make distinction between human life and other animal life.

We are higher animals.  We expect more of ourselves and each other.  We restrain ourselves.  We don’t always act on impulses.  We do difficult things for the sake of the higher good.  We are also among the most, maybe they most, aggressive, violent animals. 

But here’s my point:  If human are higher creatures, if our better nature is to care about other forms of life, then why isn’t the suffering of animals a more legitimate concern?  What is the price we pay, the hidden price, for keeping this reality hidden?

Ignoring the suffering of animals trains us to ignore the suffering of humans.  Laws against cruelty to animals are based on the observation that cruelty to animals leads to cruelty to humans.  Serial killers often start out as children torturing small animals.  We should care more about animals for the sake of humanity.  It makes us better humans.

But we should also care about animals for the sake of the animals themselves.  Animals do feel.  They are happy and sad.  They get excited and bored.  They need companionship.  They get lonely.  Their physical health is all tied up in their emotional lives, just as ours is.

Here are two things you can do.

If you eat meat, you can buy some of that meat from a farm that raises it humanely and slaughters it humanely.  The animals aren’t crowded in dark stalls.  They’re not injected with hormones and antibiotics. 

In early September I visited the North Hollow Farm in Rochester, Vermont.  I saw how the animals live.  I spoke with the owners.  I saw where they pack the meat.  Their website is www.naturalmeat.com where you can buy beef and pork on-line.  They ship it UPS in dry ice.  You don’t have to buy all your meat there, but you can buy some.   It’s a little more expensive, but it tastes better and by supporting the humane meat industry and not just the factory farming industry, you’ll be giving animals’ well-being a higher place in the world.

And you can come to our 2^nd hour today where we’ll talk bout the animals in our lives, the animals who live in our homes, and how they comfort us, accept us, and bring love out of us.

Animals are like humans in many ways, and we too are animals.  Recognizing that makes us more fully human.