We Are Creation
Sermon by The Rev. Hannah Wilder preached on October 4, 2026 at St. Paul’s, Year A, Proper 22.
Doesn’t having animals in church feel just a little bit like breaking a rule? Many of us were raised with the idea that church is supposed to be serious and orderly. Stand here. Sit there. Kneel now. Process this way. And then today we add dogs, cats, leashes, barking, and a little chaos. I love it.
Historically, animals in sacred spaces were not all that strange. In English cathedrals, the verger walked at the front of the procession carrying a staff. One practical explanation for that staff is that somebody had to clear the path. There might be dogs or even livestock wandering through the church. Holy. Beautiful. Reverent. And just a little chaotic. That feels pretty close to life.
We like things tidy. We like to think through theological questions, organize our beliefs, and make sense of things. And meanwhile, all around us, creation keeps doing what creation does. Leaves tremble. Dogs sigh. Birds migrate. Seeds break open underground. Bodies age. Things are born and things die. The world is not tidy. It is beautiful and strange and wild.
And into that world Jesus says, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” I wonder how many of us need to hear that today. Come to me, you who are weary. Come to me, you who are carrying too much. Come to me, you who are trying to hold everything together. And I will give you rest.
Notice that Jesus does not say, “Come to me, and I will explain everything.” He does not say, “Come to me, and I will teach you how to control the world.” He says: Come to me. Learn from me. I am gentle and humble in heart. And you will find rest for your souls.
Jesus describes discipleship as a yoke, something used to carry a burden. He is not promising us a life with no responsibilities or grief or hard work. But maybe he is inviting us to stop carrying burdens that were never ours to carry: the burden of controlling everything, the burden of proving ourselves, the burden of always being productive, the burden of believing everything depends on us.
And I think Francis understood that. Francis was born into privilege. He had money, status, fine clothes, ambition. And gradually, the life he had been taught to want became heavy. The Gospel began to feel light.
Francis started giving things away. He rejected wealth and status. He cared for people he had once avoided. He chose simplicity. From the outside, it looked like he was giving everything up. But Francis experienced it as freedom. He was putting down one yoke and taking up another. And underneath all that striving, he discovered joy.
Francis also discovered that he belonged to something much larger than himself. Brother Sun. Sister Moon. Brother Wind. Sister Water. Animals were not objects beneath him. They were siblings. The earth was not simply something for human beings to use. It was family.
Our other reading today gives us this beautiful image of a tree. Cole Arthur Riley invites us to stand near a tree and listen as the wind moves through the leaves. The trunk looks still, but every leaf is alive. And underground, hidden roots stretch through the soil. The tree may look solitary, but it is not.
Neither are we. We breathe because trees breathe. We live because oceans live. We eat because soil and rain and insects and sunlight work together. We are not visitors to creation. We are creation.
And sometimes creation reminds us of something our anxious minds have forgotten: that we belong. The shimmer of a hummingbird’s neck. The whiskers on a cat. The sound of a dog sighing as she settles down. Wind moving through pine trees. These things can call us home. They remind us: everything is not ours to control. Everything is not ours to solve. Everything is not ours to carry.
“Come to me, all you that are weary.” Maybe sometimes Christ says “Come to me” through prayer. Sometimes through Eucharist. Sometimes through another person. And maybe sometimes Christ says “Come to me” through wind in the trees. Come here. Listen. Breathe. You do not have to hold the whole world together. God is here.
Today perhaps the animals among us are not distractions from worship. Perhaps they are part of the sermon. They remind us that God’s world is bigger than the human world. They remind us that companionship is holy. And they remind us that life does not need to be perfectly controlled in order to be sacred.
So if you are weary today, hear Jesus speaking to you: Come to me. Put some of it down. Learn from me. Remember that you belong. And find rest for your soul.
I’d like to close with this poem by Mary Oliver called “Roses”
Everyone now and again wonders about
those questions that have no ready
answers: first cause, God’s existence,
what happens when the curtain goes
down and nothing stops it, not kissing,
not going to the mall, not the Super
Bowl.
“Wild roses,” I said to them one morning.
“Do you have the answers? And if you do,
would you tell me?”
The roses laughed softly. “Forgive us,”
they said. “But as you can see, we are
just now entirely busy being roses.”