This sermon was preached for St. Andrew's Episcopal Church on Sunday, September 12, 2021. The text for this sermon is Mark 8:27-38. This past week the New York Times Arts section ran a story about a new exhibit at the American Kennel Club’s Museum of the Dog. Opening in time for the twentieth anniversary of the September 11th terror attacks, the exhibit memorializes the hundreds of rescue dogs who searched for survivors amid the wreckage of Ground Zero. The dogs ranged from tiny rat terriers to German shepherds and golden retrievers. They and their handlers worked 12 hour days, in some cases for 10 days in a row. But they found no survivors. In fact, their desperate search was so fruitless that the handlers had to stage “mock finds” so the dogs wouldn’t get too discouraged. But the exhibit also commemorates how the dogs served in another way. Anyone who has ever had a relationship with a dog would not be surprised to learn that the dogs became a source of comfort and inspirat