A Sermon by Tim Trussell-Smith
All Saints Parish
Brookline, MA
Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
October 9, 2011
We are celebrating St. Francis today. That's very significant because it is unusual for us to move the celebration of a saint to Sunday. We don't do it very often, as a rule. And that's a testament to St. Francis' popularity. EVERYONE loves St. Francis, right? He is definitely the most popular and most recognized Christian saint. Even our non-Christian friends think St. Francis is a cool guy, right? Heck, even our non-human friends dig St. Francis! Another testament to his popularity – which is also a product of his popularity – is that there are just LOTS of stories about St. Francis! I bet some of y'all know some: does anyone have a favorite?
The Wolf of Gubbio. In Assisi, Francis is simply seen as "peace." "Rebuild my church ... and he didn't get it." [Rev. Julia said from behind:] "He gave up everything he had to follow Christ." "Julia – thanks for preaching my sermon! Well, I guess we're done here then! Let's bring the animals on up!"
The other aspect of today is that this is "Stewardship Month" in our parish where we consider the gifts God has given us and how, in response, we might give of our own "time, talent and treasure." That means that David has been very unfair to me in making me follow on the heels of Charles LaFond who began our stewardship program last weekend with a very meaningful retreat and a memorable sermon. Not fair David. You shouldn't treat your seminarians this way! And so this raises the question, "What on earth does St. Francis have to do with Stewardship?" I'll give you my answer now and explain it later: St. Francis' entire life was about stewardship.
We also like St. Francis because ... y'know ... he seemed to "get it." We see him as an early prophet of social justice, environmentalism and interfaith understanding. In a blog on the Huffington Post says that he's the "radical Christian peacemaker" we need today and claims he would be out Occupying Wall Street if he were alive today!
But there's a problem; the ways we describe St. Francis as a "lover of nature" and our vision of him as the original liberal, social justice advocate ... that "hippy dude" are all misrepresentations.
Francis wasn't an early socialist or hippy: insightfully critical of the problems with capitalism – a crusader for social justice or interfaith understanding. Although he did live among the poor and outcast and did, apparently, come to be respected by and to respect a hostile Muslim ruler.
The problem is that we like to think that St. Francis "got it." We like to think that he was our forerunner. That he saw the ills of the world that we are beginning, just now, to recognize. What we want, I believe, is for St. Francis to become the patron saint of our own "getting it." We want Francis to be who we want him to be. But that does violence to St. Francis and it does violence to the true, radical nature of what he did in his life.
So, who was Francis? And what does the "real" Francis ... the one who emerges from his own writings and the earliest sources' agreements ... have to teach us about a "life of stewardship?"
Let me tell you another story about St. Francis. One of the crucial moments in his conversion happened in the Church of San Damiano outside Assisi which still stands and attracts hundreds of thousands of pilgrims each year. But then it was a broken-down, impoverished chapel with one priest who could barely feed himself. Francis was drawn to it over and over as he began to become more and more converted to a life of following Jesus. The story goes that on the altar of San Damiano sat a crucifix – and it was critical that this was a Byzantine crucifix as opposed to a Latin crucifix with a Jesus whose wounds were clearly visible and who hung limp and lifeless from the cross. This Jesus had his eyes open and looked out with a sense of peace. Francis used to look into Jesus' eyes and one day he found he couldn't look away. And he began to hear Jesus talking to him: "Come to me ... come to me."
Francis had spent time living with lepers, tending their wounds and he had often given away money he had made selling clothes for his father. But this vision took him to a new place. While many, many Christians in the emerging towns like Assisi chose to devote themselves to a life of poverty and service to the poor, Francis did not emphasize serving the poor in his ministry. In fact, there is an argument to be made that his "voluntary poverty" not only reinforced the negative view of those who were involuntarily poor ... but perhaps directed charity away from those most in need and toward Francis' new order of Friars. Of course, the Franciscans have served the poor for centuries – but the basic point remains: Francis wanted to be poor for his own sake. That baffles us today. I know that it baffles me, at least.
Lawrence Cunningham says this about Francis the "nature lover:" "Francis was not a lover of nature. He never even uses the word. [Nature, that is]. What Francis loved were birds, flowers, fire, water, animals, and people. He was interested in the concrete: he loved [people], not humanity; wolves, not wildlife; Christ, not Christianity" (Cunningham). And that point – about Francis loving the "concrete" is crucial to understanding what Francis has to say about stewardship.
So, even though Francis didn't "get it." Maybe that's our problem and not his. Maybe our understanding isn't the only valid understanding. Although I, as a person in my time and place totally agree with Bishop Tom that, "our mission is to heal God's hurting world."
Here is what Francis' example has to say about stewardship. And it might be very helpful news for us to hear. Here it is: it isn't about us. It isn't about our working harder at fixing things. It isn't even about us "getting it."
Francis didn't use his wealth wisely. What he did was flee from all that was keeping him from identifying and IMITATING Jesus Christ. Cunningham says this: ""While it is true that his emphasis on poverty had a prophetic edge to it ... his basic motive was Christological." That is, it had to do with who Christ was and is much more than it had to do with the ethical teachings of Jesus). "He [Francis] would be poor because Christ was poor" (Cunningham).
What does it mean that Christ was poor? It doesn't just mean that Jesus was a disenfranchised peasant. Although that does matter very much. It means that St. Francis, while looking into the eyes of the crucified Jesus awakened to the deep truth that the Son of God, the second person of the divine trinity ... God's OWN SELF ... made a choice to give up everything in order to come and live among us and to put himself in harm's way in solidarity with us. And, Francis realized it wasn't because of Christ's love for humanity. It was because of Christ's love for him ... Francis. For the confused, doubting, torn son of a cloth merchant from Assisi, Italy. Christ had lived, died and risen for Francis. And now Francis couldn't do anything but try to imitate Christ totally.
So he sought to give up all he had. To break out of all the distractions, the greed, the hunger for possession – what Charles LaFond calls the Fear and the Noise of the world – which separated him from God's love as revealed by Jesus. He sought to live with the same humility, peace, and love as Jesus. And in abandoning himself to that love ... even misguidedly, even foolishly and, perhaps, even harmfully ... he discovered the unexplainable joy God holds out to us. It's a joy that makes someone preach to birds and gives them the calm to shake hands with a wolf and to seek direction by spinning around in circles until dizzy. It's the kind of foolish love that God showed us on the cross. It's the kind of joy God showed us in the empty tomb.
Hence the scripture passages are not about justice and feeding the hungry. "May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world ... let no one make trouble for me; for I carry the marks of Jesus branded on my body. May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers and sisters. Amen."
" ... you have revealed [these things] to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will ... no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
The call of stewardship is the call of conversion. God does not hold out a plate asking for a tip. God comes down from heaven (to use the metaphorical, mythical language of our faith) to love us face-to-face in the most concrete way imaginable. God places God's-self on the altar table to offer us a gentle and light yoke that will lead us – dumb creatures that we are – to an eternal joy. God wants our lives. So, even if we don't get it. Even if we get it totally wrong – as we are bound to do ... as we have for our whole history – we are still allowed to give our lives to God. And in doing so, in losing everything we think is precious, we discover the joy that God had in store for us all along.
Jesus calls to US from the cross that would not hold him. Christ calls You and Me – not humanity writ large. God calls us through the mystery of the incarnation to live into the truth and joy of God's love. When Francis began to do that, he spoke directly to the souls of his own people – the merchants and vendors. He failed to serve the truly poor as much as he could, perhaps, but he lived as a witness to the love of God. And hence his most famous saying – which, of course, he never exactly said in this way - "Preach the Gospel at all times ... use words, if necessary."
How will you change your life? What crazy, insane things – or humble, ordinary things – will you do in response to God's call? "Preach the Gospel at all times." Amen.
Also, we should just be honest about Francis' meeting with the Muslim sultan. He wanted to attempt to convert him ... and moreover he wanted to be martyred in the attempt. Again, that baffles us.
But what happened at that meeting – though a mystery – suggests that it was also an example of Francis loving the concrete individual member of God's creation in front of him. He wasn't killed, and the Franciscans were long allowed in the Holy Land when other Christians were not.