[N.B.,
A sermon delivered at St. Richard’s Episcopal parish,
Winter Park, FL, Oct. 6, 2019 on celebration of The Feast of St. Francis and
Animal Blessing]
 | ||
| Cross in San Damiano Chapel which spoke to Francis: "Rebuild my church." |
“Both
here and in all your churches around the world, we adore you, O Christ, and we
bless you, because by your holy cross [+] you have redeemed the world.” (Traditional
Franciscan prayer upon entering and departing a church) AMEN.
Blessed
Feast of St. Francis, everyone! This is a special day on the church’s calendar
and a special day in the life of our parish. It is a day I, as a third order
Franciscan, look forward to each year.
But why
do we celebrate this day on which Francis of Assisi died? What is so special
about Francis? I think that with the exception of this particular feast day,
this parish follows the church calendar devotedly. While we may celebrate the
feast days of other saints at our morning and evening prayer services, our
Taize services, and the special services we hold throughout the year, this is the
only main Sunday service of which I am aware that we deviate from the Church Calendar
to celebrate a saint. For the record, this would ordinarily be the 17th
Sunday after Pentecost.
So why
Francis? What is so special about this feast day?
The life
of Francis offers us some clues. He was a man of privilege who gave it all up
to serve the poor and the sick. A real hell raiser in his younger life, he was
called the Prince of Fools by his drinking buddies who often drank on Francis’
dime. But after being captured during one of the ongoing wars against nearby
city-state Perugia, Francis spent a year in a dungeon awaiting his ransom.
There he had time to reflect. And when he came home to Assisi, he was a
different man.
One of
the changes in Francis was a newfound compassion for the poor, especially the
lepers. A man born into a life of leisure, he had come face to face with the
disturbing lesson that many of us must come to grips with: lives of
privilege often come at the expense of the poor. As the prophet Jeremiah
says in today’s lesson: “Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness,
and his upper rooms by injustice; who makes his neighbours work for nothing,
and does not give them their wages…” Jeremiah says the just king is he who
is conscious of “the cause of the poor and needy.”
Francis
would devote the rest of his life to working with the many impoverished people who
lived in the shadows of the prosperous city-states like Assisi.
So the first
reason we celebrate the Feast of St. Francis is that he is a living example
of human transformation, of redemption, and of ongoing human development ever
more into the likeness of G-d. If
Francis can grow and change, so can we.
Another
change in Francis was a shift of his attentions from the transitory pleasures
gained from his own 13th CE version of a consumerist society to the
immense treasures of the natural world all around him. In doing so, Francis
rejected the fearful vision of the medieval church that saw the world as fallen,
sinful and full of evil just waiting for an opportunity to spring itself on
unwitting victims. The psalm for today reflects a bit of the vision that
Francis saw: “Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars; Wild
beasts and all cattle, creeping things and winged birds; Fire and hail, snow
and fog, [even] tempestuous wind, [all] doing his will…”
Where the
medieval church looked around the world and saw sinfulness, evil and danger in
every direction, Francis’ vision saw beauty, goodness, joy. Everywhere Francis
looked, he saw the image of the Holy One.
So the second
reason we celebrate the Feast of St. Francis is that he lifts up our gaze
from our own transitory, consumerist lives and redirects them to the beauty of
the natural world around us. And in a time when “this fragile earth, our island
home” is in serious need of our attention, the wisdom of Francis’s vision is
surely needed.
Along
with the natural world, Francis’ understanding of the goodness of creation
decidedly included us human animals. He held an exalted vision of human nature and
an accompanying appreciation for the human body. This was a clear departure
from and a badly needed corrective to the fearful visions of the human body that
informed the medieval church and still informs the vision of many religious
conservatives today.
There are
many humanities scholars who believe this new appreciation for the human body
was one of the causes of the Renaissance which would sweep Francis’ Italy a
mere two centuries later. Indeed, in the Basillica in Assisi which bears Francis’
body, a number of frescoes depicting the life of Francis by artists with names
like Giotto and Cimabue would demonstrate the first stirrings of the great gift
to the world of the Renaissance – the use of perspective in art.
Similarly
there are scholars in the social sciences who trace some of the roots of
notions of human rights to Francis’ insistence upon respect for the image of
G-d borne by every human being, beginning with those for whom his own society held
little regard. Matthew’s Gospel today reports Jesus speaking to the little ones
of his own time whom he loved. “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and
earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent
and have revealed them to these little ones, for Father, such was your gracious
will.”
The cherishing
of the little ones, the least of those in his own society, strongly informed Francis’
insistence that underneath the veneers of poverty and illness, the image of G-d
was present on every human face, whether we could see it or not. Mother Theresa
would later echo Francis’ vision in her work with the dying in inner city
Calcutta whose divine image she insisted hid beneath “the distressing disguise
of the poor.”
In
today’s Epistle St. Paul speaks of his “carrying the marks of Jesus branded on
my body.” Francis’ extensive work with lepers may well explain the famous stigmata
that he bore as well as the loss of his vision as he neared a premature death
at the age of 45. In his dying words, Francis said that if he had to do
anything differently he would have been kinder to Brother Ass, his name for his
own body. Not surprisingly, one of the many legacies of the Franciscan movement
is the string of hospitals that his order operates around the world.
So a third
reason we celebrate St. Francis this day is that he has called us to value
our Selves, our bodies and all other human beings as very good creations of
G-d.
Finally, the
legacy of Francis offers us a positive vision of our relationship with G_d,
Creation and the Afterlife. While Franciscans have not been known for their
scholarship, St. Bonaventure, a peer of Saint Thomas Aquinas at the University
of Paris, would articulate an alternative orthodoxy from the Augustinian vision
that had dominated western Christianity.
Bonaventure
envisioned a G-d whose relationship to human beings begins at our creation,
continues throughout our lives and ends with our reunion with G-d. He insisted
that our connection to G-d is inseverable, even by human sin, even by our
decision to ignore or reject that connection.
Thus, for
Bonaventure, it seemed obvious that we come from G-d, we find our existence in
G-d and ultimately we return to G-d. I have to say as a Franciscan that I find
that understanding much more compelling than any of the theologies which speak
of separation from G-d and any conditionality of G-d’s relationship to us. My
guess is that many of you do as well.
So a final
reason we celebrate Francis and his Franciscan legacy this day is because
he offers us a theology of hope, of connectedness, of divine presence, that is
not conditioned upon anything. That, in my view, points toward a G-d worth worshipping
and a saint worth venerating.
So why
celebrate St. Francis? He is a saint who models for us the possibilities of
redemption, of transformation, of ongoing development ever more into the
likeness of G-d. He is a saint who call us to cherish the natural world we have
been given to lovingly maintain, where the goodness of G-d can be seen
everywhere we look. He is a saint who calls us to value our own lives and our
bodies, just as they are, and to see the image of G_d in every child of G_d, the
image that is always there even when it is buried beneath the distressing
disguises of poverty, disease, addiction, and, yes, even the political ideologies
with which we violently disagree. Finally, he is a saint who reassures us we
can trust G-d with our very lives, both in this world and the next.
This is a
saint worth breaking out of our Sunday calendar to revere. For me and for many,
Francis models a spiritual path worth following. And for all of us, to the
degree that path incarnates the Way of Jesus, it is a yoke that is easy and a
burden that is light.
Harry Scott Coverston
Orlando, Florida
frharry@cfl.rr.com
hcoverston.orlando@gmail.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.
For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d? (Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures)
Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)
© Harry Coverston 2019
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