St. Francis' Day
Today, October 4, is St. Francis’ Day. In the guidelines that govern our common worship, today is the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, and that takes priority over a saints’ day. Our regular commemoration of Sundays is the most important factor in our worship. So the Scripture readings for today are those for the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost. But today is St. Francis’ Day! And, at least for me, preaching on St. Francis is a lot more inviting than preaching on the lessons for today! And, after all, we’ll have the blessings and challenge of Job and the theological intricacies of Hebrews for several weeks ahead. The reading from Mark deserves faithful and scholarly exploration, but that’s for another day. Today is St. Francis’ Day!
In this week’s e-vangelist I shared a quote about St. Francis that is memorable for me. It comes from the book that sets out our calendar of saints and provides brief descriptions about them. The current iteration of the book is called Holy Women, Holy Men. St. Francis, it says, is probably the most admired but least imitated among the saints. Most admired, but least imitated. We do admire Francis, but almost in a fairy story sort of way, it seems. We are less eager to see him as a real human being who might be a model to us of discipleship. His voluntary acceptance of poverty and identification with the suffering of Christ are not attractive to most of us.
And we should think hard about that. But Francis has other things to teach us, too.
I want to share an extended quote from a reflection on Francis written by an Episcopal Deacon in Long Island. I don’t know anything about the writer; the reflection appeared this week on the website of Episcopal Relief and Development.
I’ve taken to calling myself a creationist these days, in part (grinning impishly) because I like to see how people react and in part because I have come to believe. (Still grinning impishly.)
But really – because of St. Francis – I have come to believe in creation. Not as a static event chiseled in the stone relief of our cosmic narrative, but as an open-ended and dynamic process where every thought and action, person and particle are some how only a few degrees of separation apart.
I am so grateful that Francis heeded his call. As he knelt piously in front of a dusty Byzantine icon of the crucifix, in a busted and crumbling church in the Umbrian valley, something spoke in him, maybe even to him. “Francis, you see that my church is in ruin. Go and rebuild it.”
Not only did Francis – in a fervor worthy of a recent seminary graduate – rebuild that little church stone by stone, he began the more laborious task of offering the world a different perspective of itself; a perspective that still has the potential to change everything.
In Francis’ time, the predominant view of the cosmos was hierarchical. In an attempt to reconcile philosophical and Christian worldviews, the medieval mind conceived of the universe as a ladder. God was at the top, radiating truth down to the dimly lit earth below – for most, matter was less than spirit.
Francis’ own sense of order, however, did not spring from the university or the monastery. Francis was, in a sense, not corrupted by the popular paradigm where divine aspiration could only move in one direction: up. For Francis, Creation was like a web – an expanding sphere of interconnectedness – with God at the center and all components, creatures, moving in myriad directions: out.
It is interesting to consider that when Francis recited the Canticle of the Creatures on his deathbed, he never mentioned animals, pets or otherwise. Certainly he loved and honored all creatures great and small, recognizing their value and part in the drama of the universe. But instead, he mentioned the sun, the moon, the stars, wind and fire and he called them all brothers and sisters. To do so was to name, in an intimate way, his and our deep relationship to the world of matter that surrounds us. (Jesse Lebus HERE)
Francis saw God’s creation as a dynamic, on-going web of relationships. It’s that idea of relationship that I want to stress. We use it sometimes with respect to nature or creation, but do we really think about what it means.
What is your relationship with creation? How would you characterize the “nature” of your relationship with nature? Or, better, with all of God’s creation? What are the qualities of that relationship? I hope you’ll consider this your spiritual homework for the week. Reflect on your relationship with creation.
Relationships, by definition, are active. They involve interactions, give and take. This isn’t about your perspective on creation; it’s about the give and take of your interactions with creation and the quality of those interactions.
What is your relationship with the sun? What do you give? What are you given? What do you take?
What is your relationship with water? What sorts of interactions do you have with water?
What is the quality of your relationship with the creatures of God’s creation?
Our relationships with other human beings provide us some models or metaphors that we might consider as we reflect on our relationship with creation.
Friendship. Is your relationship with creation like a friendship? Friendships enrich our lives very much. However, even the best friendships are usually intermittent, occurring in just a particular place or time in our lives.
Or is your relationship more like the deeper commitment of a marriage?
Do you think you have no relationship with creation? You do. You do have interactions with creation. Give and take. We all do.
Relationships can be abusive.
Or they can be casual. The interactions taking place, but not having and real meaning or significance.
There are a series of human relationships that are, by their nature, hierarchical. Which doesn’t fit as well with Francis’ view of creation.
A parent – child relationship.
An employer – employee relationship, something most of us have at least some experience with. But if creation is like our employee, what’s the bottom line? What is our company’s goal?
We often talk about environmental stewardship, but I’m a little less keen on that image now. It’s a hierarchical one. Where we are the overlord or manager.
Francis saw creation as a non-heirarchical, integrated, dynamic, ongoing process, interconnected and inspired by God. God is in the interactions.
Francis offered us the relationship model of siblings. The sun, the moon, the stars, wind and fire are our brothers and sisters. Anyone who has a human brother or sister knows it is not always a perfect relationship. But as a model for our relationship with creation it reminds us that we spring from a common creative source: God. And we interact more or less as equals within a larger whole.
Francis challenges us to ponder the quality of our relationship with creation. But, especially on St. Francis’ Day, he also reminds us to celebrate our place in God’s wondrous creation.
