Sermon - Blessing of Animals - St Francis-tide

3/10/10 BLESSING OF ANIMALS – ST FRANCIS-TIDE

I must admit that when I first looked at today’s reading list, I thought there must have been a mistake made. Some of you may be thinking that too! Why two gospel readings? – what’s going on?

However as I sat with those readings in order to prepare this sermon, I began to realise why they had been chosen, as we come at the conclusion of the Season of Creation, to celebrate and remember St. Francis of Assisi, who in 1980 was declared the patron saint of ecology. For in their different way’s, they express some key aspects of Francis’s life and teaching, which are exemplary for us – for Francis brought to the church 3 radical things –
• A respect for revelation
• A demand for mercy
• A call to poverty

And I choose the word radical advisedly – for it means to be at the very root of something. And Francis was a radical- he was proclaiming a gospel that went to the origins, to the tap root; to the very source of life of Christianity itself. His was a message that challenged the wealthy and corrupt medieval church of his day, to return to the simplicity of Jesus’ original promise of “good news of the poor.”

In our reading today from Galatians, we hear a young St Paul expostulating with the kind of fervour that Francis would (much later) demonstrate – and indeed there are words here which well describe the transformative journey of Francis’s life. Paul writes -

“If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ.”

Francis would have sympathised, for as many of you probably know, he was the son of a wealthy merchant, and enjoyed the lifestyle that went with that. However as a young man, he went to war and was taken prisoner. After a year in prison he was released, but fell very sick and these two experiences proved to be transformative, preparing the ground within him for God to offer a decisive moment of revelation.

Wandering through the streets of Assisi, he entered the run-down church of San Damiano. As he prayed there, “he saw a vision of Christ Speaking to him, saying ‘Repair my home, which is falling into disrepair.’ Ever literally-minded, Francis began to raise the money to pay for the re-building of San Damiano by selling a bale of cloth from his father’s warehouse. A fiery conflict ensured between father and son, which ended only when Francis dramatically renounced his inheritance, throwing down even the clothes he was wearing, and left empty-handed to espouse ‘Lady Poverty’.” from the Wordsworth Dictionary of Saints by Alison Jones).

The words of Paul “I want you to know that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin, for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1.12), would have found a clear echo in Francis’s experience. His was a certainty born of direct, personal encounter with the divine – literally and ex-static experience; for the word ek-stasis means to “stand outside” oneself. It led him to “stand outside” his former life, to shed its habits and expectations as he shed his clothes; and to begin an entirely new way.

By begging, he eventually got together enough money to restore San Damiano’s, and others were drawn to follow his example – within ten years, there were 5,000 brothers following his “Simple Rule”, and as result of his friendship with Claire, sisters, The Poor Clares, soon followed.

What was it that attracted them? The simplicity of the rule! The holiness of the man and his attested ability to perform miracles? Probably! Certainly one of the things that attracted them was the radical mercy that Francis practised himself, and encouraged others to practise also. He took literally Jesus’ words to the lawyer in the story of the Good Samaritan we heard as our second reading today, “go and do likewise.” He is often quoted as saying, “Preach the Gospel at all times, and if you must use words.” – that is to say, use deeds rather than words to witness to the love of Christ for the world, but use words if you have to. Hence Franciscans are noted both for their deeds of compassion and for their evangelistic zeal. Many of them are among the world’s peace activists, seeking always ways to end the wars that so unjustly hurt the poor more than the rich; and often being active in missions to parishes, recalling ordinary fold like us to the extraordinary love of God for us.

Many of you will recall, in this tradition, the visits that the Little Brothers of Francis have made to us; and we remember them and pray for their ministry today. They of course are Contemplatives, committed to that essential life of silence and prayer that sustains the rest of us – leaving their hermitages only two or three times a year. Theirs is a life of radical poverty – sustained by their vegetable garden, their goats, their bees and whatever funds they gain from selling jams and cards. It must be a hard life at times. Yet no-one who has met Bros. Geoffrey, Wayne and Howard can have missed their joy – their lightness of step and twinkle in the eye.

Like their founder Francis, they have found by embracing poverty, a great freedom. They have learnt indeed, as our Gospel today says, that life is “more than food, and the body more than clothing.” (Matthew 6.25). Theirs is a lifestyle which truly challenges the consumerist idols of our day, and encourages us to re-think our notions of ownership and what is “enough”.

As Tom Cullinan, a Benedictine monk and peace activist from England, remarks, “Too many groups work at the level of nuclear arms or arms sales and not enough ask why it is that wealthy nations need armaments. There’s a tie-in between the arms race and our concept of ownership; what it means for a thing to be mine or yours. If I’ve got things, I have to defend them: if I own things, I have to lock my front door. And it’s at this deep level that monastic life ought to be relevant. We ought to say that nothing ever belongs to any of us. We need a new vision of ownership. But we can only say it by doing it, not by merely voicing it.”

In other words it is essential that we walk the talk. And Francis, and those who now follow after him, set an example of this for us to follow.

It is all too easy to dismiss him by rendering him “cute” – that diminutive little fellow in a brown dress, pictured with gentle animals around him and doves perched on his head and arms. The pre-Raphaelite pictures of a meek and mild Jesus, with long golden hair, blessing the little children, which some of you will remember from Sunday School books, have something of the same effect.

There was, I believe, nothing at all “cute” about Francis – or Jesus for that matter.

By his actions, far more powerfully than his words, he offered a radical critique to the church of his day, which still resonates today. Accepting a unique revelation, he recalls Christians to lives of mercy and poverty/

In our own day, this calls us to widen our hearts, embracing all nations and people and seeking always paths of peace and non-violence. But perhaps above all, Francis encourages us to embrace the fundamental right to life of other species. The accounts of his life are full of the tales of him preaching to the birds and taming the wolf. Hence the tradition of bring domestic animals to the priest to be blessed on his feast day. But much more is at stake here than simply seeking the health and well being of animals whom we value – important though that is.

It is clear that Francis’s attitude to animals and his skill in communicating with them, grew out of his long hours of prayer and time spent with God. He learnt from God to notice, value and reverence all living things, and this has wide implications. For the moment we accept for example that the bush stone curlew, now nearing extinction here on the Central Coast, is to be valued, we have to begin to change our human behaviour – thinking about those habits of ours that destroy habitat and food supply.

Such change is radical. It involves repentance, and different action. It goes beyond an attitude of “on aren’t the birds pretty – they really bring beauty to my place”, to transform us, so that we begin to understand that we do not own the world, but like all God’s creatures we are privileged to share its riches for a while, and must take some responsibility for all who will come after us, human, animal, bird, frog, fungus and bactium, - and this may mean us “letting-go” of some comforts we currently enjoy. It is a call to poverty – to leaving what we have, in order that others may thrive; and so that we may more easily draw near to God.

Francis indeed is a saint for our times, for he alerts us to the messages of Christ in the gospels – messages about the need to practice mercy towards others (and in our era that includes the animals, birds and forests, as well as other humans, who are currently being “set upon by robbers and left half-dead.”); Mercy of course is sometime translated “compassion”; and Thomas Merton on the day he died makes the point well, in relation to the need to expand our mercy to all living things when he wrote, “the whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another and all involved in one another.” Francis alerts us too, to the messages’ about the need for poverty – for letting go of our need for things and for security, in order to develop a more radical dependency of God.

Francis is a challenging saint – to follow him is not to conform to the norms of our culture; but as Paul said,

“If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ.”

Amen