25th Anniversary as a Third Order Franciscan

May the power of your love, Lord Christ, fiery and sweet as honey,
wean my heart from all that is under heaven,
so that I may die for love of your love,
who was so good as to die for love of my love.


This is a prayer of St. Francis
that has been a challenge and inspiration for me for years.

At the suggestion of my Spiritual Director,
this will be my Franciscan witness to 25 plus years
of living a Rule of Life as a Third Order Franciscan,
not a sermon, but a witness,
an occasion to stand and deliver
about what being a Franciscan has meant to me.

I am thankful for this opportunity to share personally with you this evening.
One doesn’t often get the chance to talk about one’s self.
So here is something of my personal story.

I began exploring this Anglican religious order of Franciscans
who can be married and living in the world,
because, out of the blue, my husband said that he was going to do this,
and he asked me to consider it too.
I never figured out fully his attraction
or even how he came to learn about the Third Order,
but what happened pretty quickly for me
was the discovery of a whole world wide community
with the same spiritual values and practice
as I had been attempting to live out on my own.

This was an amazing and delightful discovery,
and also like finding water in the desert.
I could see immediately how the Rule of Life and community
were going to be significant supports and important spiritual resources
for my own personal work in living faithfully
what I had been baptized into – Life in Christ.

So I began this journey and formation process in 1981
as the Franciscan world celebrated the 800th anniversary
of the birth of St. Francis of Assisi.

St. Francis became a guide, role model, exemplar, mentor for me
in how I too would be in discipleship with Jesus.
The more I studied Francis’ life,
the more I discovered the depth of this man’s soul,
way beyond the bird bath
and some simplistic and archaic sounding stories
from the devotional book, The Little Flowers of St. Francis,
which previously seemed to me as being overly sweet.

Instead I discovered a complex man who felt deeply
and with great courage faced hard truths about himself.
Here was someone who could ignore what his father wanted of him,
who was not afraid to act counter culturally,
who could give all of himself to our Lord Jesus
when he discovered that Jesus had put a claim on him,
and who would struggle honestly to live his life with extreme integrity.

Now I don’t claim to have walked in his footsteps to the same degree.
For one thing I have never disrobed in public
except to get into a hot tub,
which is not at all making a profound statement
of renunciation and faith like Francis did.

But I have found myself keeping on the look out for lepers to kiss,
and I have kissed a number of them along the way.

The first one I remember quite clearly.
It was 1985, June 8 to be exact,
the day of my ordination to the diaconate,
to which order Francis had also been compelled by the Church.
The big impressive liturgy at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco,
of the ordination of four priests and 8 deacons
came to the final hymn followed by the spectacular postlude,
the toccata from the 5th Symphony by Vidor.
We poured out of the cathedral through the beautiful Ghiberti replica doors
into the balmy bright sunlight,
and there was someone I hadn’t seen in two years.
The last time I had seen him he was healthy and vigorous.
That day as I looked at him I was aghast.
His hair had turned all grey and hung limp,
he had lost weight
and was slowly and painfully walking bowed over two canes.
His face looked haggard as though he had aged at least ten years.
I gasped and asked him what happened.
He said simply, “AIDS.”

Now this was 1985,
and I was currently serving as a chaplain
in a cutting edge trauma and research hospital in Houston.
The impact of the AIDS epidemic was just beginning,
and not much was known about it then,
so the fear was great about how contagious it was
and how it was transmitted,
and all our AIDS patients in the hospital
were kept under strictest isolation precautions.
But here was a human being in front of me, not a stranger
and someone undergoing great suffering.
Without hesitation I enveloped him in my arms and held him
as we both wept.

What I was given that day
was a taste of the sweetness Francis had experienced
when he embraced the rotting form
of a leper confronting him on the road.
Francis later wrote: (from the Testament, 1226)
The Lord gave me, Brother Francis,
thus to begin doing penance in this way:
for when I was in sin,
it seemed too bitter for me to see lepers.
And the Lord Himself led me among them
and I showed mercy to them.

And when I left them,
what had seemed bitter to me
was turned into sweetness of soul and body.
And afterwards I delayed a little and left the world. …

And he goes on to write:
And after the Lord gave me some brothers,
no one showed me what I had to do,
but the Most High Himself revealed to me
that I should live according to the pattern of the Holy Gospel.

Francis has been the inspiration in my life
challenging me always to go to the next level in living out
what I say are my beliefs and values.
In his extreme example of following Jesus in literal gospel poverty
Francis provided me with permission and encouragement
to take my own spiritual journey much more seriously
than the cultural norm,
which affirms being “religious” as long as you are not fanatical.
Extreme spiritual work is looked upon with suspicion,
and for good reason as we can readily see in the world today
with the extremes of fundamentalism in every world religion
that results in spiritual terrorism.

But Francis lived his extreme devotion to our Lord in such way
that others were drawn to life, not death,
to ecological integration, not exclusiveness and separation,
to realization of union with Christ so deeply and completely
that he bore in his body the same wounds of the Cross.

Francis became a welcome beacon light for me,
an encouragement of the possibility of living every more fully
into the fullness of my human potential as a follower of Jesus.

From him I was able in my own small way
to discover the secret of gospel poverty, of non-possession.

A number of you have heard my story
of preparing to take a two year sabbatical
in order to devote myself fully to meditation
and scripture study.
I was delighting in selling or giving away most of my possessions.
But one thing remained – my house.
It had been on the market to be sold for months,
and no one even was looking at it.
The date I was scheduled to begin the sabbatical was rapidly approaching
and this one thing stood in the way.

A week prior to the end of my job and the beginning of this sabbatical
I went to see my spiritual director
and we talked about this concern
about how this one thing was holding me back
from being able to freely and whole heartedly
dive into the meditation work.
He said to me simply this, “Well, you’re a Franciscan aren’t you?
You could give your house away.”

Suddenly the light bulb came on,
and with a rush of joy I realized I could really be a Franciscan now.
I went home and called the diocesan planned giving officer
and told him I wanted to gift my house to the diocese.
He was quite delighted,
but told me that it would take awhile
for all the paper work to be done,
and he would need to be in communication with the bishop,
board of directors, trustees of the diocese, chancellor,
diocesan council, standing committee.
So meanwhile continue to have the house on the market
while he worked out all the details.

The following Sunday people started coming to the door to see the house.
On Monday an offer was made,
and by Thursday we had agreed on a counter offer.
Three weeks later the transaction closed and keys were handed over.
I tithed what I gained from that sale to the diocese.
God’s mercies are so great, and I have been so blest.

One more illustration of what I have learned from Francis,
a significant awareness he has given me regarding sin.
Francis would speak of himself as being a great sinner.
Sure, his youth was spent in revelry and excess,
something he certainly was repentant about after his conversion,
but his repentance went on and on life long.
He expressed his concern that coming so far,
up to the very gates of the Kingdom of Heaven,
he should find himself excluded because of his sins.

One might say,
“Oh, Francis, what a baseless worry.
You are so good, so self-sacrificing, so scrupulous.”
But, no, I am coming to understand what he was saying.
It was not a statement of super pious self-effacing humility.
It was a statement of fact.
The more we awaken to reality, the truth of life,
the more we are aware of the work of the Holy Spirit within us,
the more we are engaged in the spiritual process of discipleship,
the more we come to recognize the subtlety of our own sin.

The gross sins, the blatant sins are not a problem.
It is what is at the core of our beings,
what emerges in attitude and habit and motive and desire.
It is essential in the spiritual life to be brought beyond our self-delusion
to the truth about our huge need for God’s mercy
and of our utter reliance on Jesus
to heal and transform and bring us to the wholeness
in which we are created.

Francis, by all the time spent in deep self-reflection,
gave me permission to leave behind other ambitions,
more recognizable and acceptable to the culture of this world,
and to give myself ever more fully to this excruciating
but also exhilarating process of purgation/purification,
which I engage in meditation practice.
So I am one of many, some 3,000 of us Anglican Franciscans world wide,
and this is my testimony.
I consider myself very blest to be among the company
of other great tertiaries, who are also inspirations and examples,
other Third Order Franciscans such as:
Desmond Tutu
Emily Gardner Neal
Peter Funk (of Funk and Wagnell)
and Bishop Mark MacDonald,
who will be our speaker on January 30
at the Communion With Creation conference,
and so many others I meet at our Franciscan gatherings
when I hear about their many exciting ministries,
and Dianne Aid and Susan Pitchford and Steve Best
and Diane Brelsford and Carole Hoerauf
and Bill Berge and Edie Burkhalter
and Nedi Rivera
and so many more.

This is a fellowship which sustains me,
and supports my heart’s greatest desire in living my life in Jesus.


May the power of your love, Lord Christ, fiery and sweet as honey,
wean my heart from all that is under heaven,
so that I may die for love of your love,
who was so good as to die for love of my love. Amen.

Sermon Nov. 1 All Saints, Emmanuel, Mercer Island

All Saints Day, when we remember all those,
regardless of their acknowledged sainthood, or their obscurity,
who have died in the faith,
the capital letter Saints and the small letter saints,
the obvious Saints and the quiet, hidden and forgotten saints,
a day especially for celebrating all the saints
who don’t have their own day on the church calendar.

And then there’s the next day, November 2, All Souls Day,
when we remember all the faithful departed,
our own Memorial Day.

As we came in this morning
we saw memorialized there around the baptismal font
loving reminders of all those who have died in the last year:
members of the congregation or their family members
or close friends.
So this is a time to be reminded
of the common theme of mortality – Death.

Now these Saints, we may note, were often martyrs,
and all of the Saints are dead.

Saints are different from heroes.
With Saints it’s not all happy endings and success stories.

The reading from the Book of Wisdom states
“In the eyes of the foolish … their departure was thought to be a disaster, and their going from us to be their destruction …
in the sight of others they were punished”

The passage then goes on to say
that they were being disciplined and tested by God,
refined like gold in the furnace, and like a sacrificial burnt offering. This is the discipleship process
that anyone who is a Saint is called to go through.
This is the spiritual process that Jesus called his disciples into.

To follow Jesus faithfully is not just a one time altar call,
being fairly regular in church attendance
and keeping your nose clean.

Be assured that simply by being initiated into the household of God in baptism
we are now susceptible to this refining process in our lives.
It goes with the territory, part of the deal when we’re baptized.

Jesus, the spiritual master, is mightily present with us
as Resurrection Spirit, Holy Spirit,
doing spiritual housecleaning within us.

And I have learned from experience over the years
that if I don’t attend to what needs attention in my life
- spiritually, emotionally, behaviorally, relationally -
life is going to hit me up side the head - over and over again,
as much as it takes,
until I get the lesson,
until I awaken to my need for God’s incomparable grace, unconditional mercy and healing love,
and I start cooperating with,
instead of frustrating, this process of refinement.

You see, I have the belief that we are all saints,
and I don’t mean goody-two-shoes kinds of people
who are always sweet and smiley and self-effacing.

We are people upon whom Jesus has put a claim
and now there’s no use resisting.

You want life to work better for you?
Stop resisting and pay more attention to Jesus.

Remember he was the guy
who told Peter, Andrew, James and John
to push their boats out into the deep
after fishing all night and not catching anything.
And now when he tells them to cast their nets
all the fish in the lake make a bee line for the boat,
coming at the call of Jesus.

But then we humans aren’t half so cooperative as the fish
so that it often takes a lot more to get us to realize
that the One we call Savior actually can save us,
save us from ourselves.
Lazarus died.
He was gravely ill when his sisters sent the message to Jesus,
but Jesus had purposely stayed away
and he even informed his disciples that Lazarus was dead
before he started back to Bethany.
And indeed by the time he gets to Bethany
Lazarus has now been dead long enough in that climate
for significant decay.
There could be no disputing of the fact that he was dead.

Jesus was being very intentional in his delaying
and this was to serve a purpose in the school of discipleship
for Mary and Martha and those with them and his own disciples.
This was to refine their faith in a severe way,
through the intense personal experience common to all humanity,
the death of one we love.

For when we have come face to face with death
and discovered God with us,
discovered that nothing can separate us from the Love of God,
then we know that faith is simply trusting that reality,
and this will carry us through anything
and reveal our nascent potency as saints.

Jesus came to raise Lazarus from the dead,
the brother of two women who had great faith in him,
coming with disciples who ought to know what he could do.
And he encounters
“If you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
Here was the Resurrection and the Life
standing before them personified in Jesus,
and they couldn’t look up from their tears
to catch even the possibility of hope
that Jesus’ presence at that moment might make a difference.

It was enough to make a grown man cry.
But, of course, these tears that Jesus wept were more than frustration.
This was also Jesus taking within himself all their grief,
all their sorrow, all their hopelessness and despair.

“Take away the stone,” he tells them,
and when Martha protests
because she anticipates the corruption of the body,
Jesus’ rebuke must have come like a bucket of cold water
splashed in her face.
“Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?”

Then the only one present realizing faith in Jesus at that moment
was Lazarus – and he was dead.
But the voice of Jesus is not to be resisted,
like the fish swimming into the net
Lazarus responds to those words shouted into the cave tomb
and bound as he was, the burial cloth wound about both legs,
he somehow managed to hop up out of the tomb,
so powerful was that voice.



What they all went through, Mary and Martha, their friends, the disciples,
from grief
to what must have been a huge fright
seeing a dead man emerge from his tomb
to unspeakable joy.
Such an occasion will change a person – most profoundly.

That’s how saints get formed.

Jesus says to each one us,
“Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?”

We could see the glory of God being worked right here in us
if we would believe, if we would trust,
if we would not resist quite so much.

We would be Saints.
The potential is there.
We can be so much more than we are right now.
That is always the case.
God sees in us all the unrealized potency that is there
God sees us as great Saints,
ones who have gifts and ministries that can
bring living water to thirsty people,
that can unbind people,
that can loose them from all the various ways
in which lives can get bound up in death.

We’ve been baptized.
Jesus has put a claim upon us as his own.
He wants to disciple us,
so that we can be of some good use to the rest of a world
struggling in darkness.

We would be Saints.