Listen again to the words from today’s epistle reading: Philippians chapter 3
7 … whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss
because of Christ.
8 More than that, I regard everything as loss
because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things,
and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ
This is a description, not only of the Apostle Paul, who wrote these words,
but also St. Francis of Assisi.
He too had been overwhelmed by the Love of God,
and so for him anything else looked like rubbish in comparison.
Today is the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi,
and, as usual, we hear
about a lot of different churches celebrating this saint,
mostly with blessing animals.
like what we will do this afternoon.
As a Franciscan who deeply values the example of St. Francis,
I always appreciate the opportunity to help others
to see more in Francis than the blessing of animals.
Not that this is unimportant!
It’s just that we humans desperately need to get over our species bias,
our racism that sees the human race
as more intelligent than other creatures, and therefore more important.
We need to get it that we are a part of the whole ecosystem,
dependent on the other components of that ecosystem,
and, honestly, the ecosystem could get along just fine without us,
and probably a whole lot better.
Now, there is nothing trivial about blessing animal companions, or pets,
especially this year,
when amidst the Corona pandemic, quarantine and stay at home orders,
these four footed companions were the ones
who did not observe the six foot rule,
who gave unconditional love,
who helped us keep our sanity
and were medicine for the depressed and grieving soul.
That being said, I want to point out
that Francis knew the interrelationship of all living beings in creation
and expressed that in such a way that it impacted the theology
about the created order and our role in that,
shifting the emphasis from domination to interdependency.
Not that everyone got that message however.
Still, Francis is the ecological saint par excellence,
the one who saw the intrinsic connection between us humans
and all the other creatures, indeed the whole planet,
the entire ecosystem,
the interrelatedness of all life forms,
the interconnection that binds up all our destinies together,
so that with our four legged and winged brothers and sisters,
and our sister Mother Earth,
we must both honor them and serve them for the sake of us all.
This includes every living being from the largest whale
to the tiniest microbe,
and that, I need to say, includes the COVID virus.
We need to see that connection between us humans,
including mosquitoes, ticks, parasites, and viruses.
I haven’t even mentioned the climate patterns that are shifting,
the huge numbers of species that are threatened with extinction,
or the very real question
of what our children and grandchildren will inherit.
But Francis with his emphasis on the brother/sister relationship
with beings other than us humans
humbles us to see that we are not in control,
that we cannot continue exploiting Mother Earth,
that we too can be threatened with extinction.
So where is the good news of the Gospel for us here this morning?
We desperately need some.
So much has been happening to shake up our sense of security.
Each day seems to bring something else to complicate the dis-ease we feel.
As my daughter put it after the sudden news of COVID in the White House,
“Plot twist!”
We can’t figure out what comes next.
Listen again to the words from today’s epistle reading: Philippians chapter 3
7 … whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss
because of Christ.
8 More than that, I regard everything as loss
because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things,
and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ
Both the Apostle Paul, writing this Epistle from prison,
and St. Francis nearly 1200 years later
had found the pearl of great price and had sold all to gain it.
Knowing Christ Jesus was a value that surpassed everything else.
Knowing Jesus was worth more and offered more
than anything else could offer.
Knowing Jesus was the anchor of hope:
the anchor of hope for Paul in prison in the Roman Empire
where he was eventually to lose his life as a martyr,
the anchor of hope for Francis during a time of great changes in Europe,
a time of petty wars between towns
and a time of the violence of the Crusades.
Unstable times, and yet both Paul and Francis were solidly anchored in a faith
that could carry them through.
Let me tell you one more story of Francis:
Francis was the son of Pietro Bernardone, a cloth merchant,
who had built up a fortune
buying fabric in France and selling it in Italy.
Pietro was grooming his son to follow in his footsteps in the family business,
but Francis kissed the leper and encountered Christ,
and he began to give alms so generously that this alarmed his father,
especially since much of this giving to the poor
and rebuilding of derelict churches
was from Pietro’s own business gains.
On April 10, in the year of our Lord 1206,
in a dramatic showdown in the town square of Assisi
Pietro Bernardone dragged his son before the bishop
complaining about his son’s profligate behavior
hoping to get something back that had ended up
in the church’s hands.
The bishop turned to Francis and said,
“You have scandalized your father.
If you wish to serve God, return to him the money that you posses.”
For Francesco this was the decisive moment.
He immediately gave back the purse of coins he had in his pocket
and then gave back the clothes he was wearing also,
products of his father’s business,
stripping right down to the skin.
And he said, “ Listen, everyone.
From now on Pietro Bernardone is no longer my father.
From now on I can say with complete freedom, ‘Our Father in heaven,’”
And indeed from then on
Francis lived like the birds of the air and the lilies of the field.
He begged for his basic needs and gladly did without
counting it all joy, living in radical trust that God would provide.
What Francis discovered in following the example of Jesus
was that in possessing nothing, he had the whole world.
in possessing nothing, the whole world was open to him.
Well, how does that address the situation that we are in the midst of today?
This is a time of intense anxiety and precariousness for many.
Sometimes we get stripped clean of our possessions
such as when wildfires burn it all away
or thieves break in and steal
or when investments drop down in value to nothing
or the world has become so chaotic
or when the dreams you once had are no longer possible to be realized
Francis chose to strip himself of possessions as a voluntary act
in response to that great spiritual discovery:
owning nothing the whole world was his.
Well, all this is not to say that we should try to literally be like Francis
in his example of radical poverty
but it is important to know that following Jesus
is a path of spiritual renunciation
that leads to realizing union with God.
People like Francis provoke us to reexamine
our relationship with money and material possessions.
This path of spiritual renunciation lead Paul to write these words in Philippians 3:
10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection
and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death,
11 if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
And Francis’ own prayer to share in the sufferings of Christ
ended in the stigmata, the wounds of the crucifixion in Francis,
the marks of the nail prints in his flesh.
Continuing with verse 12 in the Epistle:
“Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal;
but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. “
So I give you this question to ponder today: where can we apply this
in our current societal situation and our individual lives?
Where are we in terms of our trust in God, our faith in Jesus?
Here is a way in which we can have our awareness transformed
so that when we know that all living beings are our brothers and sisters,
when we truly know that we are all related
and interdependent with one another,
then without possessing it, the whole world is ours,
and we are freed to be of real service to one another in love.
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