The Very Rev. Penny Bridges
Happy St. Francis Day! Here’s the one thing you need to know about Francis of Assisi: Francis was a leader of Christian resistance.
Francis lived in the 12th century, in a small city in what we now call Italy. The Roman Catholic Church dominated the western world, a huge, imperial institution with lots of power in international affairs. The Emperor and the Pope were on equal footing. This period, the High Middle Ages, was a time of extravagant construction – think huge Gothic cathedrals – the church as power center, its strong hierarchy a model for the culture. Italy was a patchwork of small independent entities, with no national identity, each city constantly pursuing rivalries with its neighbors.
This was an honor-based society of strict divisions between rich and poor; for the wealthy, it was all important to bring honor to one’s family and city; men proved themselves by dressing in armor and either jousting in peacetime or going to war. The idea of a middle class was just starting to emerge, with merchants like Francis’ father accumulating wealth and influence by importing and selling luxury goods to the aristocratic class. There were huge disparities in wealth. No wonder there were occasional peasant revolts against their lack of freedom and horrible living conditions.
Francis was the spoiled son of people with money but without noble status. He wanted to do something significant, so he went to war. Unfortunately it didn’t work out well: he was captured and held for ransom for over a year, contracting sickness, probably malaria, which affected his health for the rest of his life. Eventually his parents paid the ransom and brought him home, where he recuperated, and wandered around the countryside, until the day when he stumbled across a ruined chapel in the woods. He experienced a vision of Jesus saying “Rebuild my church”, which he took to mean physically reconstructing the chapel. He gathered a group of friends to help, and with time, the call to rebuild the church took on a more expansive meaning, as Francis developed his monastic community and systematically rejected the values of the culture around him.
Francis became a leader of faithful resistance within the church, standing against the accumulation of wealth, the hierarchical structures, the centralized power that defined the Roman Catholic Church at that time. He himself became an icon of a life that is based on a literal obedience to the words of Jesus, that rejects worldly power, that sees all of humanity and all of creation as one family. And somehow, against all odds, his order of the Little Brothers survived and grew, and the Franciscans are still with us today, exemplifying a way of simplicity and egalitarianism that stands as a faithful rebuke to the world’s values.
Francis is sometimes known as the most admired and least imitated of all the saints. His extreme poverty and deep humility are qualities that maybe don’t speak to many of us in this day and age. But we can learn from his example and find ways to push back against the consumerism, divisiveness, and abuses of power that we see in our own world.
The great theologian Walter Brueggemann wrote about prophetic ministry: ministry that pushes against the values of empire. He wrote “the task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.” A truly Franciscan statement.
We can follow Francis’ example by living in a way that critiques the evil that we see in the world: the fake Christianity that puts an assault rifle in the hand of Jesus and rejects his call to love our neighbors; the fear-based ranting against free speech, imagination, and equal opportunity; the demonic dominionism that clings to a self-interested and perverted interpretation of history; the toxic nationalism that replaces the universality of baptism with petty tribalism; the authoritarianism that tries to silence minority voices and sanctify the voice of power.
We can celebrate the life of Francis by issuing a call, back to the core teachings of Jesus: to pray for our enemies; to care for the poor; to see every creature as a brother or sister; to lift up the lowly; to be content with enough and let go of our craving for more and more and more.
We may not be willing to go as far as Francis did, when he literally stripped off all his expensive clothing and exchanged it for a simple robe; but maybe we can strip off some of the excesses of our lives; maybe we can peel away the wants and addictions that stick to our souls; maybe we can reset our attitudes to be less self-centered and more generous.
We can hold out hope of a better world in the face of the anger, grief, and despair that surrounds us, because God has promised us a better way of life, through the story of salvation that consistently witnesses to the triumph of good over evil, love over fear, life over death.
The Gospel that Jesus preached and Francis lived is radical, revolutionary, and threatening to those who want to wield total power. And that Gospel has outlasted all the empires of history; so let’s not put our faith in human institutions or flawed human leaders; let’s not be defeated by the apparent triumph of hatred and totalitarianism; let’s join with Francis and put our faith in the one who was in the beginning with God and who is with us today, the one who calls us to life and love and true liberty. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
