10-6-19 Readings & Sermon

A reading from Isaiah.

A jute shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.

The Spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

His delight will be in the fear of the Lord.

He shall not judge by what his eyes will see, or decide by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.

He shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kick the wicked kill the wicked.

Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins.

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fowling together, and a little child shall lead them.

The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

The nursing child shall play over the whole of the ass, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den.

They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples.

The nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

The word of the Lord.

For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything, but a new creation is everything.

As for those who will follow this rule, peace be upon them in mercy and upon the Israel of God.

From now on, let no one make trouble for me, for I carry the marks of Jesus branded on my body.

May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers and sisters.

Amen.

The word of the Lord.

Thanks be to you.

The holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to Matthew.

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

At that time Jesus said, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent, and have revealed them to infants.

Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.

All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father.

And no one knows the Father except the Son, and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

The Gospel of the Lord.

Well, welcome to the festival day of St.

Francis of Assisi observed.

The actual day was Friday.

We moved it today because often what we know about Francis is that he holds a little bird, and people put statues of him in gardens, and there is really a lot compelling to know about this guy.

I want to throw a few sort of fun bits to you so you can know a little bit about him, and then I want to tell you a story that I think has really at least captured my imagination this year.

So many of you know Francis was around in the 11th and 12th century.

He was born to a middle class merchant, and actually, he was probably an upper middle class merchant because he was a bit of a fop and a dandy.

He sort of paraded around the Sisi and finery, and he had a lot of uh charisma and he had a lot of braggadociousness.

Uh he ended up a soldier in a war and got wounded, and then he fell into probably what was a pretty deep depression.

And uh he took to going outside the walls and he found a little ruined church to pray in.

That sort of became a center for meditation, and one day Francis heard this voice as he prayed that says, Francis, rebuild my church.

And of course, as many of us are wont to do, he took that very literally and he rebuilt that church.

It helped that his father was an upper middle class merchant because that is where he bought the mortar and the tradesmen.

When he was done rebuilding that church, he thought perhaps he might have been done with what God had in store for him until uh shortly after he was coming back home from the newly rebuilt church and he saw a leper.

And there were rules, of course, that lepers have to be quarantined, that they have to stay more than a hundred feet away.

Francis, poor leper, I think was probably running away from Francis.

Francis chased the leper so that he could hug and kiss him.

And this was his moment of conversion where he realized the voice was not about rebuilding this building, but rebuilding what it meant to be God's people.

And so Francis heard one day the gospel, the same as St.

Anthony, where Jesus is talking to the rich young ruler and says, One thing you lack, sell everything you have and follow me.

And Francis sure enough took that literal too and started selling all of his dad's things.

Dad was not really happy, including the furniture of the home, by the way.

He lowered that out of his upstairs window into the street so he could sell it or give it away.

Well, Dad took him to court mostly just to teach him a lesson.

This was another turning point where Francis took the clothes he was wearing off, returned them to his father, and said he had no father but the Lord.

So he he uh he really uh took some of this very, very literally.

Uh he took to preaching and actually founded the mendicant orders, so they weren't beggars, but they really lived on the hospitality of the people that they visited.

So if no one offered them food, they didn't eat.

And they weren't allowed to have possessions except for their brown robes.

So the brown is the garb of the Franciscans.

When nobody would listen to Francis's preaching, he decided to preach to the animals instead.

And this is part of the reason you see him with the little bird.

If you have been to Costco, you have seen other monuments to St.

Francis.

They've already put them out, I think, for St.

Francis Day, the Nativity Set.

Sometimes in French called a Cretch.

It actually came from the Italian city of Grecio, where Francis decided to make the Nativity story real by bringing in a donkey and a pregnant lady and putting hay.

And it was the first time he thought people in his time had had a connection that this story is real, not some fairy tale.

And so this is where nativity sets come from to this day.

They come from St.

Francis.

We read another bit here.

Um Paul writes about him bearing the marks of his body for the Lord.

And clearly what Paul means is he was beaten for what he had to say.

But the legend sort of says, this is where the word in Greek stigmata comes from, that certain people become so identified with Jesus that they physically bear the wounds that Jesus had on his body.

And so there's a tradition that Francis literally bled out of wounds from his wrists and from his ankles and from his side for a number of years because his relationship with the Lord was so close that he started to resemble him, literally.

Another story about Francis is that during the Second Crusade, he thought he would go be a martyr in the Holy Land.

He didn't take up a lance or sword, but he went thinking that the Muslims would martyr him for his faith.

Instead, they found him too likable to kill, and uh were really, really grateful for him.

So this is the guy.

They said, this guy might be completely wrong with his thoughts, but he's so compelling.

Let's just keep him around.

Um now uh I hope you'll put up with me telling you my favorite Francis story.

It's been a favorite in our home, and I promise it's going somewhere at the end.

As I told you, Francis was a mendicant.

He wandered around, literally all over, especially Italy, surviving on hospitality and invitation.

And there was a town in Italy that was sort of a new town.

There was an old watering hole that the people had turned into a well so they could have more reliable water source.

And this was ultimately the village that became the town of Gubio.

Now, in Gubio, it was pretty pastoral.

And sure, there was a village, they turned this into a well, but before they turned it into a well, there were many wild animals who drank from the watering hole, one of which was a wolf.

Now, as you know, wolves are natural predators for flocks, and it turned out that Gubio turned out, began as a herding village.

There was a especially, an especially large, and the people thought vicious wolf, because after all, this wolf would prey on their livestock.

The wolf, it turns out, wasn't very happy losing its principal watering hole, and uh was even less happy when they built a well around it, and the town decided the wolf, with all of its unhappiness, really should just be kept completely away, so they built the city wall.

Well, now the wolf really had no water source and had no wild prey.

Again, I told you this was a big and vicious wolf, right?

Maybe three times the size of a normal wolf.

Every time you tell the story, the wolf can get bigger, by the way.

So, what was the wolf to do?

The wolf had no access to natural prey.

The wolf had no access to the natural watering hole.

The people in the town were scared of the wolf, and as you know, shepherds try to keep wolves away.

So it started with people being mad and throwing rocks, and then it turned into hunting parties.

The wolf started by eating the weakest sheep, and then the wolf ate whatever cattle it could get, and the wolf sometimes turned against its attackers.

There was a problem.

For some reason, this wolf was so big that people couldn't take care of him.

They could not kill the enemy they decided upon, and so Francis was around and they invited him, Francis, make peace.

Really, what they meant was work a magic spell in Jesus' name that kills our enemies.

That's what they wanted.

They wanted the wolf gone with the magic of the Lord.

Boy, they did not know what they were going to get.

So Francis comes and they inform him of the problem in the city.

This wolf is terrible.

It eats our sheep, imagine that.

It attacks our cattle, imagine that it's a wolf.

It bothers when we throw sticks at it, it gets really mad at us.

So we want you to get rid of the wolf, Francis.

And Francis says, okay, I'll do it.

And out of the city gates he walks, and everybody gasps and screams, No, Francis, you can't go out there.

He'll attack you.

You've got to bring guards.

He goes on out, and they're all biting their nails because they're gonna be famous for the city that killed Francis.

Just like all of us, drawn like a moth to a flame, they climb the city wall to watch the gore unfold.

Francis gets out of the city, and sure enough, he's no more than 15 or 20 feet away from the wall when all of a sudden there's a wild loud.

Ow!

And sure enough, he sees what everybody thought they would see.

There's a dust cloud on the horizon, and it's growing and getting bigger, so much so it's hard to know if it's a tank or a herd of buffalo.

And Francis just extends his hands, and then you have to imagine this is like the cartoon where the running thing goes, and there's even more dust, and when the dust clears, everybody is expecting to see Francis in a million pieces, and there he is, and there's the wolf sitting right in front of them, and everybody's got their earhorns so they can hear this conversation.

And Francis says, Hello, Brother Wolf.

Now the wolf has never been greeted as a brother, has never been greeted at all.

So, much to everybody's surprise, possibly even the wolf, the wolf just sort of sits there and they begin to have a conversation of sorts.

Francis says, Brother Wolf, I know this town has not treated you as their brother.

Now, this did not make the people with the earhorns very happy.

What did he say?

What?

They have chased you, they have taken your water supply away, they have not helped you with any food, they just complained, they have made up all kinds of stereotypes about how bad wolves are.

And the wolf did what all dogs do when they agree with you.

You think they're panting, but he laughed.

It looks the same in dogs.

I don't know if you've noticed.

But then Francis said, But Brother Wolf, you have not been a brother to the people of Gubia.

You have attacked their livelihood, you have attacked their dads and their sisters and their children.

And the wolf did what all good dogs do when they're scolded.

He folded his ears down, he put his tail between his legs, he lowered his head.

If you've not seen a dog do this, I feel sorry for you.

Francis said, But Brother Wolf, you are our brother.

And it is true that the Lord wants us to live in unity and godly love.

So, Brother Wolf, will you live in unity and godly love with the village?

Will you come and be reconciled with your brothers and sisters in Guvio?

The wolf sort of wagged its tail, and Francis did the unforgivable sin.

He led the wolf right into the middle of town.

Now the people up on the walls were saying, No, what are you doing?

And they quickly gathered their axes and their hoes and their boards with a nail in it, and there they gathered it as an angry mob, and here was Francis with the wolf, and they said, Francis, get out of the way! We can finish the wolf now, you've let him into town.

And Francis said, No, her boy brother has come to be reconciled, and you have to imagine these people are really swept up in a mob mentality because they're all waving their arms in the air.

I don't know why mobs do that when they're angry, but it's really critical to the story that everybody's shaking their fists at the wolf.

And that's exactly how it is that a little three or four-year-old girl is able to run away from her mother and throw her arms around the wolf.

And everybody in town goes, And watch with true horror as the wolf sniffs, the little girl opens his jaws and gives her a big lick.

Well, they don't know what to do.

The five-year-old boy knows what to do.

He runs and throws his arms around the wolf.

And so does the eight-year-old.

And finally, there's so many of their children invested in that wolf that they have to at least put their pointy sticks down for a moment because the collateral damage would be too high if they didn't.

And so it is that Francis says, Brother Wolf and Guubio, let's make a deal.

Guubio, if you will promise to care for your brother the wolf, brother Wolf, will you promise in return to protect and look after the children of Guubio?

And the wolf does what all good dogs do when it's time to make a deal.

He shakes on it.

Now, as you know, conversions rarely happen in a moment, but the story says that for the rest of that wolf's life, which is more than five years, the wolf gets into the habit of sleeping with a different child in their own bed every night of the week.

And the legend says that when intruders tried to come into Gubio, the wolf was the first defense.

And when children were at harm, it was the wolf who came and freed them first.

And of course, you might be thinking, it's just a story.

And it is a story, isn't it?

And what's incredible that I learned way back in seminary from one of my favorite professors is stories don't always have to be true to tell the truth.

Today, this story I think tells us something we don't usually get to hear in Advent when we read this story about Isaiah's vision and about how God's imagination is so much greater for the world we choose to settle for.

In Isaiah's imagination, the wolf lies down with the lamb.

In God's imagination, the coyote lies down with their natural prey.

It is all too easy for us, I think, to decide people are dangerous or bad or no good, and for us to build up protection around our watering holes.

And I do think sometimes, of course, we make those decisions appropriately, but I wonder if we sometimes don't too hastily cut people off.

And I wonder if our brother Francis doesn't invite us on his festival day to really consider that God's imagination is greater than ours, but that we don't have to settle for what we've chosen.

We hear the gospel reading today say, Come unto me, all you are who are heavy laden.

My yoke is easy and my burden is light.

And I wonder, this is so counterintuitive sometimes, if we aren't being invited to consider that all of that armor and stereotyping and prejudice we carry every day, that we feel so safe behind, if that isn't in fact part of what's wearing us out.

And if instead God doesn't beckon us to put some of that down for the sake of reconciliation.

Now, I'm not naive.

My daughter will not be playing with wolves.

However, to call people wolves is to miss what Francis was able to do, which was find God in the most unimaginable places.

Walt Whitman said that a great blade of grass is more miraculous than anything else in the world.

It's a beautiful sentiment.

I think what Francis invites us to really reimagine, I can go with Walt Whitman on the grass, but if he'd written that about a mosquito, it would be really hard.

God is fully present in the mosquito.

I think that's what Francis invites us to consider.

It's this interesting bit we read in Isaiah, that a little child will lead them.

Now listen, I've got a little child.

And she doesn't always get along with everybody in her class.

But one thing I've noticed about how my child plays with other children is when something goes wrong, it's temporary.

It's not forever.

I wonder if little children offer us that leadership today on St.

Francis' Festival Day.

Sometimes we say we believe in the God of second chances, but we only let God give those second chances.

We don't ever do that.

I wonder if that isn't Francis' invitation to us.

Now listen, it's stewardship season.

We're gonna talk about pledging, and it would be really easy to preach the kind of stewardship that Francis and St.

Anthony did.

They gave everything to the church and everybody was really happy.

Um, I think I want to tell you, I think there's a different stewardship involved, one that is even harder than just resources to think about.

It's the stewardship of laying aside some of our walls.

It's the stewardship of taking risks to see God present in people who have hurt us before and people that we just don't like.

It's the stewardship of doing what we hope our children will do and offering a second chance.

Sometimes we end up getting the marks of the Lord.

Jesus did not go looking for revealing though.

That wasn't the point.

Jesus went looking for community and reconciliation.

And I just wonder if part of our stewardship and part of following Francis isn't to look a little bit more than we've settled for.

To imagine a little bit greater than we've settled for.

I'm pretty sure it's worth a shot.

And I will tell you, I know this can be exhausting work, which is why we're getting ready to be nourished at God's table, not just in our bodies, but for our spirits.

We're gonna say at the end of this, God, help us to use this energy to make the world a little more like you imagined.

Happy feast of St.

Francis to you.