Easter People: Thomas Merton (Father Louis)

John 14:15-21

May 25, 2014

When I graduated from college my campus minister gave me a book:  “New Seeds of Contemplation,” by Thomas Merton.  I didn’t really read it for years.  In part, I was confused by the gift.  I picked it up shortly after graduating and it appeared to have nothing to do with what I had learned about Christianity and faith during my time at college.

College, in large part thanks to my campus minister, was a time when my social consciousness exploded.  I spent a lot of time talking about and thinking about my faith in light of the pain, suffering, and injustice in the world.  I came to know Jesus as a radical activist.  I was involved in protesting the US involvement in El Salvador, the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the economic policies of our country – really anything that gave me the chance to hold a sign and march in the streets.

New Seeds of Contemplation begins this way:  “Contemplation is the highest expression of man’s intellectual and spiritual life.  It is that life itself, fully awake, fully aware that it is alive.  It is spiritual wonder.”  Contemplation and spiritual wonder were simply not in my vocabulary; I searched the book quickly for the words justice or protest, and finding neither I decided that my campus minister had made a mistake and given me a book he never read.

This Trappist monk, Thomas Merton – or Father Louis as he was known in his monastery in Gethsemani, Kentucky – was a contemplative.  He lived in the monastery for 27 years, the last few alone in a hermitage, praying, worshipping, reading, and writing.  And while it was not always easy, he fully embraced this life and believed in his vocation until the day he died.

But, as I came to learn, he also struggled over the years with the relationship of the contemplative life to the human struggles and sufferings going on outside the walls of the monastery.  As he grew as a monk and in his faith, he evolved into a person who knew deeply this connection – and that evolution, he would say, was entirely due to the God he came to knew through his life of contemplation.

Merton was born in France, but he moved often.  He lost his mother at 6 years old, and his father was variously around and not, until he died when Merton was 16, living at a boarding school.  They never had much money, and they were not a religious family to speak of.

Merton described his childhood as one of pain and extreme loneliness.  He writes that he was, after his father died, “without a home, without a country, without a father, apparently without any friends, without any interior peace or confidence or light or understanding.”  In other words, he was a lost soul looking for salvation.

After his father died, while in undergraduate and grad school, he read extensively and he also began the slow path to becoming a Roman Catholic – where he would indeed find himself again.

In 1941 Merton started volunteering at a non-profit in Harlem, and at one point he considered staying there permanently as a lay Christian in a life of poverty and service. But during this time someone urged him to go on retreat at the Abby of Gethsemani.  After that retreat he wrote, “This is the center of America…This is the only real city in America – in a desert.”  (later he would be embarrassed about how melodramatic this was!).

But, he entered the monastery as a postulant on December 10, 1941.  At this point in life, Merton was plagued with guilt about things he had done as a child and young man, and was convinced of the evils and temptations of the world.  He believed the only faithful choice was to withdraw from the world and its evils and enter a life of contemplation.

Contemplation for Merton was not too different from what is described in our gospel passage this morning.  The author of John talks about abiding in the spirit, loving God, Jesus being in us and we being in Jesus.  These are phrases about connection, about relationship with God and each other. 

For Merton, contemplation was the awakening to God and God’s spirit, in us and in the creation.  It was steeping yourself in the love of God, and listening for how to live God’s commandments.  A number of times the language Merton uses when describing the contemplative life echo, if not copy, these words from the gospel of John.  This life, this way of being, contemplation, was the ground of Merton’s entire life.

As a monk Merton was not exactly like the others.  Mostly he was always a bit restless in the community (and often a bit at odds with the Abbot), and he yearned for a completely solitary life.  He was also an avid reader and prolific writer, and his writings, beginning with his autobiographical “The Seven Storey Mountain,” were wildly popular beyond the monastery.  Though no one in the monastery really knew it, Merton was famous.

In fact, people have tried to compile bibliographies of Merton’s and they have gone on for dozens and dozens of pages:  books, essays, poems.  In Wikipedia, the partial bibliography of Merton has its own separate page completely because it’s so long.  In addition to everything he published, he meticulously kept a journal which details, in brutal honesty, his entire life, and all his thoughts and ponderings. He also kept correspondence with numerous people over the years.  These people ranged in diversity from friends to famous authors, from Christians to Hindus, Buddhists, and Jews.  These were not letters describing his daily life.  These letters were dialogues with some of the best thinkers of his time about the life of faith.

Through all these writings, you can see how he changed in his thinking over the years.  In one of his early books he wrote about how God plants seeds of love in us, but they don’t grow because the seeds are overcome by evils in the world.  He writes, “Let us throw off the pieces of this world like clothing and enter naked into wisdom.”  When Merton began at the monastery, the world was a place to escape from because any dealings with it would keep you from finding God.

It doesn’t take long before you see Merton begin to ask questions that challenge this notion that withdraw from the world is how we find God.  He was haunted by what was happening in the world.  At one point he wrote, “All over the face of the earth the avarice and lust of men breed unceasing divisions among them, and the wounds that tear men from union with one another widen and open out into huge wards.  Murder, massacres, revolution, hatred, the slaughter and torture of the bodies and souls of men, the destruction of cities by fire, the starvation of millions, the annihilation of populations and finally the cosmic inhumanity of atomic war:  Christ is massacred in His members, torn limb from limb; God is murdered in men.”

The sufferings of the world impacted him greatly, and he struggled with the question of how does a monk live apart from the world but not be indifferent to it?  How does one live out the traditional monastic flight from world without making that flight into a gesture of callous contempt for the world?

In answer to these questions, he began to look for ways he could share with the world what he called “the fruits of his contemplation.”  In other words, he began to realize that contemplation was not just for him and his relationship with God, but such a life offered him a vantage point from which to engage and impact an increasingly distressed world.

Merton believed that if he could find unity with God in contemplation, that unity would then be possible in the fractured world.  Union with God, with Christ, and with others were all of the same cloth.  Merton writes, “When the love of God is in me, God is able to love you through me and you are able to love God through me.” 

If we want the races to be reconciled, then we start with finding unity in ourselves…you can’t, he knew, impose unity on one another.  It has to be contained with in each of us.  This unity was the fruit of his contemplation, and he knew he had to share it with the world, which he did through his writings.  One of the great gifts of Merton’s life was to model for the world how to be in relationship with people from a different faith traditions.  He spent his life in conversation with Buddhists, Hindus and Jews, including Thich Naht Hahn, the Dalai Lama, and Abraham Heschel – all of whom he respected greatly.   “God speaks,” he wrote, “and God is to be heard, not only in my heart, but in the voice of the stranger.”

Merton believed that even though monks may flee the world, they are, whether they like it or not, part of the world – which includes war, race hatred, mass media, big business, technology, and so on.  To pretend that such a world does not exist in the name of contemplative living, he decided, is immoral.

Merton had his critics, in some senses from opposite corners.  First, he had his critics from other monks, the Catholic hierarchy, and fellow Catholics.  He was criticized for being too leftist – he refused to stand with the West in the cold war, he supported the civil rights movement, vehemently opposed the Vietnam War, and wrote often about nuclear disarmament. 

On the other hand he was criticized by people in the peace and justice movements for not standing with them on the front lines.  Joan Baez, for example, once went to the monastery to beg him to leave there and enter the “real” world where people are fighting for peace.  These criticisms were more agonizing for him.

One of the things he would tell his friends/critics in the peace and justice movement was that he felt like he could be most helpful where he was because he was “on the edge” of it all.  He could be prophetic because he was not steeped in a culture that could swallow people up without them knowing it.  He had a perspective that was unique and would be lost if he left the monastery.

In being on the edge, he also saw his monastic life as a protest against injustices.  He writes, “To adopt a life that is essentially non-assertive, non-violent, a life of humility and peace is in itself a statement of one’s position…by my monastic life and vows I am saying NO to all the concentration camps, the aerial bombardments, the staged political trials, the judicial murders, the racial injustices, the economic tyrannies, and the whole socioeconomic apparatus…I make monastic silence a protest against the lies of politicians, propagandists, and agitators, and when I speak it is to deny that my faith and my Church can ever seriously be aligned with these forces and injustices.” 

It is in this way that I think Merton has much to say to us non-catholic, non-monks, and non-nuns.  This is because he raises a very important question that we need to wrestle with ourselves, even if we don’t come to the same conclusions.  We have to ask ourselves how to live and oppose the evils of our culture – where Christ is being massacred, as Merton would say – without being swallowed up by the false promises of a purely materialistic existence.  In other words, if we are living in the very culture we see destroying others, can we separate ourselves enough to see clearly what needs to be done?  One of Merton’s deep longings was to find ways to help people who weren’t living a monastic life a chance to find some measure of peace and solitude…to “get perspective” as he called it.

Short of joining a monastery, how do we put ourselves at the edge of culture enough so we can have perspective and be prophetic.  I suspect we need more than this, but Church – worship – is certainly one way we have to step out of time and space to gain some perspective.  We seek God in our worship, and with all of the symbols and forms that are so different from the world in which we live, we affirm that God can be distorted by the trappings of our individualistic, materialistic culture, and so we need to shed those distortions – if only for an hour – to draw closer to God.

Here we try to grab at least a few moments of silence, precious in this world of constant noise.  Here we look for ways to defy consumerism – passing a plate for offering without demanding we “get” anything in return.  Here things look and feel differently – sometimes so much so it makes us uncomfortable.  No screens, no pop music, no couches; we read ancient words, pray ancient prayers, and do everything we can to remember that our life is not ours…it is God’s.  We try to strip away the trappings of our every day life that seek to attract our gaze and turn us away from the sufferings of our neighbors. 

Merton writes, “Without a certain element of solitude there can be no compassion because when a man is lost in the wheels of a social machine he is no longer aware of human needs as a matter of personal responsibility.”  Contact and union with God are essential to act rightly in the world…for Merton, and we need opportunities outside of our normal experience to fully connect with God.

We have to find connection to God, not because it feels good, or makes us believe something, but because it means that God lives in us and moves in us and pulls us out of that which destroys us and others.  “If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” the gospel says.  This does not mean keeping the commandments is how we love God.  It is our love for, our connection to, God that compels us to keep the commandments.

Merton died in a freak accident in 1968, when he was just shy of 54 years old.  It was an incredible loss for the world.  But he helped many, myself included, understand that life is not action alone.  Action alone, without intentionally nurturing a connection to God, can be dangerous.  We might think we are doing the “right” thing, but without a chance to see where we are blind to our own distortedness and enculturation our actions will not always be faithful to the God who calls us into this world to care for other people.

Merton was an activist, he worked for social justice and protested many evils in the world.  I admire him for this.  But the most important thing he teaches me is that God is not an “add on” to living the gospel.  God is the first mover, the primary motivator, the one in whom I rest and dwell, the one who helps us transcend the world so that we might transform the world.  In Merton’s words – which draw explicitly on our passage this morning:

“Christ prayed that all men might become One as He was One with His Father, in the Unity of the Holy Spirit.  Therefore when you and I become what we are really meant to be, we will discover not only that we love one another perfectly but that we are both living in Christ and Christ in us, and we are all One Christ.”  Amen.

Easter People: Sr. Simone Campbell

Acts 2:42-47,  John 10:1-10

May 11, 2014

Since about 2008 there has been an ongoing investigation of the LCWR (Leadership Conference of Women Religious) by the Vatican.  The LCWR represents about 80% of the nuns in the United States.  In 2012 the Vatican issued an assessment of the group, which found them to be in dire need of reform.  The concern was that they were spending too much time on poverty and social justice issues, and not enough time condemning abortion and gay marriage.  In addition, they were, according to the Vatican, promoting radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.

One part of the report specifically questioned the ties the LCWR had to Network, a non-profit organization currently run by our Easter person this morning, Sr. Simone Campbell.  Network has as its mission “to lobby for federal policies and legislation that promote economic and social justice.”  This organization, with Sr. Simone out front, was one of the most influential lobby groups advocating for the Affordable Care Act when it was before our congress, around the time the Vatican began its investigation.  This put Network, along with the LCWR who supported their work on the ACA, at odds with the US Catholic Bishops, who lobbied hard against it. 

This conversation between LCWR and the Vatican continues today, and was in fact in the news this week because the sisters were once again rebuked, this time for honoring Elizabeth Johnson – who, as an aside, was a formative theologian for me in seminary, but that’s kind of beside the point. 

All of that is to say, I have my own opinions about the dispute – and you probably have sense of those just based on the Easter person I chose.  But it strikes me that at the heart of this dispute is a question of discernment.  What is God calling us to do?  How do we know? 

In the gospel of John, Jesus says we will know the voice of the shepherd when we hear it and will not be led astray – “the sheep follow him because they know his voice,” the author writes.  And more than that, when we follow the true shepherd, we will be led to abundant life.  “I came,” Jesus says, “that they may have life and have it abundantly.” 

Cool.  But there’s one problem:  Is it really true that we’ll know the voice of God when we hear it?  Any quick glance around us today answers that question:  two people believe they are following the voice of God, but they are headed in opposite directions…it happens all the time.  It’s happening with the nuns and the Vatican.  Who is hearing the true voice of the shepherd?

Sr. Simone Campbell, has found, and continues to find, her path by listening for the shepherd’s voice and going where she is led.  We can judge whether she is right or wrong, but no one can dispute her intentionality when it comes to listening for the voice of God.  She spends time every day learning, praying, and listening so that she might become more and more in tune with God’s purposes for her life and for the world.

Sr. Simone Campbell is committed to social justice – you need about 30 seconds with her to know that.  But she also writes about her faith and spirituality, and how she figures out what God would have her do.  “Come, Holy Spirit; that is my supplication that starts my day,” she writes.  She also has a beautiful way of describing her spirituality.  She calls it “walking willing.”  As she says, “I have to be willing to walk where the Spirit leads,” which of course requires listening for the spirit in intentional ways.  This is a way of saying that contemplation or discernment and action are two sides of the same coin.  You need both for the life of faith.  Walking willing.

As a child Sr. Simone felt deeply connected to her Catholic church and community.  She felt changed in a significant way after her first communion in first grade.  She was raised in the church and educated by nuns who, as she says, kept her “tuned in and turned on to the world around us.”  This all laid the foundation for her faith and her understanding of the gospel’s call on our lives.

While a student at Mount St. Mary’s College in L.A., she decided to join the religious order Sisters of Social Service because she found their mission compelling and compatible with the gospel.  Their mission was to be active in the world, a force for justice, and to focus on advocacy for the poor, the homeless, the battered and forgotten. 

When she took her final vows as a nun, she chose the name Simone after Simon because she identifies with Simon Peter; his enthusiasm, tendency to make mistakes, and his bravery to leap out of boats.  The religious order suited her well, yet she knew if she was going to live out her call she had to be better prepared – for her that meant law school.

After graduating law school she started something called the Community Law Center in Oakland, CA.  She and her staff represented people in all sorts of challenging situations – some financial, some relational, some chaotic.  The work was heartbreaking, but it seems that the more Sr. Simone’s heart broke, the harder she worked.  She writes, “People want to turn away from pain and poverty and difficulty.  Yet that’s where life is, and that’s how we become aware that we are one body.”

When she left the Community Law Center she certainly continued to find herself with people who were in pain, poverty and difficulty.  She went to Iraq at the end of 2002, just months before the war began.  This is where her passion for affecting policy was born.  Her heart was broken by the Iraqis, but, she says, it was also broken by U.S. policy there.  She found a voice for speaking for those who could not.

It was a natural next step, then, for her to take over Network – the faith based lobbying group for social justice issues in Washington D.C..  This was her way of being a voice for the voiceless and for affecting policy.  “We didn’t want to listen to politicians tell us what they would do,” she writes.  “We wanted to tell them what they needed to do and then have them respond.” 

They work on many issues of economic justice, immigration, peacemaking, ecology.  But the big issue that was up when she took over was health care reform.  We all know how complicated and difficult that was, and Network was there in the thick of it the whole time.  In the end, many elected officials were helped by Network, and Sr. Simone specifically, because she was a trusted voice of faith.  They were able to see things not just fro a left-right point of view, but from a faith-based point of view as well.  And of course, the ACA passed and was signed in to law.

Once the ACA passed, Network began a project called the “mind gap,” which was focused on the growing gap between the rich and the poor.  Their first act was to put together a budget alternative to the one being considered in congress.  They called it a faithful budget, and it sought to help those struggling most in our economy and country. 

It was right during this time that the Vatican came out with their scathing report of the LCWR and Network.  Sr. Simone was completely thrown off kilter.  She based her life on the catholic social teachings, which has been affirmed by all the Popes.  The catholic social teachings are unequivocal in their insistence on working for the poor and marginalized.  She couldn’t believe that she and others were being criticized for being too focused on social justice. 

And so, all of the folks at Network, as well as a number of other organizations, came together to talk about what was next for this organization being named as errant by the Vatican.  In that meeting someone mentioned a bus trip – a bus trip to highlight all the work catholic nuns do to address issues of injustice and poverty throughout the United States – and there “Nuns on the Bus” was born.  As one newspaper put it:

“In a spirited response to the Vatican, a group of Roman Catholic nuns is planning a bus trip across nine states, stopping at homeless shelters, food pantries, schools and health care facilities run by nuns to highlight their work with the nation’s poor and disenfranchised.” 

Campbell put it a bit more eloquently:  “Nuns on the bus was a hymn to the American sisters even as it sought to further the mission that the religious sisters have always pursued – standing with those who have been left behind, lifting up those who have been oppressed, gathering in those who have been pushed to the margins.”  The Cedar Rapids Gazette simply said, “The nuns spoke softly, but they brought a very big bus.”

This bus tour, which started in Des Moines, actually, was incredibly successful and well received by many.  It spotlighted the work of religious sisters, it allowed people to share their stories of living on the margins, and it provided encouragement and support to those living out the gospel day in and day out with little resources or recognition in a world that seems hell-bent on ignoring the least among us.

I got tired reading Sr. Simone’s book.  Like physically tired just reading about all she has done with her life – all she does each day.  “Couch potatoes drive me nuts,” she says.  I believe it – and I hope she has forgiveness in her heart for us couch potatoes out here.  But for her it goes back to her spirituality.  “My contemplative living of ‘walking willing’ leads to an asceticism of living yes…as long as I focus on the response to need, I have plenty of energy for this life of yes.  When I get preoccupied with myself, this energy wanes, as do my insights and spiritual practices.”

Listening for the voice of God – for the shepherd’s call; this is what all people of faith must do.  And one thing Sr. Simone suggests is that we hear God’s call better when we are turned outward – oriented to others and especially to those in need.  Our way of life, our choices every day about how to live, what to do, read, pray all work to either open or close our ears to this shepherd’s voice.

Sr. Simone leads a very active life, but she also leads a contemplative one.  Like so many of the monks and nuns, she is disciplined about spiritual practices – prayer, reading scripture, community discernment, worship, retreats.  As we have seen in the last two weeks, these disciplines are not just pious, route actions we do in order to be good Christians.  They shape us, form us, and connect us to the divine so that we are more likely to respond faithfully to this world.  Here’s how Sr. Simone puts it:  “This is the essence of the spiritual journey: taking our Gospel faith and Church’s teachings into the marrow of our being and trusting that in our willingness we will be used so that all things work for the good.”

I don’t know what Sr. Simone’s favorite scripture passage is – or if she has one. But, I know the spirit of Pentecost is with her as she constantly seeks the Holy Spirit.  She talks often of the movement of the spirit and invites the Holy Spirit into her life daily.  I also know that one of the first things that the earliest followers of Jesus did after they received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was to be together, holding all things in common.  They sold their possessions and goods and distributed to all who had need.  Something about the Holy Spirit drew people into a kind of community where they recognized that we’re all in this together.

It’s not just that Sr. Simone lives as a part of her own religious community, where they do indeed put all of their money and possessions into a common till.  She sees her faith community as extending to everyone around her.  She understands this way of life as the call to all of us to live so that people hold things in common, distribute our resources to all who have need.  This is what she advocates – this is what she does, and for her it is indeed the voice of the shepherd she is following. 

Reading and studying scripture until it becomes a part of the marrow of our being is one way to help us know whether or not we are hearing the voice of God.  But we have other ways to discern as well.  One is suggested by our passage in John:  Jesus came so that all might have life and have it abundantly.  One criteria we use in evaluating our choices and actions is whether it brings abundant life to others.  Do our actions reflect Jesus’ life?  Well look around…where do we see people working for abundant life for all, and then ask yourself, am I a part of that work?

The life of faith is a constant act of both listening for the voice of God and acting when the spirit calls us to create a world of justice and wholeness – and we can only do our best at figuring out what that call is.  But as Sr. Simone says, “I know my spirituality calls me to walk willing with a broken heart – a brokenness that in the process of opening up releases hope for the many so that eventually justice for all our brothers and sisters may be realized.  But until that day, we will stay in the struggle, walking in the dark and trusting that all things do work toward the good.”  Amen.

Easter People: Francis of Assisi

Luke 24:13-35

May 4, 2014

The road to Emmaus is a beloved passage.  This is true across denominations, which is always so interesting to me, because at the heart of this passage is the breaking of bread – communion – and that has been for hundreds of years a point of division between the denominations.  I promise not to expound on the theology of communion.  In fact, I wonder if St. Francis of Assisi – our Easter person this morning – along with the Emmaus story, might help us transcend the divisions a bit and find a way for all of us to deepen our understanding, and experience, of communion.

St. Francis, of course, lived long before the Reformation when the Protestant church was born – so we get nothing of these divisions from him.  Add to that he was not primarily a theologian… in the sense of writing about doctrine and systematics.  Though he was always adamant that people have reverence for the Eucharist – communion – it was because of his experience, not his doctrine. 

Communion was absolutely central for him.  In all of his writings the most frequent theme you find is the importance of communion.  It was, just as it was for the people on the road in the gospel of Luke, one of the most important ways he connected to Jesus, and one of the most significant ways he deepened his faith.

St. Francis was born around 1181 in Assisi – a small town in Italy.  He came from a wealthy family and lived a fairly raucous life with his friends as a youth and young adult.  But when he was about 20 he joined a military expedition, and he was captured and spent a year in jail.  This began to reorient him.  He became withdrawn and spent a lot of time alone, hoping for a sign from God about what he should do with his life.  He spent much time at a church in San Damiano. 

One day, while there, he said a prayer: “Most high glorious God, enlighten the darkness of my heart and give me true faith, certain hope, and perfect charity; give me perception and knowledge, Lord, that I might carry out your holy and true command.”  And upon this, he left his family – to the great pain of his parents – and began to live at San Damiano.

He then had what he would name as his conversion experience.  God, he said, led him to the leper colony outside Assisi.  Francis had always been disgusted and repulsed by lepers, so this was a turning point for him.  Francis wrote, “When I was in my sins, just to see lepers was very bitter for me.  And the Lord himself took me among them, and I showed mercy to them.  And on leaving them, what seemed bitter to me had turned for me into sweetness of body and soul.  And afterwards I waited a little and left the world.”

By leaving the world he meant that he gave up everything, became poor, took on the clothing of a beggar, and moved into the leper colony to care for those that lived there.

Before he knew what was happening, two men who had been hearing about him came to join him in his way of life.  This was not something Francis sought, but he invited them to join him if they would give up all their possessions, sell them and give the money to the poor; which they did.  All of a sudden Francis was a leader of a movement…something that would always be awkward for him, from that day forward. 

This little group was eager to learn what God would have them do.  They approached a priest in a church and asked for guidance.  This priest, as was a common practice, opened the bible randomly three times and read whatever he saw there.

The first passage was “Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor.”  The second was “Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money; and do not have two tunics.”  And Finally, “If anyone would come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”  They went to the Pope who agreed to approve of the new group, and these three passages were what guided Francis and his early followers in everything they did – and continue, by the way, to guide Franciscan brothers today.

This life Francis chose, while I agree it reflected the gospel in many ways, sounds hard to me.  Yet his movement grew from three to thousands over a relatively short time.  There was, obviously, something compelling about him and how he lived. 

As the movement grew, Francis was counseled to come up with a rule to govern the community.  He was hesitant, to say the least.  In large part this was because one of his values was absolute humility.  Being in a position of authority – telling others what to do – went against what he believed.  A number of times during his life he tried to give others authority over the movement – but he was clearly its leader and people looked to him for guidance.

The rule grew out of the three gospel passages the priest read to them.  In it, the brothers are told to give to everyone who asks, and if someone takes what is theirs, they should not ask them to restore it.  He entreats his followers to humble themselves – to hold no positions of authority.  He writes that the brothers should love their enemies, saying, “Our friends are those who, for no reason, cause us trouble and suffering, shame or injury, pain or torture, even martyrdom and death.”  He told them that “those whom the Christian serves are to be loved for themselves, no matter how unlovable, not because we can fix them by our good works.”

Francis may have given a rule, but always more importantly he gave himself – his life – as an example.  He was big on action, less big on words.  Francis gave alms to any beggar who asked, and when he didn’t have money he, literally, gave them the clothes off his back.  He was infinitely compassionate with his fellow brothers.  He loved animals and creation, seeing them as an example of beings that depended totally on God.  He preached a sermon to captivated birds once, telling them to praise God with their voices.  He would stop to pick up worms on the ground because he couldn’t stand the thought of someone stepping on them.  He claimed that God gave him a greeting:  May the Lord give you peace, and biographers throughout history have reported that many, just by hearing him say it, indeed did find peace.

Francis was, for all practical purposes, a saint before he died – he was certainly sainted very quickly after he died.  People just saw him this way.  He was known far and wide, and folks would walk long distances to see him when they knew he was in the area because he was known to have healing powers.  He would respond to people – especially people in dire circumstances – even when he was incredibly sick and even dying.

But all of this – his way of life, his ethics, his movement – all of this is tied to his relationship to the Eucharist, or communion.  For Francis, communion is where you realize that God is present – it is where you meet Jesus.  It is what makes it possible, he says, to follow in Jesus’ footsteps. 

In part this was true because when he took communion, the Jesus he met was the one who suffered.  While we tend to shy away from the bloody aspects of communion, for Francis, thinking about the blood and broken body of Christ shaped his desire to connect to the suffering around him. 

“This is my body broken for you,” Jesus said…and we repeat every month.  We glide over that thinking it means Jesus died for our sins – and maybe that’s part of it.  But Francis understood the broken body of Jesus, the blood of Jesus, as solidarity with all who are broken in the world.  Francis believed that by going to the cross Jesus told the world, “I suffer in solidarity with you.”  And Francis sought to do the same thing with his own life. 

It is in the breaking of the bread that the two disciples headed to Emmaus recognized Jesus.  I don’t know exactly why Luke told this story to the early followers of Jesus, but I can’t help wonder if it wasn’t about telling them Jesus is present in the brokenness of life.  These men were devastated by the events of that week.  They had given up much to follow Jesus, and it ended in tragedy, not glory.  The world hadn’t changed, the poor were still devastatingly poor, and the Romans still ruled with an iron fist.  This is where Jesus, where God, meets us – meets the world.  The brokenness.

The reminder of Jesus’ words – my body broken for you – are a reminder of how our lives are forever connected to the God who chose suffering in solidarity with all those who suffer; the God who chose crucifixion in solidarity with all those who are crucified; the God who chose a life of poverty in solidarity with all those who are poor.

When Francis took the Eucharist, he felt the pain of Jesus, and so felt that same solidarity with those who suffer.  He recognized Jesus in the brokenness.  But the interesting thing is that didn’t happen until after he left his life of wealth and went to live with the lepers.  In other words, communion didn’t cause his conversion, or even his works.  Instead, I think the Eucharist was responsible for strengthening his faith, which is what sustained him, matured his faith, expanded what he did, and, I would suggest, made him so compelling to others.  It was his time with those who suffered that led him to communion, and communion that increased his desire to heal those who suffer.

We can connect to God in many ways, doing many things.  But this morning we have communion – which we have every month.  I tried to do a quick calculation of how many times I have probably taken communion…I’m going to guess around 600 times.  It could be more, it could be less, but I know it’s a lot.  Many of you are in the same boat.  And, it didn’t cause a conversion for me, which makes me wonder, what has communion done for my faith?  How has it affected what I do with my life?

Communion means different things to all of us.  For some it is about community & belonging, for some about a personal encounter with Jesus, for some it’s about connecting to God in ways that can’t be explained, for some it’s about honoring God – reverence and praise, and more. 

Our passage, and I think Francis’s life, offer us an opportunity to reflect on what it means for us…not necessarily in an abstract, academic way – though that’s appropriate too – but in a heart way.  How does this connect to my faith?  My life?  My decisions?  Does it, as it did for Francis, help us walk in the footsteps of Jesus? 

This is my body broken for you.  I love you, God says, – in all your you-ness.  I meet you in your brokenness.  I love the world – in all its world-ness.  In the taking of the bread – the bread we break just as Jesus did with the disciples that day – we are united with Christ…Christ is in us…we become broken in solidarity with the world’s brokenness.  And that impacts how we live.

This focus on suffering might seem to indicate a downer kind of life.  And Francis certainly had his spiritual sufferings…dark times when he couldn’t console himself and could acutely feel the suffering of Jesus.  In fact, by all accounts, he suffered physically with protrusions on his hands and feet that looked like nail heads.  They were excruciating.

But, as makes sense given people’s response to him, he was also a man of great joy and energy.  He sang and danced spontaneously during sermons (something I’m not likely to imitate).  He delighted in nature.  He was charismatic and kind. 

At the very end of his life – while he was in great pain – he wrote one of his most famous poems called “Canticle of the Sun.”  It’s a celebration of creation – of what God has given us in creation.  The sun shows God’s beautiful, radiant light.  The moon and stars are precious.  The wind and air give us sustenance.  Water is useful and humble.  Fire is cheerful, powerful and strong.  Mother Earth feeds us with fruits, colored flowers and herbs.  It’s no wonder Pope John Paul II named St. Francis the patron saint of ecology.

Identifying with Jesus’ suffering, and by extension identifying with the world’s suffering, is not easy – and it doesn’t necessarily lead to an easy life.  But it is not exclusive of joy.  That’s because compassion is the seed of joy…it is a sign of hope that creation can be what God intends.  When our hearts break for another, it is because we know what is possible for them…for this world…and is not yet accomplished.  We have a vision of beauty and wholeness and a desire to see that manifest. 

When we take the bread and juice today, may they be reminders for us of the God who dwells with all who hurt.  And as we take them into our bodies, may we be compelled to do the same.  Amen.