St. Francis Day, 2021

 Why are we talking about divorce for the Blessing of the Animals?  And where is the good news for a broken world?  This Gospel today doesn’t feel like Gospel at all.  It feels like guilt.  It feels like shame.

It turns out, this teaching is less about marriage between two humans and more about the marriage between Jesus and the Church, or Jesus and the cosmos—all of God’s creation.  This teaching is about God’s commitment to us and how God will never divorce us or forsake us, how nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Remember the Gospel stories about Jesus as the bridegroom?  The bridesmaids were waiting and some remembered to bring enough oil and the others ran out and they all fell asleep and some of them missed the bridegroom.  That is a story about Jesus marrying the church, marrying the people of God, making a commitment, a covenant with God’s people.  Jesus is also mentioned as the bridegroom in Paul’s letters—in Ephesians and Romans and many times in the Hebrew scriptures God describes God’s self as the husband.

Remember the beautiful Gospel of John, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that we would not perish, but have eternal life.”  For God so loved the cosmos that God made a commitment to be in relationship with all Creation, no matter what life would bring. 

We humans are not faithful, and yet God keeps up that relationship with us.  This is not a day to congratulate ourselves.  Our sin is right before our eyes, our brokenness is so apparent.  Some of us have been divorced.  Some of us have been unfaithful.  We all sin and fall short of the glory of God.  We have divorces in our families.  We have abuse in our families.  We are people and know people who have stayed together much longer than we should have because of the damage we do to each other and people around us.  We have let our minds wander, our eyes wander.  We have been unfaithful in our commitments with our most intimate partners.

We have been unfaithful to God.  God has married us, made a commitment for life with us and we have pursued other relationships.  We look to our money to save us and be in relationship with us.  We have worshipped at the altar of trying to impress other people and be successful.  We have not honored our relationship with God.

And on this day of the Blessing of the Animals, we confess that we have failed in our commitment to the Earth.  God has made this beautiful Earth to support life and be in balance, and rather than steward the mother God shares, we take and we take and we take without regard to the future or other species or any kind of limit.  That was not what God had in mind.  In destroying what God gave us to steward, we have destroyed many people, many plants, animals, and insects, and we are on a course to destroy ourselves.

The bad news is apparent and I don’t want you to let go of it too quickly, because it is in facing our shortcomings that we turn to God who is the only one who can save us and teach us a new way.  Although we have been unfaithful, God is not ashamed to call us children.  Jesus is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters—as it says in our reading from Hebrews this morning. 

The word for shame came up in the Old Testament a lot to talk about the Israelite encampment and keeping it clean and orderly.  You don’t want God looking at the encampment and seeing something shameful, so the laws the Israelites followed kept certain behaviors and garbage out the camp.  But today, God is not ashamed.  God is not looking away from the shameful thing, which is our unfaithfulness.  In fact, Jesus faced the most shameful thing, the cross, public humiliation, human laws to control and strike fear, violence and suffering.  God did not look away from this shameful display and use of human power to assert dominance.  God does not look away from our ways that are contrary to God’s vision of the flourishing of life.  And God asks us also not to look away.  Look at our criminal justice system and speak up at the injustice.  Look at our human laws and speak up about how they are applied to keep rich people rich and protect their property and keep the poor from being able to feed and clothe and house their children.  We are called to open our eyes and look at our treatment of this world God is sharing with us—the paving of it, the pollution of it, the destruction of trees and waterways.  We are called to speak up, do something about it.  We do not put away what is shameful or divorce ourselves from what we have done, but we face it, look at it, and renew our vows.

The two shall become one flesh.  This means that our fates are bound up together.  What happens to my spouse, happens to me.  If I divorce and break my commitment to my partner, I break my own flesh, my own commitment to myself. 

When God creates the first humans, do you remember God takes the clay, the earth and breathes life into it.  God takes “Adam” or person from “Adama” or earth.  Humans are one flesh with the Earth.  What we do to it, we do to ourselves. 

We learn from Jesus that it isn’t law, but mercy that is the foundation of all relationships.  Rules only take us so far in guiding our behavior, because we always find that as humans we fail in our commitments.  Does that mean we give up?  No.  We come back together and find a way to move forward. 

St. Francis, who we celebrate this day because of his commitment to the Earth and the animals that are precious to God, saw himself as a poor sinner—a beggar.  He once had much wealth and a lot of parties.  He was popular and had a lot of fun.  After serving in the military, a year-long imprisonment, an illness, an approach by a beggar, and a vision in a church, St. Francis devoted his life to God.  He took a vow of poverty, rebuilt several churches, and provided care for lepers.  St. Francis shone a light on what was previously seen as shameful—poverty and illness.  He is credited with creating the first Nativity Scene, which highlights Jesus’ lowly birth, something else that might have been seen as shameful.  St. Francis association with the animals is partly due to his renouncing worldly goods, something he and animals had in common and a connection with the little children mentioned in today’s Gospel.  Francis shined a light on what was shameful and weak, thereby shining a light on what God’s priorities are—simplicity, compassion, love.

On this day, we take a clear look at what is shameful—divorce and broken commitments and failures—and we place next to it the Old Rugged Cross, the emblem of suffering and shame and we find that Jesus is not ashamed of us.  No.  Instead he comes as one of us to walk this Earth, to court us and to show his commitment and love for us and all the Earth, all the Cosmos.  His commitment to the very most lowly and shameful, offends those who profit from shaming others, it offends us and we shout “Crucify him!”  And his shame is there on the cross, lifted up for all to see—his nakedness, his powerlessness to save himself, the death sentence, his suffering.  And Jesus takes that shame and turns it around to lift up all who have been blamed for their nakedness and suffering, all who have been weak or ill, all who have been hurt in their human relationships, all who have been mocked, all those who have been belittled both human and animal in all the cosmos, and Jesus dies as we all do.  Three days later, Jesus rises from the dead, blesses those who abandoned him and divorced him on his death bed, and offers forgiveness and new life and love to all the cosmos.  We stand here astounded and grateful and let Jesus call us back into right relationship with God and all God’s Creation.  We find our gratitude pouring out in thanks to God. Let us respond by looking at what is shameful in us and the systems around us and finding God’s grace to make changes.  Let us renew our commitments so that God can work through us to shape this world into one of new life for all Creatures.