St. Paul's On-The-Hill Episcopal Church

The Rev. Stephen C. Holton, Rector

18 Pentecost, St. Francis' Sunday

October 4, 2009

Job 1:1; 2:1-10

Mark 10:2-16

BREAKIN' ALL THE RULES

We are called to break the rules. As Christians we are called to break all the rules. We are called to break the rules of theology. And we are called to break the rules of society.

Francis was one who broke all the rules. After living by the rules, taking advantage of the rules, succeeding by the rules – he broke all the rules, because he wasn't nourished by the rules, fed by the rules. He was starving, inside, because of the rules. So he broke them to find God.

He was a young man, a prince of a merchant house of Assisi. His father owned a fabric manufacturing company and dealt in fine fabrics. He had a lot of money. Francis became a knight of Assisi and, with the other knights, rode up and down the land in the many wars that Italy's city states fought with each other. It was all about glory and power and money, and Francis got a lot of all three.

But at some point it wasn't enough. All of this success was just not enough. All of this power and money and even security just wasn't enough.

So he began to seek out a religious life hoping that would help – as we do when we first begin to question the fulfillment we may or may not be getting from what little money we have.

He started to pray, and he received a vision – a voice saying: “Francis, rebuild my church.” So he found the small, ruined church of San Damiano nearby, and he rebuilt it. Actually he stole some of his father's fine fabric, sold it, and with the money paid for the rebuilding of the church.

With his father's money he followed his vision – not so sincere a task, if you ask me; and, like all of us, it still shows too much reliance on money, not enough on ourselves, our souls, whether we have lots of money or – like so many of us – don't have so much.

He gets another vision from God that indicates this is not quite what God had in mind. When God said “church,” he meant the people of the church. Rebuild their souls. Rebuild their lives. Rebuild their humanity. Do that, and Francis would rebuild God's church.

And he did. He goes back to his father with the vision. His father says, essentially, 'not while you live under my roof and wear my clothes.' So Francis takes off all his clothes and stands naked in the square and leaves his father's house. Not so unnatural a response for your average teenager.

He goes off, starts treating everyone as his equal, his beloved brothers and sisters, regardless of how much money or power they have – all people, strangers, neighbors, animals, plants, planets. And God's church gets rebuilt from the inside out, from the soul outward.

Job is the first famous rule-breaker in the Bible. He suffers the loss of his whole family and even all his health. His friends come to him and say: this has happened to you because you've broken all the rules – the theological and liturgical rules of God. You must have hurt someone or prayed wrong or done wrong, or this wouldn't be happening to you.

Job says: No I haven't. And by the end of the story, God says Job hasn't broken any rules. He's suffered for reasons beyond his control. There's nothing he could have done or not done.

There's only one rule he lived by. He stayed in relationship with God. He didn't curse God. He didn't cut himself off from God. That relationship gave him the strength to get through life. When everything else was going wrong, he stuck with God, and stayed alive.

This is the only rule we should not break, because it is the rule that enables us to get through everything else.

It is God who breaks all the other rules we live by, we religious folk. He breaks them to show they're worthless. He starts with Job to show that Job is worth something, in spite of all that is happening to him.

It is Jesus, later, who breaks other rules. The kids are trying to get to Him and the disciples are holding them back. They are breaking the rules of protocol and respect for adults. Or they haven't been confirmed yet. Or they haven't washed properly.

“Let the little children come to me,” says Jesus. “Do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.”

Then he says to all of them: “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child” – by breaking the rules of protocol and of knowing who's allowed in or who's not and for what reason – whoever does not break these rules and “receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”

Then, as if to show what entering the kingdom of God is like, “he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them and blessed them.”

That's what entering the kingdom of God is like – being embraced by Jesus. And we only get there by running full tilt at his lap so he can gather us up.

Perhaps we run full tilt at Him because we are running away from the unfulfilling life of Francis, the unfulfilling life of social success but spiritual loss. Perhaps we never gained the social success, but it wasn't for lack of trying! So we abandon the search, and try the search for Christ instead, the search that involves throwing off success and the hope for success, like Francis threw off the robes of success; and letting Jesus embrace us and bless us in our nakedness and failure. When we do that, we are able to go on full of hope and love and trust in Him, released to love ourselves and others, instead of looking for it outside ourselves.

In this world today we are so trapped in seeking fulfillment outside ourselves. We spend our income and pillage our planet to fill that bottomless need. It will never happen. It will never happen. Physical resources will never fill the hole. They will just leave more holes in the planet.

Like Francis, we must leave the plants and animals where they are. Love people as they are, as they were created by God, rather than as we think they should be. We can love these animals as they are, rather than as we think they should be. We can accept all the people and things of this great creation, love them and cherish them and be loved and cherished by them – rather than being at war with them, both people and things.

Francis' trust in God, the trust that led to his freedom from the success ladder and the rat race, is summarized in this prayer of his:

“O how glorious it is,

how holy and great,

to have a Father in heaven.

O how holy, consoling,

beautiful and wondrous,

to have such a Spouse.

O how holy and how loving,

pleasing, humble, peaceful,

sweet, lovable and desirable

above all things

to have such a Brother

and such a Son;

our Lord Jesus Christ,

who gave up his life for his sheep,

(Praying With St. Francis, p 63, Eerdmans)

This is the secret to Francis' own humility, the knowledge of God's love for him. It gave him the true security to love others without worrying about being humiliated by them or overpowered by them or surpassed by them in some road to success – as we worry so much when we interact with others in a daily competition of life. As he said:

“Blessed is the servant who esteems himself no better when he is praised and exalted by people than when he is considered worthless, simple, and despicable; for what a man is before God, that he is and nothing more. (Praying with St. Francis, p 67).

“That he is and nothing more.” Nothing less, either. We are but simple lovers of other souls, loved by God, cared for by God, entrusted by God with the care of others.

How wonderful it is to be agents of God's love, as well as of our own.

We are sent from this place, this true church of fellowship to love other people. 'Tell them I love them,' is what God says to us. That is our call, to go to them, to tell them that all shall be well, as Julian of Norwich says; to tell them God created them as well as the birds and the trees and the planets and we are to treat each other well and not think that life or success depends on what we can take from each other but on what we can give to each other – and the greatest gift is our selves, our love, our respect, our care.

There is an old hand trick I relearned last week. It goes (with hands closed) “here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors, and there's all the people (opening hands and showing fingers).

I think the reverse is true. (Start with fingers showing). Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors, and send out the people (and fingers go out to the crowd).

Go and tell them I love them, says God. Show your love for them. Tell them to love the plants and animals, brother sun, sister moon, as Francis said. We are all related, living together in this great, life-giving, web of God's creation, with God too.