What Can Francis of Assisi Teach Unitarian Universalists?

Sermon

In Unitarian Universalist tradition, Francis of Assisi is perhaps the most beloved of the Catholic saints. Granted, we UUs don’t generally have a straightforwardly admiring relationship with Catholic saints, but with Saint Francis it seems much of that complication is put aside. I mean, really, what UU doesn’t melt when asked to cultivate peace in the world, as our reading this morning asks us to do? Our seventh principle, "Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part," explains why we so love the hymn we sang this morning, which is attributed to Francis. And this hymn pretty much sums up what UUs know about Francis: He loved peace, he considered the birds and the bees and the sun and moon to be his brothers and sisters…sounds like a UU superhero to me, right, what do you think?

In reality, Francis was deeper and more complicated, and today I’d like to look at some of these deeper lessons that Francis offers and see how they relate to the tenets of Unitarian Universalism.

Francis was born in 1181 in Assisi, a hilly, rocky, medieval Italian city. He was born into a well-off family and was a gregarious and irrepressible youth, very much into parties and interested in a career as a knight. He was wounded, however, early in his military career, and like many of us today, his trauma caused him to reconsider his life’s work. After recovery, his prayer life began; in solitude, in lonely caves and abandoned places, he started to ask his God what his role in the world should be. This practice formed the foundation for the most basic of Francis’ teachings, one that is often easy for UUs to understand and incorporate. Francis believed that each of us has a divine purpose to our lives, and through solitude and contemplation, we are able to find out what that purpose is, and also find the strength to live it out with a minimum of fear or doubt. Francis never wrote a theology of prayer, or a method of prayer, like so many other Christians did. Francis strongly believed that we all should allow contemplation to take us where we are ultimately meant to go, releasing any preconceived notions of where and how our experience with the divine should run. Avoiding the legislation of prayer allows us to seek our own path, to fully embody the role that we are meant to take on in the world.

Francis, along with those who incorporate Francis’ teachings into their writings, like Bonaventure and Thomas Merton, takes this conception of prayer and relationship to the Divine one step further. Francis equates this connection with Spirit to a direct line of communication with our inner reality. In other words, when we are really in connection with who we are, then we are automatically in contact with the Divine. In passages that could be taken from modern day Life Coaching handbooks, 20th century Cistercian monk Thomas Merton expands on Franciscan thought in his exploration of the difference between True Self and False Self. False Self is who we become when we are far from the Divine, far from who we were put on earth to truly be. It derives from an invented concept, fueled by social pressure, of who we think we need to be. Doesn’t this seem like a familiar, modern concept? People wrapped up in a false sense of self strive after accomplishment, acquisition, prestige, fame, money, or victory to justify and define themselves, only to find that justification and definition poofs away as soon as we finally achieve what we think we want. This false self is a shadow person, a reflection of a damaged society’s idea of who we need to be in the world. It leads to a fundamental unhappiness, an endless longing for more, a fruitless search for the meaning of life by buying more, climbing the ladder more, fighting age and death more…When Tom Brady, the 28 year old quarterback of the New England Patriots, who has three superbowl rings, says in an interview on 60 minutes that he has achieved all he’s ever dreamed of and sometimes now wonders if this is all there is to life, he is demonstrating the frustration that comes from chasing after a false sense of self. When you are chasing false accomplishments you are never done chasing because you are never at the finish line, never enough, never home.

In contrast, the True Self is who we are really meant to be, the expression of our truest nature. It can only be discovered through a process of radical honesty and radical acceptance of your Self, with all of your gifts and abilities and follies and weaknesses. True self looks not only at what you are, but what you were intended to be and what you were born to be. What calls to the True Self is not the logical, not the obvious, not the acceptable, not what your parents wanted you to be or what your teachers thought you were good at, but the actions and achievements that make you feel most alive, most yourself, most filled with joy and peace. If you have spent years and thousands of dollars training to be a lawyer, it really doesn’t make sense to society when you leave it all behind to start a jewelry business or stay at home with a child, but it is utterly understandable in the very depths of you – and that is a calling of the True Self. The True Self sings out in us despite what makes sense to society, despite our five year life goal plans and our Franklin-Covey prioritizing letter grades and our busyness and even our commitments sometimes. Thomas Merton writes that "God utters me like a Word containing a partial thought of Himself," and Francis would say our life’s question should be, which thought am I? What aspect of the greatness of creation am I called upon to live out loud, in my short time on earth? Life coach Martha Beck asks it best in modern terms: who would you be if it weren’t forbidden? There’s another quote I like that fits in here: "Any number of paths can take you partway up the mountain. Only your path can take you all the way to the top." Francis says that here each of us will find a different answer, a different call to our True Selves, that these answers are reflections of the Great Divine, and that the path to these Selves is through communion with the Creator, in whatever way you feel inspired to commune, because your own way of wanting to touch the divine is part of God’s plan too. Pretty open minded stuff, I’d say, from a medieval lay religious soon to be considered a Catholic saint.

There are certainly ways in which this theory can be portrayed in a bad light. It can be seen as justifying the selfish, and certainly the selfish could use it to their advantage. "I’m sorry, honey, but I find that washing the dishes is not really the path that God has chosen for me. I think I’m supposed to be concentrating on a loftier mission tonight." Any such selfish interpretation of this idea would be a misconception of what Francis was talking about, and if you brought this point to Francis he might begin a discussion on an topic with which many UUs have a very complicated background: The image of Jesus, crucified.

Some of us in this sanctuary were trained in childhood or adulthood to see the cross in a certain particular way. We were faced with a horrific image of torture, of a man who was supposedly everything that was good but who must have suffered terribly, unjustly, who died on that cross, and we may have heard that that man died for our sins. We may have wondered if that meant that we were responsible, or guilty, or evil. I know for many of us, our experience with the cross was so negative that we left our original churches, and in part that is why we are now Unitarian Universalists.

Let’s put a label on that way of looking at the cross that says "Not for right now" and let’s put it to the side. Because I do not intend to discuss this version of the cross today; I will not refer to it, or try to explain it, or deconstruct it. I want to talk about another aspect entirely: The cross as it relates to our purpose on this earth as humans. The cross as it exemplifies extreme service to each other, and why that symbol of extreme service is important to us and our growth as good people and good UUs.

I have to say that Francis surprised me greatly as I learned about him. In my head I often spread Christian teaching out on a continuum. On the one end, we have Jesus as the Wise Human Teacher, who preached love and good works. This is the end that most UUs have no argument with. On the other end of the spectrum is Christ, the Messiah, Crucified and Risen, where Jesus is more revered for his divinity than for his teachings. This is the end where lots of UUs – in no way all UUs, but lots of them – have trouble with Christianity. Surprisingly to me, despite his UU tendencies Francis is theologically very much at this highly Christological end of the spectrum. He is mystical, transcendent in his relationship with Jesus and with God. He is utterly attached to his vision of Jesus on the cross, and the meaning that vision imparts to him. For him, Christ on the cross exemplifies Jesus’ ultimate gift, his infinite love, and an example for the rest of us to follow when we ask ourselves how much we can possibly be expected to offer another person. It is from this message of Jesus on the cross that Francis gets the inspiration to become what UUs really admire, a brother to all living things, an instrument of peace. How does this happen? Can we as liberal religious also learn to look at this example of torture and see a message of ultimate love? Should we?

Let us put aside for now our reasoned questions about the historical accuracy of the story of Jesus’ crucifixion. Let us put aside for now the many abuses that we or others may have suffered at the hands of some of those who claim to also be followers of the cross, even though these abuses are real and valid and deserve a voice. Let’s look at the story itself and see its value for us as humans, as UUs. What happens in the world when we sacrifice for each other? What happens when we let go of the power we have in order to show that we love? Does death itself come to an end? Are we transformed, are we resurrected?

Many liberal Biblical interpreters, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., were personally inspired by the Hebrew Bible’s concept of the Kingdom of God, which is interwoven throughout the Old Testament, especially in the book of Isaiah. In fact, Dr. King developed the concept of Beloved Community as a reflection of his vision of the Kingdom, and if you go back and hear or read his speeches you can hear these concepts frequently used in them. Jesus himself references the Kingdom in the gospels as the goal to which we humans should be working through our love and service for one another. So, what is the Kingdom of God, anyway?

The Book of Isaiah describes the Kingdom of God this way, among others: No more will the sound of weeping be heard, or the cry of distress. No more shall there be in the world an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime, for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed. The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling 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 hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. They will not hurt or destroy on all the holy mountain; for the earth will be as full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea. Imagine this kind of heaven on earth, where the pain and suffering that we now assume is natural is reversed. The strong no longer dominate the weak, the prey relaxes with the predator, and they are led about not by the power of mighty leaders but by the ease and innocent, loving being-ness of children. Imagine for one minute the whole world as a holy mountain, where no-one hurts or destroys, because the earth is full of the knowledge of the divine.

What does "knowledge of the divine" mean? Francis would say that it is the knowledge of the power of ultimate and self-sacrificing love, exemplified by Jesus in a pure and final example of turning the other cheek. Would Francis say that loving your neighbor, loving your enemy, loving the creatures around you, seeing your interconnectedness, being that interconnectedness, being a brother or a sister of all life, is the way to bring the qualities of heaven to this earth, the Kingdom of God, now, today? Yes. Is this relevant to us as Unitarian Universalists? As people who profess an active search for peace, an active search for the divine in the individual, the lessons we can learn from this version of the crucified Jesus story are critical. Despite our discomfort, despite our criticism, despite our hurt, let us pledge never to forget the transcendent nature of love, and our own role in bringing that love to earth for the betterment of humankind.

Unitarian Universalists, whether we claim a Christian or a Jewish or a humanist or a Buddhist or a neo-pagan background, can bring heaven among us by loving each other, by sacrificing for one another, and all these traditions I just mentioned contain teachings that affirm that this sacrifice creates a power and miracle of love that can supersede suffering and even death. Is it true? I want to find out. Let’s work together to see if it is so.

Amen.