The Feast Day of St. Francis: October 4, 2020
Today, like many of you, my soul is troubled: my heart is at war with itself, my
Church historian, Diana Butler Bass, recently wrote that what we experienced on national television in the behavior and rhetoric of Donald Trump is the distilled essence of a cruel, dangerous, and evil person. He not only assaulted us all, he turned us into his victims. “Words are powerful,” Bass writes:
They cut the heart. They silence opponents. They force others to submit. The biblical wisdom tradition insists that words can nurture or destroy… and Donald Trump weaponized words, intending to “break the spirit” of Joe Biden, of Chris Wallace, of those watching, and even America’s democratic traditions. Not only was it mean and rude and unfair and cruel, but most of us intuited that the verbal violence was sinful. It was a purposeful exercise in evil.
No wonder so many of us could not sleep that night – or even still – we had been assaulted. Bass adds:
These kinds of attacks wound on several levels, leaving immediate bruises and long-term trauma. In the short-term, they are like gut punches, taking our breath away. We are knocked off our feet; we feel confused and disoriented. Longer term trauma — sleeplessness, panic attacks, depression — can set in, too. On a spiritual level, these attacks unmoor us, undermining our capacity to love our neighbors, causing us to doubt ourselves and God. And that’s why) it is necessary to name what happened on Tuesday night honestly — an act of verbal evil on the part of the President – against his opponent, the process, and the American people.
When I try to grasp what it means for me to embody Christ’s love within this maelstrom of disorder and deceit, I’m drawn again to the witness of that wounded healer some of us know as Henri Nouwen. He was a gentle, broken man, often overcome with anxiety and shame, who yearned to be at peace with God and his neighbors. And if I might summarize his tumultuous journey of faith in one sentence, Nouwen came to see that people of faith are “constantly invited to overcome their neighbor’s fear by entering into it with them, and to find within the fellowship of suffering our own way to freedom.” In relationship. In compassion. In tenderness together.
When I try to grasp what it means for me to embody Christ’s love within this maelstrom of disorder and deceit, I’m drawn again to the witness of that wounded healer some of us know as Henri Nouwen. He was a gentle, broken man, often overcome with anxiety and shame, who yearned to be at peace with God and his neighbors. And if I might summarize his tumultuous journey of faith in one sentence, Nouwen came to see that people of faith are “constantly invited to overcome their neighbor’s fear by entering into it with them, and to find within the fellowship of suffering our own way to freedom.” In relationship. In compassion. In tenderness together.
Alone we feel immobilized – frozen in feelings beyond our comprehension – but when they can be shared in love and trust, they thaw out and become our way into peace. Part of the foolishness of God – the wisdom of the Cross – is that the fears and wounds of another are paradoxically the way into our own healing as well as theirs. Nouwen called this the charism of a wounded healer, where “the loneliness and despair of another awakens in ourselves similar pains within our own hearts” and we begin to see that the suffering of another cannot be healed or taken away without entering into it. As Dr. King told us: We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny and whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
They were alone and afraid, so he adds, “I leave you peace not as the world gives, but as I embody it, so that your hearts need not be troubled or afraid.” In their time of need Jesus offered himself, his companionship, make it clear that sharing our humanity in solidarity is God’s sacred antidote to isolation, anxiety, and the trauma of abuse. The prayer of St. Francis renders poetically the paradox of the wounded healer who discovers that consoling another creates solace for all, that giving to others is how we receive, that pardoning becomes our entry into forgiveness, that listening without judgment reveals the essence of the holy, and that dying to self becomes the way of new life within God’s peace.
Make me an instrument of your peace, O Lord:where there is hatred, let me sow love.Where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith.Where there is despair, hope;Where there is darkness, light and where there is sadness, joy.
By myself I cannot overcome my alienation. That’s why the song says WE shall overcome. We need each other. When I started these live cast reflections 29 weeks ago, it was to help another local congregation during their transition. But after a few weeks it dawned on me that in this era of self-quarantine and solitude, I needed to be in relationship and conversation about what was taking place as much as anyone else. I needed to reach out to you and those I love both to be consoled as well as to consolation. Even virtually, I’ve experienced how the paradox of presence brings me a measure of peace as I experience Christ with you. Until the lockdown, I never took Jesus seriously when he claimed that he would be among us whenever two or three gathered in his love. Well, sometimes, that’s all there is on a Sunday morning, right – two or three gathered in his name – and that’s just fine! Over these past seven months I’ve learned that the charism of the wounded healer trusts our fragility to be one of the ways we experience God’s strength. St. Paul used to say to the first faith communities in your weakness and emptiness, God offers a fullness beyond human comprehension.
The more you accept your need for companionship, the more your heart opens to the living spiritual presence of Jesus made flesh through other people. But if you act like you’re the self-sufficient center of the universe, the promised peace of Jesus simply seems absurd. Especially if your identity is indebted, embedded, or addicted to Empire where you become a human do-ing instead of a human be-ing.
St. Paul’s first letter to the struggling community in Corinth put it like this:
The message of the cross is foolishness to those enmeshed in the status quo of Empire, but to us who are being made whole by grace, the Cross is the power of God. In the upside-down ways of the Lord, when the world did not grasp God’s love in nature or reason, God decided, through the Cross, to reveal a sacred mystery to the world. Those who would only trust tradition continued to demand signs that they could control while those with sophisticated training desired rational explanations and all we proclaimed was Christ crucified and risen, a stumbling block to tradition and foolishness to conventional thinking.
It is my growing conviction that right now God is once again whispering to us: let Christ’s peace fill your hearts beyond trouble and fear. Take up the invitation to be a wounded healer who honors both the promise and the pain of each day. For in this vulnerability, I will bring you the strength and peace to make it through yet another day by faith.
Do you recall how Mary Oliver put it in “Wild Geese?” Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine? Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains, and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
The apostle Paul’s insights, Henri Nouwen’s charism, the poetry of both St. Franci
s and St. Mary Oliver all insist that the peace that passes all understanding becomes flesh whenever we reach out beyond ourselves to another in trust and tenderness. The early church used to speak of this as “learning to live and walk by faith not by sight.”
That means practicing trust by resting our fears within God’s strength not our own efforts. When the weakness of our flesh, the foolishness of our faith, the limitations of our power, even the dread of our hearts are placed into God’s love, then we discover the solace of the Holy Spirit taking up residence within. When we risk being empty, then we can be filled. I think that’s what Jesus was trying to tell us in the Sermon on the Mount – and this becomes clear in Eugene Peterson’s reworking of St. Matthew: You are blessed when you’re at the end of your rope - for with less of you there is more room for God. You’re blessed, too when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you: only then are you ready to let the one MOST dear to you embrace you with grace.
The Christian educator, Gertrud Mueller-Nelson, observes something similar when she notes that “whenever we become ‘bankrupt’ or have no defenses left to shield us from reality, the possibility of transformation becomes possible… Too much money, too much comfort, power, good looks, charm and outward success all mask our inner poverty of spirit. That’s why Jesus says losing one defense after another, bit by bit, is a blessing.” (Here We All Dwell Free, p.32)
Think of St. Paul: in his certainty, he became a spiritual terrorist; but when he was strike blind and vulnerable became a servant of grace and peace. He’s speaking from experience in Romans 8 when he says: God searches our hearts and knows what is the mind of the Spirit; so when the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs to deep for human words, we’re being filled with God’s love. That’s why we can trust that all things work together for good for those who love God. Not that all things ARE good – just that God can transform even death into new life for the sake of love. Knowing this, experiencing it myself within my own flesh, I must tell you if God is for us like this, who can be against us? No wonder I am convinced that neither death nor life, angels nor rulers, things present nor things to come, not powers, height, depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Now this didn’t happen in a vacuum – Paul wasn’t left by himself to figure out how God’s love was transforming him from hatred into peace-making – that would’ve been cruel. No, when Paul’s hard heart was broken open by the presence of Christ’s tenderness on the road to Damascus, God sent a servant by the name of Ananias to care for him, to nourish him physically and spiritually in his own home as Paul’s blindness was being healed. To pray with and for him during this convalescence and then to baptize him into a new way of living into God’s love. And while we don’t know the details of what happened next, we DO know that for the next three years Paul was nurtured by others in the way of Jesus. He was NOT left alone. Companions, who became for Paul the living presence of Jesus, renewed him inside and out and trained him to become yet another wounded healer.
This is much like what happened to St. Francis some eleven hundred years later. Francis entered the world as the privileged son of an Italian merchant who lived the life of a self-centered playboy. But when he was wounded during one of the crusades and spent the next year in prison before his father bailed him out, he sensed the presence of Christ visiting him in his lonely despair. And when this young hotshot regained his strength, he announced that Jesus had asked him to rebuild his church – and that’s what Francis literally did – stone by stone, step by step, he rebuilt the ruins of San Damiano into a chapel for the poor. Once again, it was the living, loving presence of Jesus, then a cadre of followers who became Franciscans, and eventually all of creation itself – think Brother Sun, Sister Moon and his kinship with animals and nature – that healed Francis. For such is the foolish, transformational, mystical grace of deep incarnation that reveals God’s strength to us in our weakness and empowers us by the Spirit to become wounded healers for the glory of God.
For a whole month we’ve been listening to foolish wisdom of the Lord through the non-linear insights of trees and rivers, wilderness and soil. Softly and tenderly the season of creation asks us to trust the charism of the wounded healer more than the power of Empire and rules that govern the status quo. Eco-theologian and spiritual director at the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research in Minnesota, Steven Chase, suggests that if we’re paying attention the cosmos reveals God’s foolish, paradoxical, healing to us over and over. He writes, “creation rejoices and mourns - it trains our souls through silence - opens our eyes to awe – and overwhelms our senses with the sensuality of the sacred. Creation is inebriated with love, intoxicated with longing and joy, and in constant praise for its Creator.” For five weeks the presence of God in nature has been luring us into giving up the ways we ordinarily measure value, worth, and meaning to simply receive the glory of God as it has been given to us in creation and community.
A beloved Zen teacher in my life, the late Michael Daniels of blessed memory, was reborn from above when he got clean and sober. After years of losing a debilitating battle with a grisly addiction to alcohol, Michael was transformed from the inside out by accepting his weakness and trusting God’s love. And when he had some sobriety under his belt, he often told me, “James, you are too damned smart for your own good.” And when I challenged him his reply was: “You freakin’ intellectuals all believe you can think your way into grace and study your way into the peace that passes understanding.” He knew that was true for me because my study at church and home was filled with bookcases and stacks of magazines and newspapers.
So, he loved to slowly look at all those books before turning to silently smile at me
before saying, something like: “The truth of the Spirit is that you only get God’s peace by letting go. If there’s too much YOU inside, you squeeze the Lord outta business. To be filled by God, you gotta be empty – and none of these books are gonna save your over-educated and sorry ass.” What a guy – what chutzpah – I was the one who got him into treat for God’s sake. But Michael was right.
He never used the word paradox – he didn’t know the Paschal Mystery or the foolish wisdom of the Cross from a whole in the ground – he just knew that after he hit rock bottom and became so sick and tired of being sick and tired that it was either death or trust that God was stronger than he was that he chose to let God be God so that he didn’t have to be. And he became a new and loving creation as a wounded healer.
Of course, he still had his demons and troubles. I had the privilege of receiving several of what AA calls the fourth and fifth steps in the 12 Step Process. Essentially they are confession and absolution. So I know the ups and downs. But when Michael worked the program – and he did – when he reached out to others when he was afraid or in trouble and together they both reached out to God however they under-stood the One who is Holy – one more day became clean and sober and manageable and even sacred to this scrappy little saint. And he was one happy dude. I miss him a lot and give thanks that God brought St. Michael into my life.
And what was true for Michael – and the first disciples and St. Paul and St. Francis and so many others – is true for us right now in the morass of the pandemic, an ecological catastrophe and America’s most serious racial reckoning in 50 years. We, too, can live in the paradoxical tension of our pain and God’s peace as reasonably happy dudes and dudesses if we’re open to becoming wounded healers. More than ever before it’s got to be just ONE day at a time right now – anything more is just overwhelming. So let me ask you to sing this little tune called One Day at a Time with me as we get ready for Holy Communion and the blessing of our pets. Another wounded healer by the name of Willie Nelson wrote it a long time ago. I first heard Joan Baez sing is and I think it’s the perfect prayer for us right now…
It is my growing conviction that right now God is once again whispering to us: let Christ’s peace fill your hearts beyond trouble and fear. Take up the invitation to be a wounded healer who honors both the promise and the pain of each day. For in this vulnerability, I will bring you the strength and peace to make it through yet another day by faith.
Do you recall how Mary Oliver put it in “Wild Geese?” Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine? Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains, and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
The apostle Paul’s insights, Henri Nouwen’s charism, the poetry of both St. Franci
That means practicing trust by resting our fears within God’s strength not our own efforts. When the weakness of our flesh, the foolishness of our faith, the limitations of our power, even the dread of our hearts are placed into God’s love, then we discover the solace of the Holy Spirit taking up residence within. When we risk being empty, then we can be filled. I think that’s what Jesus was trying to tell us in the Sermon on the Mount – and this becomes clear in Eugene Peterson’s reworking of St. Matthew: You are blessed when you’re at the end of your rope - for with less of you there is more room for God. You’re blessed, too when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you: only then are you ready to let the one MOST dear to you embrace you with grace.
The Christian educator, Gertrud Mueller-Nelson, observes something similar when she notes that “whenever we become ‘bankrupt’ or have no defenses left to shield us from reality, the possibility of transformation becomes possible… Too much money, too much comfort, power, good looks, charm and outward success all mask our inner poverty of spirit. That’s why Jesus says losing one defense after another, bit by bit, is a blessing.” (Here We All Dwell Free, p.32)
Think of St. Paul: in his certainty, he became a spiritual terrorist; but when he was strike blind and vulnerable became a servant of grace and peace. He’s speaking from experience in Romans 8 when he says: God searches our hearts and knows what is the mind of the Spirit; so when the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs to deep for human words, we’re being filled with God’s love. That’s why we can trust that all things work together for good for those who love God. Not that all things ARE good – just that God can transform even death into new life for the sake of love. Knowing this, experiencing it myself within my own flesh, I must tell you if God is for us like this, who can be against us? No wonder I am convinced that neither death nor life, angels nor rulers, things present nor things to come, not powers, height, depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Now this didn’t happen in a vacuum – Paul wasn’t left by himself to figure out how God’s love was transforming him from hatred into peace-making – that would’ve been cruel. No, when Paul’s hard heart was broken open by the presence of Christ’s tenderness on the road to Damascus, God sent a servant by the name of Ananias to care for him, to nourish him physically and spiritually in his own home as Paul’s blindness was being healed. To pray with and for him during this convalescence and then to baptize him into a new way of living into God’s love. And while we don’t know the details of what happened next, we DO know that for the next three years Paul was nurtured by others in the way of Jesus. He was NOT left alone. Companions, who became for Paul the living presence of Jesus, renewed him inside and out and trained him to become yet another wounded healer.
For a whole month we’ve been listening to foolish wisdom of the Lord through the non-linear insights of trees and rivers, wilderness and soil. Softly and tenderly the season of creation asks us to trust the charism of the wounded healer more than the power of Empire and rules that govern the status quo. Eco-theologian and spiritual director at the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research in Minnesota, Steven Chase, suggests that if we’re paying attention the cosmos reveals God’s foolish, paradoxical, healing to us over and over. He writes, “creation rejoices and mourns - it trains our souls through silence - opens our eyes to awe – and overwhelms our senses with the sensuality of the sacred. Creation is inebriated with love, intoxicated with longing and joy, and in constant praise for its Creator.” For five weeks the presence of God in nature has been luring us into giving up the ways we ordinarily measure value, worth, and meaning to simply receive the glory of God as it has been given to us in creation and community.
A beloved Zen teacher in my life, the late Michael Daniels of blessed memory, was reborn from above when he got clean and sober. After years of losing a debilitating battle with a grisly addiction to alcohol, Michael was transformed from the inside out by accepting his weakness and trusting God’s love. And when he had some sobriety under his belt, he often told me, “James, you are too damned smart for your own good.” And when I challenged him his reply was: “You freakin’ intellectuals all believe you can think your way into grace and study your way into the peace that passes understanding.” He knew that was true for me because my study at church and home was filled with bookcases and stacks of magazines and newspapers.
So, he loved to slowly look at all those books before turning to silently smile at me
He never used the word paradox – he didn’t know the Paschal Mystery or the foolish wisdom of the Cross from a whole in the ground – he just knew that after he hit rock bottom and became so sick and tired of being sick and tired that it was either death or trust that God was stronger than he was that he chose to let God be God so that he didn’t have to be. And he became a new and loving creation as a wounded healer.
Of course, he still had his demons and troubles. I had the privilege of receiving several of what AA calls the fourth and fifth steps in the 12 Step Process. Essentially they are confession and absolution. So I know the ups and downs. But when Michael worked the program – and he did – when he reached out to others when he was afraid or in trouble and together they both reached out to God however they under-stood the One who is Holy – one more day became clean and sober and manageable and even sacred to this scrappy little saint. And he was one happy dude. I miss him a lot and give thanks that God brought St. Michael into my life.
And what was true for Michael – and the first disciples and St. Paul and St. Francis and so many others – is true for us right now in the morass of the pandemic, an ecological catastrophe and America’s most serious racial reckoning in 50 years. We, too, can live in the paradoxical tension of our pain and God’s peace as reasonably happy dudes and dudesses if we’re open to becoming wounded healers. More than ever before it’s got to be just ONE day at a time right now – anything more is just overwhelming. So let me ask you to sing this little tune called One Day at a Time with me as we get ready for Holy Communion and the blessing of our pets. Another wounded healer by the name of Willie Nelson wrote it a long time ago. I first heard Joan Baez sing is and I think it’s the perfect prayer for us right now…
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