SUNDAY OCTOBER 3, 1993

St. Francis’ Episcopal Church, Stamford, CT

Today is your patronal feast day. St. Francis day. In a few weeks my

parish in Greenwich Village, the Church of St. Luke in the Fields, will

be celebrating its patronal feast. St. Luke’s Day. Two such seemingly

different saints. St. Luke, the urbane, sophisticated, eloquent patron

saint of physicians; St. Luke, the symbol of healing. St. Francis, the

ascetical, barefoot, brown-clad, child-like patron saint of the needy

and defenseless (flora and fauna alike); St. Francis, the symbol of poverty

and vulnerability. Two very different men from very different times. Yet

perhaps in the light of the Gospel they were not so different. One a

doctor tending to the sick who were so often poor. One tending to the

poor who were so often sick. Both man seeking and serving Christ in

others. Both men imitators of Jesus, literally Christ-bearers, entering

into and bringing hope to lives marginalized by society. Both men

continuing Christ’s ministry of reconciliation, the Church’s ministry.

Therefore, both men models for us.

Today we focus on St. Francis. He is probably the number one favorite

saint of all Christians of all ages. This may be because his image has

been distorted over the centuries, sanitized, romanticized, and

sentimentalized into something more palatable for us. The gritty gutsy

reality of our saints are so often hidden behind the pastel blandness of

our gift-shop statuettes, Ken and Barbie dolls in biblical drag,

Mary appearing to have never stepped outdoors in her spotless robes.

We have exalted Francis as the Dr. Dolittle of the four-legged world.

Up to a point that’s fine. That’s fun for the children and for the child

in all of us. The traditional blessing of the animals will be taking place

around the world today. You’ll be doing this, and I’ll be returning to

St. Luke’s to do this later today. The Cathedral in New York will be

renting its usual quota of elephants and camels. And we will sing of

All Things Bright and Beautiful, All Creatures Great and small.

And perhaps in all of this a certain innocence will be restored to use

a vision of God’s Kingdom as the place where the lion lies beside the lamb.

Well, what’s wrong with that picture? Nothing, in so far as it goes.

Several things, in so far as what has been left out. Things which are

needed in order to express the heart of Francis’ life and ministry.

Where are the homeless? Where is the woman with the hemorrhage which

no doctor could stem? Where is the man blind, deaf, and dumb from

birth? Where is the mongoloid child? Where is the leper? Where is the

person with AIDS? Where are all those two-legged creatures to whom

Jesus and Francis reached out, to embrace and to metaphorically lie

beside?

The picture of the lion and the lamb lying side by side is a picture of

the overcoming of fear, It is fear, not hate, which is the opposite and

enemy of love. When fear is overcome it is overcome by love; not love

as a mere feeling, but love as God loves; love as a willingness to

reach out beyond a self-concern rooted in our fear of “otherness”, to reach

out to affirm the full humanity and acceptability of others, no matter

their condition or their seeming threat to us. Francis was terrified of

leprosy. Let’s not romanticize or underestimate what it must have cost him

to get down off his horse to physically embrace a leper. Only an openness

to God’s grace could have given him the will and courage to bridge the

chasm caused by fear, the chasm that in alive and well today between the

healthy and the sick.

In reaching across that chasm Francis experienced a kind of crucifixion,

a death of self, of fear of pollution, of conventional wisdom which said

that one stayed away from such people; a death of judgementalism which

considered such people as not favored by God and therefore not to be

favored by us. And through this crucifixion Francis arrived at the

resurrection where he could see that indeed all things were bright and

beautiful and in favor with God, where the lion lay beside the lamb.

We too cannot arrive at that resurrection place without going through our

own crucifixions. Of course I have a feeling that if Christians had a

board game, on the order of, say, Monopoly (maybe we could call it

“Pilgrimage’), everyone’s favorite drawing card would be the one that

read: “By-pass the crucifixion, go directly to the resurrection, and

collect immortality”. Most of us do not willingly choose the

sacrificial path, but sometimes life itself presents us with a crisis that

asks us to make a choice for or against love, for or against fear.

This has happened here at St. Francis.

AIDS in today’s leprosy, and St. Francis Church now has AIDS, and isn’t

it ironic that it has struck the very place devoted to the ideal of

St. Francis? The real meaning of “crisis” is “opportunity”. You now have

an opportunity. What will you do with this? AIDS is a work-a-day

phenomenon in my parish. We do more funerals then weddings. And we

are privileged. So very privileged. Amidst the sadness and the lose

looms the figure of Christ shining through all the woundedness, reminding

us of just who it is that Jesus hangs out with, who it is he favors: the

outcasts, the marginalized, the week, the sick, the stigmatized.

Reminding us that as we reach out and minister to the Christ in them,

as did Francis, it is really they who are ministering to use opening

our eyes in the face of their suffering and courage, inviting us into

their closeness to the heart of God.

Richard’s friend Edward has AIDS. Maybe many of us will never even

meet Edward because he is not technically a member of St. Francis church.

But because he is Richard’s friend then he in our friend and his AIDS in

our business. As a body of Christ reincarnated in this life then we are

members of one another. One member’s tragedy is our tragedy. Richard’s

whole life, perspective, and understanding of the Gospel will be affected

by his friend’s illness, and this will affect us. Edward will minister

to us through Richard. Can we be open to that? Can we be open to hearing

what God will have to say to us through one to whom he is indeed very

close right now? And can we minister to Edward in our ministry to

Richard? Can we be healers by giving our love and support to Richard so

that he may have the strength to meet the days ahead as he ministers to

Edward?

Perhaps the first task of ministering will be to incorporate AIDS into

our vocabulary, to make this word a permanent part of our intercessory

prayers, to pray formally each Sunday and in our own private prayers for

all who have AIDS, for their families and friends, for all caregivers,

for Doctors and nurses, for all who seek a cure. Then hopefully St. Francis

will be moved through its prayers to find a ministry to those with AIDS

in the Stamford area. At St. Luke’s we have a Saturday night feeding

program and we host a tea party on an AIDS ward each weekend at a

nearby hospital. How will St. Francis discern its Franciscan ministry to

those with AIDS?

Whatever the chosen ministry, through it we will be bridging the chasm

of fear by entering into relationship with the neighbor not of our

choosing but with the neighbor God has so graciously given to us: Edward.

Maybe then we can begin to understand the extraordinary grace given to

Francis through the leper he embraced, the grace which crucifies all our

usual ways of thinking and being, so that we might truly be brought into

the light of the resurrection to see that all things are being made new,

all relationships redefined.

It is, however, God’s supreme irony that the route to the kingdom lies

through a path of darkness, of crucifixion, of blood, sweat, and tears,

of pain and suffering; the pain of others and our own pain as we

reluctantly shed the illusions of our pastel lives, orderly and tidy

like the plaster statues of our saints. It is precisely in and through

the darkness of AIDS whereby we will arrive at the primary colors of

God’s kingdom; colors so dazzling that our eyes could not bear it except

by the grace of God in Jesus which gives us new eyes to see with Francis

that all things are and will be bright and beautiful, especially when the

lion and the lamb lie down together.

Amen.