RBG Prayer by Rev. Debra McKnight

God of Justice,

Ruth, Your sacred soul has died. And we are hurt and grieving, wounded and worried.
Ruth, Your beloved, lives in our memory and yet we long for more.  
Ruth, Your defiance in the face of sexism and dissent in the face of misogyny,
Ruth the great defense of our most vulnerable bodies and our tender democracy.

Anger and fear are feathering their nest,
    making themselves at home in our hearts,
        despair is making itself at home as the choices of the horizon call for action.

The choice, we fear, rests in the hands of the Ruth-less,
    unmoored from morality and friends with hypocrisy,
those who seek to control the choice and voice, body and vote of others
those who long for an America that was great for very few.

Our anger rises. We wonder, “Is there any honor left among us?”
We fear the truths about to be laid bare.  

And yet you bid us. You call us to take heart, still our nerve,
to join the march, be the company that pulls the long ark of history towards justice
and makes all things new.

You bid us to decent with every breath and vote,
You call us to justice with every pulse and step,
You remind us of the one who turned over the money changers tables
and laid the heartless the bureaucracy bare.

You send us prophets of dreams and decent
of wisdom and voice,
of courage in every size and shape and color and creed.

And so we will grieve and we will curse
and we will follow your call.
We will grow through the pain of this moment
to a more perfect union and your all loving dream.

And we will shoo the little whispers of fear and self doubt,
we will send despair packing and transform anger into righteous rage.

We will do what must be done,
to make earth as it is in heaven.

We will do what must be done,
with every breath and vote,
with every pulse and step
to let justice roll down like waters
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.  

May we have the courage.
Amen.

-Rev. Debra McKnight

Bless Your Heart by Maria Walker

 Reflection by Maria Walker

September 20, 2020

Matthew 9:7-12

7 And he stood up and went to his home. 8 When the crowds saw it, they were filled with awe, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to human beings.

9 As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.

10 And as he sat at dinner[a] in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting[b] with him and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 12 But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 

I have lived in Omaha, Nebraska for 10 years. An entire decade. And I still sound like this. I am not shy about sharing the fact that I grew up in the south. The sounds of the south, recipes, mannerisms, and colloquialisms are still a part of me and are not forgotten. As Scout, my oldest daughter, said to me the other day, “I forget you have an accent until one of my friends says to me, ‘Your mom has an accent!” She is also the child that recognizes when I am leaning into my southern roots as the other day, we are sitting directly beside one another at the kitchen table, I can hear her on a virtual class. The teacher asks, “Scout, are you here?” She replied with, “Yes.” I immediately call out, “Ma’am. Say ‘Yes, ma’am.” My daughter looks at me with slight annoyance, but still kindly tells me, “No one here talks that way”, and refocuses on her class. It’s as though she has reached out and patted my hand and said, “Mama, bless your heart.” 

 

There are many things I still cherish about growing up southern: Duke’s mayonnaise, sponge curlers, excessive monograms, grits, and the phrase, “Bless your heart.” Perhaps you have heard this phrase on television, seen it in a meme, used it yourself, or had it said to you. Bless your heart. 

 

You may know it has a double meaning. At face value, it truly means bless you. It can be an expression of sympathy, love, or comfort. Typically, when used in this manner, the phrase is accompanied by a hug, a kiss on the cheek, or if you are hearing it from me I usually clarify with, “For real. I am being sincere.” 

 

But there is a second meaning to this phrase that is, arguably, less kind.  “Bless your heart” can also be a way to question someone’s actions or behaviors without directly saying, “That is so wrong.” Using ‘bless your heart’ can give you a pass to, as the young folks say, “Rekt someone” without the harshness of “getting rekt”. 

 

Perhaps the equivalent here in Nebraska is awkward silence? 

 

We also use the phrase, “From a place of love” in the Walker home. It is usually prefaced with the question, “Can I give you some feedback?” and then, “It’s from a place of love.” I can recall a time when a much younger Robin, our youngest daughter, came to me crying. She said, “Scout just called me a name. And it was not from a place of love.” I am not sure they understood that the phrase, “from a place of love” didn’t give you a pass to demean your sister. 

 

Bless your heart gives you permission to challenge someone while at the same time nullify any cruelty that may be stated or implied.  In the scripture today, I imagine it as a time Jesus would have said to the Pharisees, “Bless your heart.” 

 

Jesus was brought a paralyzed man, told the man to stand up and walk, and the man did just that! Folks that gathered and witnessed this “were filled with awe”. I imagine their faces also reading astonishment in addition to that awe. Jesus kept on doing Jesus. He was walking along, spotted Matthew, a tax collector, and said, “Follow Me”. After a paralyzed man walks after Jesus tells him to, I don’t think Matthew could say no to that. 

 

They sit down to dinner and others join Jesus, Matthew, and his disciples. And you all know what happens next. The Pharisees had to ask, “Why does your teacher do this?” I always hear this question with a very judgmental and condescending tone. “Why does your teacher do this?” 

 

The remainder of the passage plays out with Jesus, of course, hearing this. I picture Jesus breaking bread for folks, making room for one more person at the table, passing plates right to left and left to right… anyway he can. Then he hears the Pharisees asking, “Why is he doing this?” Jesus, perhaps, does not miss a beat and looks at the Pharisees “How shallow and uneducated must you be to not already know the answer to that, bless your heart.” Then I hear one of the others that have joined the table shout out, “Get rekt”, and see heads nodding.  Perhaps this is the southern interpretation of this passage, so I will stop there with my commentary. 

 

Jesus didn’t bless anyone’s hearts in that moment, but Jesus did let them know that dining with ‘those people’ is exactly what should be happening. Mercy for others is the desire of the Divine. Compassion is the motivation for connection. I think the phrase “bless your heart” can include that same mercy. 

 

When we say bless your heart, we acknowledge that we don’t agree with what someone has said or done. We have given a definitive “No, thank you” to whatever is offered. But we also offer a blessing to that same person. As Debra has shared with me in the past, “it has a redemptive quality to it.” 

 

Blessing hearts can be the thing that allows folks to stay in relationship when tension exists. It can be a way to boundary up when we enter challenging conversations in these 6 weeks prior to Election Day. It can offer a challenge to spoken beliefs that may not seem congruent with mercy or compassion and still offer that same mercy and compassion to the speaker. 

 

I acknowledge this approach may not feel as comfortable for some as others. I’ve been blessing hearts for 43 years. It may feel intimidating or overwhelming to challenge or disagree with folks while still being present with mercy, love, and compassion. But I hope you will take today’s message as a challenge to bless a few hearts in the coming months, both in word and deed. 

 

Be courageous and challenge when folks are questioning generosity. When asked, “Why would you do that?” Because that is what we are called to do, bless your heart. Challenge the notion that select individuals are gatekeepers to mercy, compassion, and kindness because of their role, status, or own self proclamation. When asked, “Why would you help those people?” Because I can, bless your heart. Challenge misinformation and misuse of the gospel. “Why would you do that?” Bless your heart. 

 

One of my favorite songwriters, Jason Isbell, acknowledges the struggle of dissension coupled with optimism. He writes: 

I know you're tired
And you ain't sleeping well
Uninspired
And likely mad as hell
But wherever you are
I hope the high road leads you home again

He goes on to say: 

I've heard enough of the white man's blues
I've sang enough about myself
So if you're looking for some bad news
You can find it somewhere else
Last year was a son of a bitch
For nearly everyone we know
But I ain't fighting with you down in a ditch
I'll meet you up here on the road

As we meet up here on the metaphorical road, may we hold each other’s hearts in love and warmth. We are blessed to be in this community that offers space for that love and warmth, and affirms all people. We are blessed and can then bless others. May we go forward this week from places of love and courage and approach our world with blessings to share. Bless all our hearts. May it be so.

Hildegard: This Lady Loves Science, You Should, Too!

 Rev. Debra McKnight's Reflection

September 13, 2020

I have lived near Hildegard…well, near Bingen, and I have read her and I want to love her. I feel like we should be spiritual buddies even through we were born about 1000 years apart. I have seen the Rhine river and spaces connected with her and perhaps even a relic of her, which probably amounted to a display case of bejeweled, golden containers and signs that say, “This is Hildegard’s index finger, Charlemagne’s forearm and St. So-and-so’s clavicle.” I have wanted to feel connected but, to be honest, it is hard. I read her writing and when I to draw the visions she details, I end up looking at a mountain of eyeballs looking up at a glowing orb, a human figure at the base, and flames coming out from the sky. And all of it means something: the eyes looking up are about humility and the flames are virtues and I just start to say, “Hildegard, you are too much!”

Of course she is too much. You would be too if you were gifted to the monastic community as a child. She was the 10th child, so her parents give her as a tithe to the church. At the age of eight, she leaves home for the monastery, living under the care and supervision of Jutta. Just to give you perspective she was a year older than Lila and if you are thinking about how you can support the Abbey, this is it. The world in which she dwells is almost incomprehensible to me and perhaps to you. She joins the monastic community at 8, takes vows at 15 and when her mentor dies, she will take her place in leadership of the Sisters. This path might be why it’s a challenge for me to follow her writing.

I much prefer a secondary source like Matthew Fox or Jan Richardson. They are like sunscreen that makes it safe to bask in Hildegard’s brilliance. I appreciate the historians and the experts; they are like tour guides and can help us navigate the landscape. They know the pitfalls and the best views, they know the Rhine was Celtic before the Germanic tribes, they know the  politics of the many little Germanys that would have shaped Hildegard’s world and they know the theologies that she pushes back against. I love having the help of wise guides and if anything, I think Hildegard would totally affirm this. She believed our “regal intellect” was a gift to be used and she told that to the fundamentalist and anti-intellectuals of her day. She would likely be appalled by the state of modern American Christianity.

She loves science saying, “all science is a gift from God” and finds creation to be alive. She loves nature and writes books on medicine. She imagined the universe with the metaphor of an egg and believed we were co-creators with God. Born in 1098, she lived in a world hostile to the feminine voice and yet she would not be silent. She wrote 300 letters to Kings and Abbots, Popes and Princes and she told them exactly what she thought. She delighted in creation, talked about being “moist” (that’s right, moist) in love of God and creation and the great sin of the church was drying up. She told them to get “wet and green and moist and juicy” and if you are hearing that as a little erotic, well you are hearing her right. She said, “the sin of the Church is silence and tolerance of corrupt men” and “You, O Rome, are like one in the throes of death, you will be so shaken for you don’t love the Kings daughter, Justice.” She lives most of the 12th century and won’t be silenced until she is 80 and I don’t know if you have met a lot of 80 year old church ladies, but they will not be silenced.

She invites folks to explore Christ through music and medicine, science and opera, poetry and art and theology and something a kin to medieval European yoga. She sees creation as delightful and delighted. She will name Mary as the seed of all being and see divinity (God’s presence) not as a ladder to above us, but as a wheel - a circle that embraces and encompasses us all. She does not buy into the dualism of Greek Philosophy that so influence voices like Augustine and so she does something different than the standard original sin narrative that makes us so broken we are just lucky God would look at us. She preaches original Wisdom and a vision of Love at the start of creation.
 
Hildegard says, “I heard a voice speaking to me: The young woman whom you see is Love. She has her tent in eternity…It was love which was the source of this creation in the beginning God said, “Let it be!” And it was. As though in the blink of an eye the whole creation was formed through Love. The young woman is radiant in such a clear, lightning-like brilliance of countenance that you can’t fully look at her…She holds the sun and moon in her right hand and embraces them tenderly…The whole of creation calls this maiden Lady. For it was from her that all of creation proceeded, since Love was the first. She made everything…Love was in eternity and brought forth, in the beginning of all holiness, all creatures without any mixture of evil. Adam and Eve, as well were produced by love from the pure nature of the Earth.”

We are formed in love, all of creation is formed in love, “gifted with all needed” and “a symphony of joy and jubilation.” Adam’s sin is failing to love and rather than a fall and redemption that requires a violent crucifixion to be at one with God, she invites a different path. Redemption is about incarnation not crucifixion, the very notion of God within us and around us and through us, God is already there. Matthew Fox names Hildegard’s salvation theology as Via Positiva, Via Negativa, Via Creativa, and Via Transforma. All of creation begins in joy and abundance. Creation isn’t to be used, but celebrated. Adam’s sin is not loving creation and like Adam, we journey in this negative space. The mystery and darkness, the fire balanced with stillness, the presence of silence and suffering are a part of life, honored and named. Hildegard will have her own moments of this with sickness and struggle and when she does, she longs for the goodness and remembers the goodness. “O Mother, where are you? I would suffer pain more lightly if I had not felt the deep pleasure of your presence earlier.” As she longs and struggles, she sees the crucifixion as a place of being awakened, a grounding place of restart. And that journey towards transformation takes one through creativity (Via Creativa).

Hildegard embodies the creative path. She spends 10 years writing and directing illustrations of her visions for her first book and then just adds an opera on the end of it. Her music is incredibly challenging and requires a musician to go through their full potential. Her musical compositions anticipate Mozart by 500 years. She wrote books on theology and claimed her visions. She wrote letters to leaders navigating the challenging political landscape, crafted a text on Medicine and she preached up and down the Rhine, the Saar, the Moselle and the Danube. She took her sisters, left the men’s monastic building and built her own. She not only raised the money for it and lead the community, but she designed the building and it had running water and toilets before most of Europe could imagine such engineering. Creativity leads to transformation. This is the journey toward connectivity with God and the presence of the spirit. Transformation leads to tending the “King’s daughter, Justice.” She call us to struggle against evil. “Resist strongly…become a tree.” Trees are rooted and strong and she compares the sap to the soul. Her view of creation as a circle and God embodied in all means violation of the earth and humanity is a sin.

All of this is perfect. Except she is not perfect. She is imperfect and we expect folks we name “Saints” to be perfect. But the truth is as far as she might have come theologically, there was room to grow. To understand other faiths and folks who practice them is in the circle, too. To open the doors of her community to sisters who didn’t come from nobility would have challenged the norms of her day, but that is one challenge she didn’t follow. And while her very presence and voice challenges gender norms of the 12th century and pretty much every century after it, she doesn’t bring other women along…at least not very well. Of women she says, “for they are an infirm and weak habitation, appointed to bear children and diligently nurture them.” Reading this breaks my heart. I don’t know if she is comparable to Phyllis Schlafly, but I know I am disappointed. Why can’t she be perfectly liberating? Why did she do so well and not do everything well…or the way I would want her to?

The truth is she teaches folks to love their “regal intellect” and gives us the reminder to think critically and so we must, even about her very teachings. We can learn what gives life and leave what does not behind. We can take her message and move a step further than she could at the time. And most important, we can think deeply about our own blind spots and mistakes. Her world was a mess, it was violent and oppressive, hunger and sickness made life hard at every turn and yet God works through her and with her. She leaves home at eight as a gift to the church and the strange miracle is she actually thrives and becomes a holy, imperfect gift to the church and the world around her. Our world has its share of violence and oppression and the mess around us can feel anything but holy. Perhaps Hildegard asks us to look deep at what we can make of this world around us, how can we love it wildly and fully? What might we need to carry a step further to draw closer to God’s love? May we have the courage to journey with Hildegard through it all. May it be so. Amen.

P.S. Interested in reading more? Consider Hildegard of Bingen: A Saint For Our Times by Matthew Fox, his love of her carries through in every word. Interested in a great devotional that grapples with how hard it can be to dance with Hildegard? Consider Jan L. Richardson’s In The Sanctuary of Women. If you are seeking her writings, we have them at the Abbey.

Life Jackets Are Essential

September 6, 2020

Rev. Debra McKnight



As we break this bread and as we light our candles in our own unique spaces, we remember that Jesus journeyed in community and that His baptism was the very launch point of this work.  So let us pray. 

    

Gracious and Generous God, you call us into life in unexpected ways, through unexpected moments in spaces that are entirely ordinary: water, sand, bread, wheat, grain - all of the things that you spoke about, much mended nets - seeds landing in the ground.  Grant us the courage to find what is extraordinary in every ordinary moment, that we might live into the call of our baptism, that we might follow with love and gratitude and abundance.  May it be so.  Amen.

Scripture - Luke 4:16-21

This scripture is sort of a bold move on Jesus’ part.  It’s like, “mission accomplished,” mic is dropped.  Done.  And the people respond with, “isn’t that Joseph’s boy?  Uhh, who does he think he is?”  The baptism invites us into these sorts of unusual places.  It has this kind of work within us.  And when we think about baptism, we think about water - this kind of part of us, that we are made of water, we exist in water, water is essential to life.  Water is a sacred expression in so many religious traditions, particularly our own.  And so we gather here at this space of water, in this space that means a lot to me - this space where I have been hanging out off and on since I was six or so.  (Lila from the background, “Nine!”)  Well, first, mom & dad bought this lot and we would swim here and then, when I was nine or ten, we moved here.  [Thank you for the clarification.  For those of you who didn’t hear it, Lila fixed what I said was wrong.  She’ll get her own mic in the future, but not yet].  So this is a space of care and it’s a space where you can see of privilege and not just privilege in this space of getting to grow up in this space of nature and this space, but this privilege of having parents like Jim and Sandy McKnight.  And this space was a space of hospitality.  Not was, is (Covid is hard).  This space was this kind of hosting base for my parents over and over and over.  They invited everyone to come anytime; to swim anytime.  My family, my cousins, came all the time.  And then when I was in high school, they started hosting the entire marching band.  The entire high school marching band came here at least once a summer.  They’ve hosted baseball teams and softball teams, not just for their kids, but for their grandkids.  They have hosted all kinds of people, even our summers of Japanese exchange students who went to College of Saint Mary and came down here and my dad would get everyone in the water and run around on the boat with tubes and skis and knee boards and whatever else. 

And my dad, in this work of hosting, in this work of hospitality, cared very much about safety.  And that is a gift.  When I was growing up, when we moved here, if we didn’t join the swim team and then prove that you could swim across the lake and back, just to be in the backyard, you had to wear a life jacket.  At leas that was the proposal.  It really encouraged us to swim and to get really good at swimming.  Of course, not being five foot ever, meant that when I got trophies for swim team, they were more like the “110%” award or “Most Improved.”  But, trying really hard was just fine.  And we wore life jackets all the time.  We wore life jackets on the boat.  We wore life jackets everywhere.  My dad is like the Oprah Winfrey of life jackets.  He’s got a wall of life jackets.  “You get a life jacket!  And you get a life jacket!  And you get a life jacket!”  He’s got life jackets for babies.  He’s got life jackets for toddlers.  He has five choices.  If you’re in middle school and you’re not sure which one’s quite right for your body because it’s changing, it’s fine.  There are choices.  We will try them all on.  Life jackets for everybody.  Everybody in the boat needed a life jacket.  And my dad wore his life jacket.  It wasn’t just “you should wear a life jacket,” he wore a life jacket all the time.  He wore a life jacket driving the boat - didn’t matter how hot it was, didn’t matter how slow they were going - because, he clarified, that if we really needed the life jacket, it wasn’t gonna help us sitting on the chair next to us.  So my dad wore a life jacket all the time.  And I got older and I started to notice that none of the other dads wore life jackets in their boats and I started to be aware that just because my life jacket was like, hot pink and teal like my prom dress in the 90s, didn’t mean that it was cool.  This kind of awareness of like, our deep-rooted nerdiness showing up for everybody to see. 


But the gift of life jackets, the gift of this kind of care taking and hospitality and protection; this gift allows you to do things that you wouldn’t otherwise do.  And it keeps you safe while you try something new.  It keeps you safe when you’re being pulled behind a boat and being flung this way and that.  It gives you a space to try and try and try again at skiing.  It gives you space to kind of float and rest and relax; it is a space of safety and care.  And so here at the McKnight house, we wear life jackets all the time.  And when I think about this space and when I think about this work of baptism, how when we are in community with one another, we become like this safety net.  We make this safe space for each other.  We offer each other this kind of extra lift, this extra ability to float, this extra protection if things get too unsure and too wild.  See, baptism is about us committing to a life together, us committing to do work together, us committing to community.  When I talk to children about baptism and they ask questions, I will say that baptism makes us a family with a bunch of aunts and a bunch of uncles and, just like a family, maybe we don’t always get along.  Maybe sometimes we disagree.  But we are family.  Josephine and Everett (the two babies who were baptized during this service) gain this big, wild extended family.  And the gift of it is that we guard one another’s hopes and dreams, that we make this protective space, this safe space.  


See, life jackets allow you to do something really hard, really even risky.  And the Christian tradition asks us to do things that are hard and risky.  This scripture is Jesus’ mission statement.  He comes back after his baptism after being drawn into the wilderness, after being tested and tempted, and his first thing is proclaiming release and recovery and healing and care for all people.  They are tangible.  They are hard.  They are upsetting to the status quo.  Nobody will like them.  See, this moment ends with Jesus being run out of his hometown.  That’s how popular Christianity is.  This work of baptism, it asks us to invite one another into those spaces that are hard and to stand side by side as we do work that is risky and challenging and unsure and uncertain every step of the way.


May we have the courage.  May it be so.  Amen. 

St. Francis of Assisi

Rev. Debra McKnight's Reflection

August 30, 2020

You have probably seen Francis, even if you didn’t know it. His likeness frequents many a garden or quiet nook. He is most often depicted with a bird resting in his outstretched hand as woodland creatures gather at his feet. They are mesmerized by his aura of grace and love. He has all the charisma of Snow White or Cinderella, except he isn’t make-believe and his values probably don’t match the Disney company. The truth is, his values are hard for most of us. His faithfulness and commitment to living as Jesus lived even made other spiritual contemporaries nervous.


His Dad, Pietro di Bernardone, probably loves that his son is famous. He probably loves the Basilica in his honor and every single little statue, charm and token. He was a wealthy merchant in a time when the economy was changing and he dreamed big dreams for and with his son. In fact, he returned from a business trip realizing his wife named their sweet baby Giovanni (John) just like every other kid in Umbria, so he changed it to Francesco - something more fantastic that could remind everyone that his son is the child of an elegant French woman. His Dad was succeeding in this new economy based in currency where folks worked “In the name of God and Profit.” And at least for a while, Francis didn’t have trouble following his Father. He made friends easily, he delighted in singing the love songs of troubadours and he even joined the military. This could take him a step up the ladder, not just rich, but military leadership matters. The changing economy comes with social unrest. City-states or small republics are pushing back on feudal lords and the church and there are plenty of opportunities to go to war. He will spend a year as a POW and upon his return he will consider joining the Pope’s army…that’s right - the Pope has an army and that’s because the Pope has a lot of land and when you have a lot of stuff well, you have a lot of needs to ‘protect it' and your interests.


But, along the way to serving the Vatican’s military ambitions, he has a vision or an urging that turns him right around and places this question of serving God in his being. He becomes depressed. His friends will say nothing delights him and he spends time in a Grotto (which is just a really nice way of saying ‘cave’). He isolates, he separates and probably makes his family equally worried and annoyed. He spends time with beggars and lepers and even kisses their wounds as he cleans them. Suddenly he feels what he calls sweetness, what was bitter becomes sweetness. He spends time in an old church called San Domiano, which is falling apart, and senses another urging to repair this sacred space. So he gets serious, serious enough to sell some things…things which belong to his Dad… and he gets to work. He does this more than once…selling things that may not technically be his to sell…to raise money for efforts close to his heart. One Cleric will not accept the money out of fear of the gruff business man, Pietro.


Francis is in love, in love with poverty. His friends notice his delight and he says he has married Lady Poverty. What was bitterness turns to sweetness. He finds delight in his poverty and his passions. Of course not everyone finds this delightful. He is mocked publicly and his father had imagined perhaps a beautiful wife, not lady poverty. He educated Francis for taking over the family business, not for the life of a poor lay servant of the Church. People think he is mad, his Father tries to contain him, stop him, keep him home…anything but running around like a wild wilderness man singing love songs of God and nature. The conflict comes to a head before a Bishop. Pietro has demanded the church stop Francis, but rather than stopping, Francis denounced his Father, strips down bare to return anything that might belong to him and there, completely vulnerable, he names God as his father. Saying, “Our Father” means something deeper. The Bishop, moved by the moment, embraces the young Francis and finds him the simple tunic belonging to a shepherd or farmer.


Francis, newly liberated from his family and focused on his life of poverty and building the church, is soon joined by others who gave away all they had to the poor and joined him in poverty. “They were content with a single cowl, patched inside and out, with a staff and underwear. We had no wish to have anymore than that…we were uneducated and subject to everyone. I worked with my hands and I want to continue to do so, and I wish all the other brothers to do honest work. When we get no pay, let us take refuge at the table of the Lord and beg for alms from door to door.”


Francis was succeeding. His community was growing, more men joined him and then one day a young woman named Clair joined him. She started a community of women that would later be the “Poor Clairs.” And married people came to create a third order. All of them committed to a life of poverty, giving everything they had away. Francis had been gifted with some humble space from another monastic community, but he needed the Pope’s permission to establish an order. Pope Innocent III was anything but and the opposite of Francis. He was a cannon lawyer and a savvy son of wealth. Rather than proclaiming the Sun his brother and the Moon his sister, Innocent saw the Sun and moon as metaphors for power. Papal power was the Sun and Royal power the moon, which receives its brightness from the Sun. He didn’t consider himself equal to God, but he was pretty sure his role made him a little higher than the mere mortals around him. He had worked to reform the church, but I suspect folks like Francis imagined he could have done more.


Francis approaches this all-powerful Pope knowing that he has dismissed other lay orders that embarrassed poverty, intact dismissed is an understatement, he sent an army or crusaders to disband the Cathars in Southern France after theological discussions failed. Francis asks anyway and confirmed that he was not objecting to the churches leadership or clerical authority. One Cardinal speaks up for Francis, “This man merely wishes us to let him live according to the Gospel. Now if we tell him that this surpasses human strength then we are declaring that it is impossible to follow the Gospel, and blaspheming Christ, the author of the Gospel.”


Francis leaves the Pope with permission to form his order. And they grow. Folks start to respect him and ask him to settle disputes between communities. He even tries to move the church to different kinds of crusade, he visits with Sultans and leaders in the holy land hoping to broker peace. As he is more respected, his orders grow, more folks join and more folks offer money to fuel the work. As they grow, folks receive his preachers more easily, but the members lessen their intensity and commitment. They wanted books and Francis believed that was a slippery slope to wanting more books and eventually a university chair. Folks gave them coins and Francis wanted nothing to do with them, preferring folks to pay the brothers in eggs, milk and bread.


Francis felt the commitment to poverty lessen. He lamented brothers making his words a mockery, and this worried him enough to write in his will that the orders would not own property, neither individually nor communally. Of course, within two years of his death, the Religious leaders ruled that the will was non-binding and the order began to hold property, at last…at first in trust (only violating the spirit of the Will). Soon the Pope would announce a tremendous building project in honor of Francis. His most loyal friends and companions would object, but they would not win the day. The Church would name him a saint and relax his expectations at the same time.


Being a Saint is complicated. When a man like Francis asks too much of us and challenges our norms, we can either be converted and change or we can label him insane, radical, heretic, communist, socialist or anything else that makes us feel better about dismissing his voice. Or if you are the church, you have a third option, name them a saint and give them a halo. We make them so holy we can not be expected to follow. We can be inspired safely and keep everything that makes us so comfortable. The Church does this with Francis and Teresa. We do it not just as a church, but as a country. We celebrate the birth of MLK every year with a beautifully crafted dinner and we replay his speech about dreams and we sing songs. But changing structural poverty, repatriating and rewriting the redlines, increasing wages and finding education, recreating our justices system, ending police brutality and naming Black Lives Matter…well that’s too hard. A beautiful lunch and a holiday? That we can do. We have seen it most recently with Susan B. Anthony. Our President will pardon Susan B. Anthony, but he could never apologize for calling his opponents “nasty women.” It is easier to pardon a woman long gone than readily expand voting and enfranchise the marginalized. It is easier to pardon Anthony than to close the gaps in wages and opportunities.


We name people as saints and heroes, we honor them with holidays and monuments and ceremonies. And then we don’t really have to change. Their stories can warm our hearts without really forcing us to let them break open wide. May we have the courage to be uncomfortable. May we have the courage to look beyond the halos and the holidays to the hopes of these sacred souls that inspire us to God’s all-loving dream. May we have the courage to grow. May it be so, Amen.