Feast of St. Francis with children and adults

Galatians 6:14-18; Matthew 11:25-30


Do any of you carry big heavy back packs? Sometimes back packs come with wheels on them so you don’t have to carry so much weight. I don’t like carrying really heavy things, do you? It hurts!

But sometimes we carry heavy burdens inside and we don’t really know it. We just know that we don’t feel so good. Sometimes we might think that life is really not very fair and that somebody else has a way easier time of it than we do. Or we might want something we don’t have. Or we might resent that somebody else got all the notice for work that we actually did. There’s all kinds of things that can weigh us down – we might be addicted to something like alcohol, or somebody, like a boyfriend or girlfriend. We might be burdened with too much guilt, or too much worry, or just too much of too much!

Carrying all that stuff around inside hurts, and it can make us sick or sad or lonely.

But Jesus said that his burden was light and his load was easy to carry. Just love God with everything you have. Everything you own, love God with it. And love your neighbor as yourself. Love with everything you have. Don’t keep anything back – just abandon yourself, warts and wiggles and all, to God. And don’t hold anything back from your neighbor. No act of love is too small.

And that’s it! You’ll be light as a feather, shiny as a star. No more heavy backpacks on the inside to lug around. So why isn’t it easier? Why is it so hard? That is a very good mystery.

Really, Jesus was talking about being who you are naturally – a God centered, God shaped being. We’re made for love and to love. So carrying Jesus’ easy burden really means becoming exactly who you are naturally meant to be. Animals certainly know how to be exactly who they are meant to be. Trees know how to do this. The sun is the sun’s truest self at all times. So are children. Tired? Wah! Hungry? Let’s get something to eat! Joyful? Let’s yell and dance around!

But something happens as we get older and wiser. Older and smarter. We start getting so smart that we can’t just hear Jesus and believe him and follow him. It takes the full on power of the Lord’s Spirit to get us to lay our burdens down and be healed. It takes Prayer – usually of a whole community - for us to become utterly convinced of God’s love and acceptance.

So Jesus was enamored with the little ones – with those who were not burdened by sureness in their own abilities. People who were foolishness enough to just take God completely at his word. People like Francis of Assisi.

When Francis heard God say – “Go and re-build my church” – he did, stone by stone, begging people for rocks to rebuild the little village church that had fallen into disrepair. When he went to church and heard the gospel reading for the morning that said – “go and sell all that you have and come and follow me” – he did. Fortunately for his father, Petro Bernardone, most of the family business was not in Francis’ keeping!

Jesus called God, “Father”, so Francis did too. So literally that he took off all of his clothes in the public square and said, ““From now on I can freely say ‘Our Father Who art in heaven,’ not father Peter Bernardone….”The Bishop tried to rescue the whole situation, by taking off his cope to wrap around Francis.

Because God was Francis’ Father, all creatures were his brother and sister. The lepers. The trees. The birds and the wolves. The Sun and the moon. The water. Cold and fire and death itself.

Francis’ life became a parable of the Divine. And the Divine Life abounds in paradoxes – the kind that our brilliant minds simply can’t make sense of. Who can “understand” God? Well, maybe children who love stories, or animals who live utterly true to their own nature, or those fortunate enough or foolish enough to be utterly abandoned to the fire of the Holy Spirit.

For those of us bumbling along the way, feeling our way rather blindly toward the Divine, living parables like Francis help light the way. Actually, if you meditate on the saints enough, they will de-stabilize you more and more until you too tip over the edge into the pure ocean of God.

So – one of these paradoxes Francis discovered was this: Poverty – by which Francis meant not appropriating anything or anyone for your very own – this Poverty was actually Freedom and Wealth.

This is as impossible to understand now as it was in Francis’ day as it was in Jesus’ day. There is no human learning that can make this make sense or make it a checked off item on your “getting spiritual to do” list. It’s not something you do or don’t do. It’s a holy work of the Holy Spirit. All you can do is fervently desire that the Holy Spirit comes to you, and fills you and brings you closer and closer to the feet of Christ.

And meanwhile, love in whatever small way that is open to you. Walk in however much light you’ve been given. Eat the body of Christ with as much faith as you have that this is indeed the bread – the very sustenance – of heaven itself. And the Lord will work his holy work in you – gradually and gently, or suddenly and stormily – either way you are being brought safely home.


Let us pray.
Relieve us of our own wisdom, Holy God, so that our only wisdom is Your eternal Word, Jesus. Help us set down those things which weigh us down, and fill us with your easy burden and the light load of your Love for others. Grant us the peace that passes all our understanding. And make of us a church that delights in paradoxes, in children, in animals, and in You.
Amen.