Celebrate Poverty

This coming Tuesday, October 4, is St. Francis’ Day, the day on which the church celebrates the life and ministry of St. Francis of Assisi. Among other things, of course, St. Francis is known as the patron saint of animals. So this afternoon we will gather for a brief service to give thanks for all animals and bless those pets who are particularly dear to us. St. Francis, though, was more than just a friend to God’s creatures. Listen to this description from Lesser Feasts and Fasts. It caught my attention years ago and has stuck with me. "Of all the saints, Francis is the most popular and admired, but probably the least imitated; few have attained to his total identification with the poverty and suffering of Christ." The most popular and admired, but probably the least imitated. Francis, after all, gave up absolutely every shred of material possession that was his, and he came from a wealthy family. That is indeed a hard example to imitate.

Paul speaks of imitation in the portion of the letter to the Philippians that we heard this morning: "Join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us." Paul encourages the Christians in the church in Philippi to imitate him, his example. Paul is rarely short on self-confidence, but even for Paul this sounds a bit on the arrogant side. Aren’t we to look to Christ, not Paul, for our model, our example? Paul seems to imply that the perfect church would be a collection of people just like him. There have been plenty of people within the history of Christendom who have felt and said similar things, who have seen or proclaimed themselves as the model of perfect Christian behavior. Rarely to the long-term benefit of the Body of Christ. The strength of the church is in the alliance to Christ’s mission of a diverse group of people. So what is Paul saying?

Listen to what Paul says a few verses before this morning’s reading. "Whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ." So it really is about Christ for Paul, and his hope is that others will come to be like him in his humility before God. What Paul wants other to imitate is his own sense of how much he lacks before God.

Which brings us back to St. Francis. We know more about St. Francis personally than we do about Paul. His story is endearing. But what St. Francis is most known for is his poverty, for what he lacked. He completely renounced all power and status and every penny of material wealth and possession. So if we are to imitate Francis (or Paul, for that matter), we must imitate what they lacked. We must achieve loss; we must work to acquire poverty.

To say this is counterintuitive for most of us is probably one of the greatest understatements of existence. We live in a world where everything is measured by what we have… not what we lack. We work to gain, to acquire, more of things, not less. The more we have, the more we achieve, the better. And not just material toys. The stronger we are, for example, the better we feel about ourselves. Or if we think we have less imagination or patience than we should, we measure ourselves poorly. We are always seeking to have more, whether it is material comforts or the more noble possessions of character. We still long for more; we pray God will give us more. We strive to overcome what we lack.

St. Francis and St. Paul and even Christ himself challenge us to step out of this world we live in and look at it with completely new eyes. Turn our hopes and expectations upside down. What if we could live by the measure of what we lack, what we don’t have? What if we could truly celebrate our poverty? The church and the world would undoubtedly be a better place if we all could, in fact, truly imitate St. Francis. But even if we can’t give away everything like St. Francis did, maybe we can stop and look at our lives differently. Instead of always measuring what we have; maybe we can measure what we don’t have.

Let’s celebrate, really celebrate, what we don’t have. It really is a wonderfully liberating perspective. Celebrate what we lack.

For example, we lack all the answers. And I don’t just mean all the answers about child rearing or responsible investing. We don’t have all the answers about God. We don’t have a full picture of what God intends for each of us in our lives, and we certainly don’t have all the answers about what God intends for others. We don’t have all the answers about God and human sexuality, or about God’s purpose for the relationship between the world’s great religions. We don’t have all the answers about the mission and ministry of St. John’s in Flossmoor for the next 25 or 100 years. We don’t have all the answers about the meaning of Holy Scripture. We have not acquired the perfect model for all time for corporate worship. There is poverty in what we know.

In 1800 a young woman named Miss Caroline E. Smelt wrote to her cousin, "never enter a theatre, never play cards, and never attend tea parties. For if any one of these is evil, they all are; and of this I am absolutely certain." Absolutely certain. She was absolutely certain she knew God’s perspective. She had all the answers. Whether or not we agree with her particular perspective is not the point. The point is, that at that time, God wouldn’t have had much incentive to speak to Miss Smelt any further. And she certainly had no reason to listen. She knew all she needed to know. Her relationship with God was dead.

Let us celebrate the answers we don’t yet have, the things we don’t yet know. Let us give thanks for all of the questions yet unanswered. That is where God will speak to us in days to come. Those are the active and engaging conversations with God that will shape and form us as we grow in the days and years ahead. We need not dismiss the wonderful grace and knowledge that has been given to us in the past, but let us celebrate the infinite poverty that remains in our knowledge of God and God’s purpose. In that poverty is our future. Unlike Miss Smelt, we have much to look forward in our growing and deepening relationship with God.

And let us also celebrate the things we don’t have. That’s hard to do, although easier than giving up the things we do have, as St. Francis did. Most of us would rather try to acquire the things we think we lack, rather than celebrate the absence of what we can’t acquire. But there are things we can’t acquire, will never acquire. Despite the cliché, no one really has "everything a man could want." Not everything. And it seems to take lacking some possession we desire to enable us to see that possessions do not really bring us fulfillment. They may bring fleeting pleasure or comfort, but they do not give our lives enduring meaning. The new car that we do not buy, the prime rib we do not eat, the expensive jewelry we will never afford, the larger home… whatever it is that we consciously lack… that poverty is space where God may find room to enter our lives and offer us true riches. In those spaces where our desire is unfulfilled, God can give us (as this morning’s collect says) more than we desire or deserve. Thank God for the things we lack.

And finally, let us celebrate, thank God for the things we cannot do. We cannot create love. We cannot force the sun to rise or the grass to grow. We cannot program imagination. We cannot legislate repentance or reconciliation. We cannot earn or engineer eternal life. We cannot do these things. The poverty of our power is immense. And yet love and goodness and the dawn and imagination and reconciliation and eternal life are real; they are given to us in life. They are God’s active, never-ending, eternally creative presence in our lives. As long as we recognize our poverty and acknowledge our yearning for more than our power can accomplish, God will act. So let us celebrate all of those things that we cannot do, but God does.

Paul is quite clear on the fate of those who think they can manage on their own… those people who think they have it all or know it all or can do it all. "Their minds are set on earthly things; their god is the belly; their end is destruction." St. Francis, on the other hand, is an example of someone who put aside earthly things and in poverty found joy. It is that simple joy that I think we find most admirable and endearing in Francis’ life. We may not have the courage to imitate Francis’ total poverty, and we may not find the seemingly total serenity and joy that he found. But we may, at least, make a beginning. We may celebrate the poverty that is in our lives. Celebrate the things we do not know, the things we do not have, the things we cannot do. Celebrate our poverty. It is there that we will find God.

Amen.