Readings – Philippians 3:4b-14, Matthew 21:33-46
I press on towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
May I speak in the name of God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Church of St Damian, Assisi. Photo credit Berthold Werner.
It is a time of troubles. Plagues, accelerated by the rapid growth in intercontinental trade, spread across the world with dizzying speed. The economic gap between rich and poor is yawning, and many of the young have given up on the ability of the existing order to usher in a just society and are seeking a completely fresh start, consigning the old ways to the dustbin of history with as much aggression as needed. The West and the Islamic world are at loggerheads, with Western powers embroiled in multiple bloody conflicts in the Middle East, which started so long ago that nobody much remembers how or why they started. I am not, of course, talking about the present day but about the first years of the 13th Century, a time when the older townsfolk of Devizes will still have remembered the Church of St John the Baptist being built. There is truly nothing new under the Sun.
In that tumultuous time, a rich young party animal called Francis, whose feast we commemorate today, was having a life crisis. Set to inherit a family fortune, he had spent his youth hanging out with the troubadours, the wandering bands of minstrels who travelled around during the High Middle Ages making music, singing with them in his beautiful voice and partying with them. An attempt to settle down a little by turning his hand to soldiering had resulted in Francis spending a year as a prisoner of war. After that, his former life of drinking and dancing no longer had any appeal. He wandered the countryside of his native central Italy, half-starved and dressed in rags, begging God to show him a more meaningful way of life. One day, Francis stumbled across a church dedicated to Saint Damian, no older than the then relatively new St John’s, but already falling into disrepair. Amid the crumbling stones, he had a vision of an Icon of Christ Crucified that hung in the church speaking to him. “Rebuild my Church”, it said.
He took up the task with enthusiasm, starting with the physical rebuilding of that Church of St Damian, and going on to work for a spiritual renovation of the whole Christian world. Some of his schemes were perhaps a little overambitious: he once travelled to Cairo, reckoning that if he could only convert the Sultan to Christianity then he could end the wars connected to the Crusades. You will not be surprised to learn that he wasn’t successful.
But that isn’t the point – the point is that he gave things a go. Following Christ isn’t about following a series of step-by-step orders like the instructions for setting up a new mobile phone. As we know, that doesn’t guarantee success anyway. Richard Holloway once described the Christian journey as being less like marching to a heavenly military band and more like joining God in a jazz jam session, listening to the music God is playing and seeking to chime our own personal riffs with His. Christian obedience is about co-operating with God and recognising our own immense value to Him. God is not a cosmic sergeant-major waiting to scream at us angrily if we miss a beat. If God doesn’t pick up on the tune we’re playing, we can always get back into the beat in the next bar. New life can begin at any time. Following Christ is about trying to sense where the Holy Spirit is leading, trying different ideas, accepting that God will not pick up on some of them, because it’s only in a world of chance and risk and serendipity that other little tunes we toot can blossom into symphonies that are more magnificent than anything we could have imagined.
St Francis started singing hymns and psalms with a group of men who shared his vision of a rebuilt Church. The Franciscan Order which he founded still sings together after all these centuries: communities of men and women dedicated to prayer, self-chosen poverty, and moving from place to place the better to serve God. A Third Order of men and women, married and single and living in conventional homes with conventional careers joins them in their daily round of prayer. One of them is our own Archdeacon Sue. It flourishes not only in the Roman Catholic Church, but in Anglicanism, and indeed in our own Diocese. The Franciscan friary at Hilfield, just outside Sherborne, is not only a powerhouse of prayer and hospitality, but joins Franciscans throughout the world in living out Francis’ concerns in a contemporary context. In the spirit of Francis’ visit to the Sultan, Hilfield is a centre of the great Franciscan work of promoting fruitful religious dialogue between Christians and people of other faiths, indeed also with people of no faith. In the name of his role as patron saint of animals, Hilfield shares the Franciscan vocation to protect God’s gift of creation and our environment. If you have never been there, I can only commend a visit, and it has just in the past few days reopened to guests for the first time since the lockdown.
We must sing the songs that our soul desires us to, while always listening for God’s counterpoint, in obedience to the way of life that Jesus Christ modelled for us. In the Christian life, there needs to be a degree of synthesis between proactively giving reign to our God-given imagination, intellect, and talent; and submitting our will in obedience to that of our heavenly Father. To repeat, that isn’t about self-abnegation, but about being in harmony with God and our neighbour. It’s about being humble enough to open our hearts to God so He can show us how to make the best of our wild and precious lives.
As we seek to harmonise our lives with the music of the heavenly spheres, we might even find that God starts a new beat that upends all our certainties. In today’s reading from the letter to the Philippians, one of St Paul’s most beautiful and uplifting writings, he recalls how he thought he had it all worked out. He was a holy man from a line of holy men, one of God’s chosen people, so certain he was right that he was willing to violently suppress those whom he thought had it wrong about God. Yet God had sung a new song in the person of Jesus Christ, His very self in human form. Paul couldn’t hear God over his angry shouts that were supposedly on God’s behalf; eventually God had to shout louder, in the form of a blinding light crying, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” After that, Paul lost much in earthly terms but gained the Kingdom of Heaven. It’s much better to listen carefully than wait to be deafened by God.
There are different ways of stopping your ears to God’s voice. St Paul got things wrong because he was far too sure he knew what God wanted; the tenants in today’s Gospel reading simply don’t care what God wants. They are only interested in material gain. To get rich, they are willing to beat people and kill people and misuse what the great heavenly landlord has built for their benefit. On a day when we commemorate Francis, patron saint of the environment, it is a reminder that God has merely leased us this Earth for a season; we will have to give account for how we have used – or misused – God’s creation. But it is also a reminder that we need to listen for God, neither pretending that He has nothing to say to us nor acting like He has already told us all that He wants to.
In the week to come, why not pause for a few minutes every once in a while, and listen in silence for the tunes God might be singing to you. It doesn’t matter if you think you might be too young or too old or not “holy” enough – you can be of immense use to God, as you are now, where you are now, with the capacities you have now. Listen for His voice, and let Him surprise you into surprising others with what you can do for Him. It doesn’t even matter that we’re all living a crazy half-life full of masks and physical separation and the stink of hand sanitiser. Indeed, this plague year of great silences may be a time when we can hear God’s voice more clearly than usual. Don’t get me wrong: as a very extroverted person, I frankly hate the way things are at the moment, but it’s going to last for a while yet, so we might as well use it as best we can.
Remember most of all that God is always listening for us, His beloved sons and daughters, waiting to hear a promising new tune from us, waiting for us to join Him in a great jam session of the soul, just as Francis did all those centuries ago.
Now to the only wise God our saviour, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.
