It is the late 12th century in central Italy, Assisi to be exact. Italy itself is not a united country but is made up of city-states of varying sizes and degrees of power, the largest and most powerful of which is the Papal city-state. Traditionally these various city-states had been controlled and ruled by members of the nobility or landed class, but things have begun to change, and the rising merchant class is now in control of some of the smaller city-states, including Assisi. All of these city-states have aspirations of greater control and power, and they frequently battle one another to gain land and power. Every city-state, no matter how large or small, has to decide whether or not to align themselves with the Papal city-state or to fight against it. The Church is generally more interested in power than faithfulness to Jesus. And individual families more concerned with providing a comfortable life for themselves and their children and grandchildren than being faithful to God.
It is into this world that Giovanni di Pietro di Bernaidone of Assisi was born. He was the older of at least two sons born to an upper-middle class merchant family who sold cloth and fine fabric. His parents were upstanding and respected members of their community who had worked hard to better themselves and increase their family’s wealth, reputation and status. Giovanni had all the comforts his time and place could offer to him. At the age of 14 he became an apprentice in his father’s business and began to learn the work that he would inherit as an adult. By all accounts he was a hard worker and learned his tasks quickly. He was also a bit of a wild child who enjoyed spending his parents’ money on leisure activities with his fellow upper-middle class friends. His parents tried to reign him in a bit, but overall were glad that he was well-liked by his peers and community, and encouraged the connections he was making that would help their family business grow.
Giovanni, like many young people, also had dreams of fame. In his day and age, to become famous one needed to prove oneself in military battle, so he joined his city’s militia. It was surely also enjoyable for Giovanni to socialize after military training with his fellow soldiers. Giovanni had the resources to purchase his own horse, so was a part of the mounted unit and not a foot soldier. Temperamentally attracted to beauty, Giovanni surely also enjoyed the finery that a mounted military man would wear as part of his duties.
In his early twenties, his city, Assisi, went to war with a nearby and larger city, Perugia. Giovanni and his fellow soldiers suffered a devasting and bloody defeat. Francis was among the troops imprisoned in Perugia for more than a year. Imprisonment was hard on Francis and when he returned home his physical and mental health were severely damaged. Today he would probably be diagnosed with PTSD. Whatever we would call his suffering, he was not able to return to his military duties or to work in his family’s business. Instead, he wandered listlessly around the house and the surrounding countryside.
After about two years of living in desolation, he decided that reentering military service would cure him, and he set out on horseback to rejoin his fellow soldiers. After he had travelled about 18 miles it came to him that military service was not the solution to his problems, and he sold his horse and returned to Assisi on foot. Two miles outside of Assisi he came to the old run-down church of San Damiano. This church became a place of refuge and prayer for Giovanni who became known as Francis after this. Eventually he moved out of his family home and lived in squalor in the church. His father tried to forcibly make him return home but was ultimately unsuccessful. After hearing the passage from Matthew 16:24-28 about the cross and self-denial read aloud in church he renounced his inheritance and dedicated himself to a life of total poverty and reliance upon God and God alone. He repaired the church of San Damiano and several others. One day while travelling he came across a leper. Previously he had found lepers repulsive and would flee from their presence. On that day his understanding of beauty and relationship was transformed, and he embraced the leper and took on the work of serving leper communities.
Francis’ reputation grew in Assisi and the surrounding communities, and others became attracted to his way of life. Those who joined him gave away everything they had to the poor, supported themselves through manual labor, and lived dependent upon God alone. In these early years, Francis and his followers were not a religious order. They were a group of pious wanderers preaching the Gospel of Jesus wherever they went with both their words and most importantly through how they lived. As more and more people were attracted to his way of life, an order did develop, and by the time Francis died at the age of 45, an order recognized by the Pope had been established, as the movement would not have survived after Francis’ death without a structure to hold the group together.
Francis never set out to reform the church, the world, or to start an order. He set out to find peace and relief from his suffering. What he discovered as he waited for and received God’s response was that God’s vision and way to peace was very different from the world’s vision and way to peace. He came to see inherent value in all that God created, every human, every animal, every plant, every rock, the sun, the moon, the stars, everything. He understood himself to be not above any other human being or part of creation but to be in kinship with all of creation. He wanted to live in a way that the rest of creation could live. All of creation had intrinsic value to Francis, because God created it.
This was and is a profoundly different way of viewing the world. It sets our individual self-interest aside in favor of the interest of the world. Francis was known to stop to pick up earthworms so they wouldn’t get stepped on, he admonished his brothers not to cut down entire trees for wood, but to take only a part so the tree could live, he would give away anything he had, including the clothes on his back, to someone in need. Francis didn’t need words to preach because he demonstrated the Gospel of Christ in everything that he did.
Today, on this last Sunday in our celebration of the Season of Creation, we are remembering St. Francis, perhaps the first Christian ecologist and we are blessing animals, our beloved pets, in his honor. Most of us understand our pets to be members of our family. They are kin to us. We care for them as we would care for anybody we love. We grieve for them when they die. We bring them here today because we want God’s blessing for them.
Francis reminds us today that it is not only our pets who are our kin, our siblings, our beloved ones. Francis reminds us that all of creation is our kin. The ground upon which you are sitting. The grass under your feet. The air flowing around us. The trees beside us. The river flowing past us. The sun shining down us. This is a different from thinking of all of creation as something over which we are stewards. A steward is over that which they care for. A steward has control over that which is in their care. A kin relationship is horizontal. If I am a sibling of the trees, I have a responsibility to them and they to me, but I am not superior to the trees.
I believe that this kind of understanding of creation is crucial to our dealing with the climate crisis in which we find ourselves. As long as we continue to see creation as something we are separate from, and over and above, we will continue to use creation in ways that harm and damage it. If we can come to see creation as us, as our kin, we will love it, not for what we can extract from it or how we can use it, but because it is, because God created it, and our behavior will change. I don’t love my cats because they do something for me. As a matter of fact, I do a lot more for them than they me. I love them because they are my family, because God made them.
St. Francis was truly an unlikely saint. Talented, intelligent, well-liked, affluent, good-looking, upwardly mobile, and God spoke to him, and he listened. And what he discovered was an unlikely path: simplicity, spirituality, service, and kinship with all of creation. We too are unlikely saints. Privileged, comfortable, well-educated, well-liked, and affluent, and God is speaking to us too. Will we listen? Amen.
