World Communion, October 4, 2009
Today is the official celebration day of one of the most beloved and well known saints of Christianity - Francis of Assisi. And, even though Protestants don’t officially recognize saints, I think most all of us have heard of this guy. Living at the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th centuries, it was Francis, from the tiny hill town of Assisi, Italy, who challenged the religious and political powers of his time with a simple message. Our love for God will be most evident in our love for one another and it is only in our living together as one people that we will become truly rich and truly happy. And it is because of that simple focus that I think Francis can help us as we celebrate yet another World Communion Sunday.
World Communion Sunday began in the winter of 1935 when a group of ministers met to study the spiritual needs and possibilities for the church in the midst of the Great Depression. They called for a Worldwide Communion Sunday the following year on the first Sunday of November, close to Armistice Day which celebrated the end of World War I. Their idea was that worldwide communion could overcome worldwide conflict and that the church could lead the way in ending violence between nations and bringing peace to all peoples. The observance was eventually moved back to the first Sunday of October but, though the date changed, the focus did not. Today, some people think that World Communion Sunday is primarily about all Christians celebrating Communion on the same day - or, about Christians recommitting themselves to unity. Of course, both of those concepts are noble ones. But, when I reacquainted myself with the history of the celebration, I realized that the heart of this Sunday is about the need for Christians to actually follow Jesus - to be leaders in making the world a more peaceful place. And we do it the way Francis did it - through the difficult work of treating one another as beloved children of God. As much as one might say about Francis of Assisi, in the end, that was fundamentally what he tried to do - and his doing of it challenged paupers, priests, popes and potentates alike. Our scripture text today is one Francis heard read one day in church. It was February 24th in the year 1208. Francis by then had heard a call from God and had left his father’s house but he still wasn’t exactly sure what God was asking of him. Then he heard these words:
Tell them that the kingdom is here. Bring health to the sick. Raise the dead. Touch the untouchables. Kick out the demons. You have been treated generously, so live generously. "Don't think you have to put on a fund-raising campaign before you start. You don't need a lot of equipment. You are the equipment . . . travel light."
One of his biographers reports that, on hearing that text, Francis proclaimed that is what my whole heart longs to accomplish! And, with classic Franciscan exuberance, "he immediately gave away his second cloak, his hat, his staff, his sandals, and exchanged his leather belt for a length of rope," heading off into the countryside, proclaiming the good news of the gospel, healing the sick and changing the world as he knew it! And, that was it - from that moment, Francis really did live what he had heard. For him, things got very simple. Whether relating to the pope in Rome, the townspeople of Assisi or the leper down the road, inspired by that text, Francis was known for treating everyone - indeed every created thing - as family. It was ‘brother sun’ and ‘sister moon’ and ‘brother wolf’ and ‘sister Clare.’ For Francis, following Jesus was about making connections with the world around him. One of the most interesting true stories about Francis - one that few people know - has to do with his foray into international affairs. Using this Jesus-inspired method of one-to-one diplomacy, he set out to meet none other than the Sultan of Egypt.
Remember, the 13th century was a time of the crusades. Francis accompanied the Fifth Crusade with the intent to talk to the Muslim leader, al-Kamil, convert him to Christianity and establish peace in the world. The story goes that after an exhausting trip to Egypt by boat, he and one of his brothers walked from the Crusader camp toward the Saracen stronghold at Damietta. They were quickly seized by warriors guarding the enemy camp. They were beaten and were on the verge of being killed. Sir Steven Runciman in his history of the Crusades recounts what happened:
He had come to the East believing, as many other good and unwise persons before and after him had believed, that a peace mission can bring about peace . . . The Muslim guards were suspicious at first but soon decided that anyone so simple, so gentle and so dirty must be mad, and treated him with the respect due to a man who had been touched by God. He was taken to the sultan who was charmed by him and listened patiently to his appeal.
They spent four days together and, while neither man converted the other, they emerged from their encounter with a profound mutual respect. Each described the other as a man of faith. In fact, the sultan gave Francis an escort so that he could return to his own camp safely and offered him free and protected passage to the Holy Land. (It is not clear whether Francis was ever able to take advantage of the gift.) Later, the sultan, in response to the visit with Francis, offered to give the entirety of the Holy Land to the Christians if they would simply leave Egypt - in other words, quit fighting. The Christian leaders refused. That experience was one of the most heartbreaking of Francis’ life for he had to admit that he saw in the Muslim leader greater humanity and a greater desire for peace than he found among the leaders of the crusading Christians.
Those words of Jesus in Matthew were not a pie-in-the-sky ideal. Jesus knew - indeed, we know - that the desire to win, the quest to be better, to get more - more recognition, more glory, more money - works against community. And, while we might not get as radical as Francis did, in the end, the only way to truly build peace is person to person. Sitting down with the sultan, the Saracen, the saint, the sinner - and while it may not work even if we do it, it will definitely not work if we do not have the courage to try.
Physician Rachel Naomi Remen in her book Kitchen Table Wisdom tells the story of Yitzak, a holocaust survivor who attended one of her mind/body healing seminars. He had been diagnosed with cancer. "Liberated from a concentration camp in 1945, he had come to America, worked and studied hard, and was now a respected research physicist . . .he had come to our retreat for people with cancer to see if he could engage and possibly defeat this enemy with the power of his mind." At these retreats, there is apparently a fair amount of hugging and touching and it was a bit too touchy-feely for Yitzak. With a heavy Slavic accent, he asked . . . "Vat is all dis, all dis huggy-huggy? Vat is dis luff the strangers? Vat is dis?" He apparently held back most of the week, clearly struggling with the process. Still, she said, by Sunday, he seemed more relaxed. Naomi asked how he was doing. "Better," he said, and told her he’d had a conversation with God as he walked on the beach the day before. She said she asked him what God had to say. He laughed again. "Ah, Rachel-le, I say to Him, ‘God is it okay to luff strangers?’ And God says, ‘Yitzak, vat is dis strangers? You make strangers. I don’t make strangers.’"
Sometimes, the most profound truths are the simplest. God does not make strangers. We do. And, in fairness, there are reasons for our hesitation at community. Certainly, Yitzak learned through his concentration camp experience that strangers can do a lot of damage. He had learned to be wary, to protect himself. But that is not God’s view, God’s hope for this world. Jesus was quite clear about that. So, difficult or not, our challenge is to make connections.
I am presently reading The Journal of Hélène Berr. She was a young, college aged, Jewish woman living in Paris during World War II. She studied literature at the Sorbonne and had the hopes and dreams of a young intellectual. In 1942, she began to keep a diary, a diary which has only recently been published. At first, she shares the story of a very ordinary life. In fact, the beginning of the book is a bit boring. But, then, as deportations increased and the threat level escalated, she began to suspect her life would not be spared. That’s when her diary becomes a haunting reflection on what it takes for evil to win. She writes:
I have a duty to write because other people must know. Every hour of every day, there is another painful realization that other folk do not know, do not even imagine, the suffering . . . And I am . . . trying to make the painful effort to tell the story. . . for how will humanity ever be healed unless all its rottenness is exposed? How will the world be cleansed unless it is made to understand the full extent of the evil it is doing? Everything comes down to understanding.
As the story unfolds, Hélène clearly believes that the deportations would not happen if people opened their eyes, their hearts to see the reality around them. She is particularly puzzled that Christians who follow Jesus - who was a Jew, after all - don’t understand how wrong the world had become. She even reports reading the gospel of Matthew and concluding that if Christians actually did what Jesus taught, the whole world would be Christian and evil would be overcome. Sadly, however, evil was not overcome and Hélène was deported, sent to Auschwitz and then to Bergen-Belsen. She was beaten to death just five days before the camp was liberated.
‘Everything comes down to understanding.’ So simple. So profound. In the end, it is only through our efforts at understanding that we can become the people Jesus called us to be. And we will only do it as we make connections between one another. The words that compelled Francis to visit the sultan are words for us as well . . . we are the equipment God needs to build a peaceful world. For, God does not make strangers. We do. Everything comes down to understanding. And it starts here. Now. Among us.
