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SERMONS

Twentieth Sunday after Pentacost
Proper 24b
October 18, 2009

By The Rev. Alston Johnson

St. Francis of Assisi made a journey to Rome to visit the Pope. Francis knew that if his new, little community was going to survive, he would need a papal blessing. The medieval Church was not a democracy. Innocent III was thought to be the most powerful man in Europe during his reign.

The Church, the Pope, the Magisterium, were as close to absolute rulers of the earth as almost any group has existed through time. The medieval Popes retained and supplied armies. Bishops and Cardinals lived like royalty. Entering Rome was like entering Oz.

Into Rome walked a little man in brown clothing. Poor. Full of zeal. Full of love. And some thought a bit off his rocker; coming to ask the blessing of the Pope, the earthly and heavenly ruler of his day. The most powerful and the least powerful men in the Church standing in the same room.

The story goes like this: Saint Francis was given an audience with the Pope and the assembled Cardinals. After making an appeal to Pope Innocent III, the gathered Cardinals murmured against Francis, and the Pope said something to the effect of:

“You know, when I was young, I too had such zeal and vision for the Gospel. But time and discretion have played the better part; so that now I can hold such vision in check . . . realize that it is not possible.”

Francis then very innocently said, “If we are to say that it is not possible to live the Gospel, as we find it in Christ, why then do we have a Church?” That is when the Pope got up and left the room. Francis was told to return when he had some sensible strategy and order for his monastic project.

Francis returned the next day, and Francis presented his case again.

This time Pope Innocent IIIrd looked him straight in the eye and related a dream he had the night before which he shared had left him feeling disquieted. Sleeping on a bed, he saw himself with a tiara on his head. The Lateran Basilica, the Cathedral in Rome, was tilted to one particular side at an angle, dangerously close to collapse. But in his dream, a little beggar, a monk, leaned against the pillars of the church with his shoulder. And this little mud-covered man wearing rags held up the Church and kept it from collapsing. The man, Pope Innocent IIIrd said, was Francis.

Our Gospel reading today needs little explanation, because it drives a stake into the heart of so much of how we live in this world. Striving, ambition, the drive toward ultimacy, it is not foreign in the Church any more than it is in the secular world. If we are not encountering it in either place; it will soon catch up to us. I often point to this passage when folks complain of how “political” the Church can become - as though it were a new phenomenon.

It is a hard lesson to learn in our lives; that God’s ways are not our ways. That something must be unlearned; perhaps our drive to ultimacy, our surrender to ambition. This must be unlearned in the presence of Christ. It must have been hard for his disciples, to unlearn so much of what they had learned; for James and John to learn how they too were being invited to follow Jesus, in the words of Isaiah:

like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.

The Catholic writer Henri Nouwen puts it well, “The long painful history of the church is the history of people ever and again tempted to choose power over love, control over the cross, being a leader over being led.”

The lesson of the Gospel today is not simply another reminder that Christians are always the people ready to help the poor and the hungry and the destitute. The lesson today is how we are to live together as brothers and sisters; how we are to perceive power in our midst. Jesus is saying that the leaders must be the ones who are serving.

Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.

One of the ways we try to model this truth in our worship is by having the Vestry of the parish wash the feet of parishioners first at our Maundy Thursday foot washing service. It is a way, perhaps a small reminder, of what our roles should be in the Church. One question we might ask ourselves when choosing our leaders in the Church is “whom would I be honored, and ashamed, to have wash my own feet.”

Where do we find the beggar, the unwashed, the holy fool, who holds up the walls of our Chapel when they threaten to fall?

Once there was a boy who was playing in the streets of his village with some of his friends. They were from more well-to-do families, and they used to poke fun and laugh at the working people in the village. They were “larking about” as they say in the old country one day when they came across some men digging a ditch beside the street. They laughed, made jokes about the men, their clothes, their lot in life, etc., the way boys, and some not so young boys, often do about those who they feel are beneath them.

This boy noticed one of the men, his red handkerchief, his hot red face with sweat, and a great shock of with hair on his head; he was an old man. And he paused as the boys laughed and passed by.

The boy’s church used to meet on Saturday night for communion before Sunday morning. The boy and his father put on their best clothes and went down to the church. Sitting in the pews the boy felt moved by the darkness, the beautiful music, and everyone hushed in reverence. As the choir processed into the sanctuary, the boy turned to look at the end of the procession where the Bible and the Bread and the Chalice were carried in before the minister. The boy took a quick breath. There, carrying one of the most sacred pieces was the old man with the white hair – carrying the chalice.

The old man’s face and eyes were focused on the cross before him.

After the service the boy asked his father, “Da {Scottish for daddy}. Da, who was that man with the white hair carrying the cup tonight?”

His father said, “That is old Joseph. I have known him since I was about your age. He is perhaps the holiest man that I know in the world.”

The boy was quiet. He later became a minister of the Gospel.

Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?