Through God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Good morning everyone. As a new Novice with the Third Order of the Society of Saint Francis, I am honoured to be able to speak with you on this, the feast of St Francis of Assisi.
Today I would like to share a message with you that I think you should hear.
You are all horrible people and you should be ashamed of yourself.
Is everyone feeling a little shocked or worried where this is going? I hope everyone is at least a little uncomfortable. They should be.
Because this is not my message to you. And it is not at all the message I think the church is called to deliver to the world.
But unfortunately, far too many people believe this is the whole Christian message. And I think the more we come to understand the ministry of healing and reconciliation and blessing that is the true calling of the Christian person, the more that should make us uncomfortable.
Yes, we must come to the Cross in humility, accepting and acknowledging our weaknesses and failures. Our “sins” to use the Biblical language. But we must not stop at the Cross, frozen forever in guilt and suffering. Because Jesus didn’t. The story goes on.
And really, the Christian story does not begin at the Cross any more than it ends there. In the Gospel according to John, we are told that Christ is the Word made flesh. The Word was with God in the beginning, and the Word was God. And it was when God spoke that all things came into being. The story of the Word, and thus the story of Christ, begins in the first chapter of the Bible, not with the New Testament. And it does not begin with sin. It begins with creation and blessing.
The mountain top of original sin, which dwells on guilt and redemption, and views this world as a fallen place to escape from, might be a common vantage point for faith… but it is certainly not the only one. Across the valley, there is another place from which we can look upon the world – that being the mountain top of original blessing.
Who here has heard the term “original blessing” before?
To me, “original blessing” is something I have only recently heard of and began to explore. I think it is a concept the church should more widely explore, so that every Christian knows the term. In general, original blessing refers to the priority of God’s love for us, shown in his blessing of us at the beginning, as we hear in today’s reading from Genesis: “God created human beings in his own likeness. He created them to be like himself. He created them as male and female. God blessed them.”
Before sin ever came into the world, God blessed us and He blessed all of creation. As our Genesis reading concludes, God looked upon everything he had made and it was very good.
Regardless of how you interpret the doctrine of Original Sin, I think it becomes almost irrelevant for us in the light of the Cross. The power of sin is stamped out. Paul speaks in today’s reading from the letter to the Galatians that the ways of the world have been crucified. This must of course be taken in the context of the whole letter, in which Paul is urging his readers to resist the temptation to submit to the Jewish Law, as some taught that Christians had to do. At the beginning of Chapter 5, he declares, “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” After debating about works and faith, he then tells us that what really counts is that the new creation has come.
In his letter to the Romans, Paul states even more explicitly that the entire point of the Cross was not anger but love and freedom from sin. He says that as sin came into the world through one man, so does one man bring the full grace of God. Christ is sufficient for the whole world. Or as John Calvin, one of the staunchest of the Reformation’s leaders, put it, “the power of Christ to save is greater than the power of Adam to ruin.”
And if the power of sin and death is eliminated, then what state are we in other than a state of blessing and the new creation Paul describes? One might say we are restored to the state of Original Blessing, and of God’s love for us with all of creation.
So where does that leave us in relation to the world? Before the story of Adam and Eve rebelling, we are told that God made people to be like him. And he did not hate creation, so I would suggest that neither should we. All through history, there have been Christian saints and mystics who called us back to a love of Creation. Meister Eckhart, Hildegarde of Bingen, and Julian of Norwich just to name a few. In varying times and places, these prophetic voices have declared with Julian, “I know well that heaven and earth and all creation are great, generous and beautiful and good.”
And of course, today we celebrate and remember St Francis of Assisi, who is, among other things, the patron saint of animals and nature. To Francis, every creature was sacred. He did not view the world as something evil to be rejected, but rather as a beloved creation of our God to be loved and cherished. In the Canticle of the Sun, which is a celebration of creation that echoes today’s Psalm, Francis writes,
“Be praised, my Lord, through all Your creatures,
especially through my lord Brother Sun,
who brings the day; and You give light through him.”
Francis regularly addressed creatures of all kinds as “sisters” and “brothers,” and thus as equals in the sight of God. There are a few stories of St Francis relating to animals, and in one of them, St Francis is walking through a valley and actually stops to preach to a large gathering of birds, even ending with a blessing on them. It was from that time on that Francis viewed all creatures as fellows with whom to worship God, and it is in that spirit that we carry on the tradition of blessing animals on this day.
And today we also share another blessing, as we celebrate the sacrament of Holy Baptism with little Jack and his family. The Bible uses plenty of colourful language and allegory to describe baptism, but at its core, what we are doing is welcoming Jack into the Christian family. We are affirming God’s love for him shown in the Cross and Resurrection. We are declaring God’s blessing on Jack as a new creation, as he is himself a reflection of new creation and a blessing to his family. In the Cross, just as our story begins with creation and blessing, so does it end with blessing and new creation in Christ.
And so we pray for Jack, that he might be blessed in his life, and be a blessing to our community and to the world, as he is to his family. Because as Christians, we are called from death to life, and from sin to blessing, so our lives should be about healing and blessing. As we are blessed and not cursed, so should we bless and not curse.
But even if we make mistakes, sometimes doing what is wrong or failing to do what is right, we are not horrible people. We are just typical people, who will need to stand up, dust ourselves off, and get back on track. And we are in the company of some faith giants, like St Paul and St Peter, Abraham, Moses King David, and others. They made mistakes as we make mistakes.
And like them, we are still loved by God. We are still cherished as his beloved children. And whether we feel it in any specific moment or not, we are saved from sin and restored to God’s original blessing.
My friends, please pray with me.
Most high, omnipotent, good Lord, grant your people grace to renounce gladly the vanities of this world; that, following the way of blessed St Francis, we may for love of you delight in your whole creation with perfectness of joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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