The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

+ In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

When was the last time you stood in awe of the natural world?

Perhaps you were on a hike in Saguaro National Park, and the towering, regal cacti standing sentinel made you smile.

Maybe you were up in Sedona, and the red, wind-swept vistas splotched with green trees caused you to stare agape.

Or maybe you were walking to your car after a busy day of work and you look up – and the sun is setting painting the sky some of the most vivid purples and pinks and reds and oranges that you have ever seen.

Every now and again, the beauty of creation shatters my self-important illusions as I race from task to task in the day.

Every now and again, the overwhelming wonder of a cosmos, lovingly created and sustained by God, collides with my murky eyes and I am left in that liminal space where – for a brief moment – I feel both profoundly insignificant, and that I am bearing witness to a miracle.

These grace-filled moments where the immense beauty of creation opens us to God is not a modern experience. Rather it is profoundly ancient. The Psalmist today writes of this experience, despite never seeing a Tucson sunset(!):

“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1).

The Holy Scriptures are replete with Prophets standing in awe of creation and recognizing how creation points back to God.

As we come to end of the ecumenical observation of the “Season of Creation,” we are invited to not only give gratitude for the marvel of all that is, but also to consider how creation orients us to Christ, and in that re-orientation, considering the cross we are to bear as His followers.

The “Season” ends today on the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi. St. Francis is one of the most popular saints within Christendom, and is the patron saint of animals, ecology, and the environment.

But often, I think our image of St. Francis can be overly sentimentalized. We turn him into a kind of Snow White, who frolics with deer and birds and flowers and trees. We erase key aspects of who St. Francis really was.

When we look to the historical St. Francis, when we look to him for more than a Disney-esque caricature, we begin to see that Francis did not love nature because it was cute or nice or pleasant. He loved creation because it oriented him to Christ. Francis was first and foremost a radical follower of Jesus Christ, who, in the early 1200s, cast away all forms of material comfort to follow, quite literally and seriously, Jesus.

He put on a course woolen robe, which was what the poorest peasants would have worn, and owned nothing else. He begged for everything. He devoted himself to prayer and rebuilding chapels and churches. He severely fasted. He cared for the most despised and downtrodden, even going to the Leper colonies, embracing them and nursing them, to which he likened this to encountering Christ.

He even went to meet the Sultan during the 5th Crusades, to attempt to convert him, in Egypt. The sultan was so taken by St. Francis and his demeaner and the seriousness by which he took his faith that, for centuries following this encounter, Franciscans were the only Christian religious order given care of churches in the Holy Land.

St. Francis cared for creation because in it he came to know Jesus Christ.

In caring for creation – and others – and living deeply into his faith in Christ, he became one of the most well known and most favored Saints.

By all accounts, he would be scorned as a madman in our modern world.

And yet, here we are, concluding this ecumenical season on his feast day.

Far from being an overly sentimental character, Francis is rather a profoundly ascetic, deeply devout follower of Christ who is blessed, at the end of his life, with stigmata – the wounds of Christ given to saints who demonstrated lives of profound holiness. People who so completely give themselves to the Living Lord that they become like a little-Christ.

For Francis, marveling at all creation – which includes care for fellow humans – was not a beautiful distraction from the hardships of life.

Rather it was a call to surrender. We see the self-giving love of God echoed in the self-giving abundance of nature. In this pouring out of divine grace, Francis himself recognized the shape of the cross.

His manner of life echoes that which St Paul writes in today’s Epistle: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death” (Phil. 3:10).

Francis took these words very seriously.

Creation is called good by God in Genesis.

Sometimes we are given the true sight of creation praising and giving glory to God.

And we are called to steward the pure and utter gift of creation as a people who follow Christ.

The life of Francis leaves us with some important considerations. In him, awe leads to devotion, and devotion leads to the cross. This invites us to consider – what might awe of creation, devotion to God, and cross of Christ, look like for us as we step out of those red doors to the sanctuary?

From awe, to devotion, to the cross.

I pray we deeply consider this ascetic response to the call of Christ on our hearts, and give thanks to God for the life of Francis, who shows us what a life deeply lived in Christ and in harmony with creation looks like.

St. Francis of Assisi, pray for us to the Lord our God.

Amen.