St. Francis of Assisi once said, “Preach the gospel at all times; use words when necessary.” For those not familiar with Francis, he was an Italian Catholic friar and preacher. Francis was the son of a wealthy cloth merchant in Assisi, and he lived the high-spirited life typical of a wealthy young man. While going off to war in 1204, he had a vision that directed him back to Assisi where he began to lose his taste for his worldly life. On a pilgrimage to Rome, Francis begged with the beggars at St. Peter's. The experience moved him to live in poverty. Francis returned home and began preaching on the streets.
Francis has served as an inspiration for all who serve in ministry and has been a faithful example of what carrying the work of Christ in Christ's own way means. Every minister/missionary who works with the poor has had some influence by St. Francis of Assisi. Francis called all creatures his brothers and sisters, and even preached to the birds and supposedly persuaded a wolf to stop attacking some locals if they agreed to feed the wolf. Everything and everyone was his brother, his sister. He truly believed that this life and all in it were the mirror of God. He once said, “I have done terrible things. If God can use me, God can use anyone.”
Today's scripture is about what St. Francis was about: caring for God's children. Jesus parable of the sheep and goats is probably one of his best parables. Like the Ten Bridesmaids, Jesus is able to put in a story what the kingdom of heaven truly looks like. He tells us that when the Son of Man comes, he will gather all the nations and divide the people from one another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the the sheep on his right and the goats to his left. He will say to those on his right, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison, and you visited me.” Those on his right will ask, “When did we ever do this for you?” and he will say, “Just as you did for one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”
In the world I live in, there are people who exemplify this way of life. Both in the real world and the fictional world, I sometimes visit. We call them knights of faith. A knight of faith is someone who lives faithfully in community with those around them. A knight of faith, like the knights of our history and our stories, are people who duty-bound to those around them. They care for all in their midst and in their rule. But it is hard to see a knight of faith. They do not stand out like the heroes of my fictional world. Those heroes wear capes and masks, and use all sorts of wonderful gadgets and power rings. They do not wear suits of armor, in fact, some hardly wear suits of any kind. They abide in the love of Christ through their service to others.
These knights of faith are ordinary people with ordinary jobs who live ordinary lives. You may run into one, clasp your hands and say half aloud, “Good lord, is this the knight? Is it really he? Why he looks like a farmer!” You will examine his figure from head to toe to see if there might be some cape or costume or armor exposed through his overalls. No! He is solid through and through. His stride? It is vigorous, belonging entirely to the land; no smartly dressed country-girl who walks but to Walkerton on a Sunday afternoon treads the ground more firmly, she belongs entirely to the world, no Richmonder more so. She takes delight in everything, and whenever ones sees her taking part in a particular pleasure, she does it with the persistence which is the mark of the earthly human whose soul is adsorbed in such things. She tends to her work. So when one looks at her one might suppose that she was a county clerk who lost her soul in an intricate system of book-keeping, precise is she. She takes a holiday on Sunday. She goes to church.
The Reverend Paul Tillich tells a story about woman who died a few years ago and whose life was spent abiding in love, although she rarely, if ever, used the name of God, and though she would have been surprised had someone told her that she belonged to the One who judges all humankind.
Her name was Elsa Brandström, the daughter of a former Swedish ambassador to Russia. But her name in the mouths and hearts of hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war during the First World War was the Angel of Siberia. She was an irrefutable living witness to the truth that love is the ultimate power of Being, even in a century which belongs to the darkest, most destructive and cruel of all centuries since the dawn of mankind.
At the beginning of the First World War, when Elsa was twenty-four years old, she looked out of the window of the Swedish Embassy in what was then St. Petersburg and saw the German prisoners of war being driven through the streets on their way to Siberia. From that moment on she could no longer endure the splendor of the diplomatic life of which, up to then, she had been a beautiful and vigorous center. She became a nurse and began visiting the prison camps. There she saw unspeakable horrors and she, a girl of twenty-four, began, almost alone, the fight of love against cruelty, and she prevailed. She had to fight against the resistance and suspicion of the authorities and she prevailed. She had to fight against the brutality and lawlessness of the prison guards and she prevailed. She had to fight against cold, hunger, dirt and illness, against the conditions of an undeveloped country and a destructive war, and she prevailed. Love gave her wisdom with innocence, and daring with foresight. And whenever she appeared despair was conquered and sorrow healed. She visited the hungry and gave them food. She saw the thirsty and gave them to drink. She welcomed the strangers, clothed the naked and strengthened the sick. She, herself, fell ill and was imprisoned, but God was abiding in her. The irresistible power of love was with her.
And she never ceased to be driven by this power. After the war she initiated a great work for the orphans of German and Russian prisoners of war. The sight of her among these children whose sole ever-shining sun she was, must have been a decisive religious impression for many people. With the coming of the Nazis, she and her husband were forced to leave Germany and come to this country. Here she became the helper of innumerable European refugees, and for ten years, Tillich writes, I was able personally to observe the creative genius of her love. We never had a theological conversation. It was unnecessary. She made God transparent in every moment. For God, who is love, was abiding in her and she in Him. She aroused the love of millions towards her self and towards that for which she was transparent— the God who is love. On her deathbed she received a delegate from the king and people of Sweden, representing innumerable people all over Europe, assuring her that she would never be forgotten by those to whom she had given back the meaning of their lives.
The knights of faith look like a farmer, a county clerk, or in this case, a young nurse, dressing as plain as any, and carrying on with the daily grind. In my life, I have been influenced by costumed heroes. Heroes whose powers come from either a mutant gene or from the yellow sun of Earth. These heroes are heroes because they serve humanity for the greater good. Elsa Brandström was no superhero. She didn't inherit a billion dollar fortune, build a base in a cave, or have a really cool car. She wasn't sent to earth as her home planet was being destroyed. She isn't a Viking god sent to earth to learn humility. Elsa Brandström is a knight of faith because what she did, what she is remembered for, her actions that affected the here and now. Her life was about loving those in her midst and loving them completely and faithfully. A knight of faith doesn't wear a cape or a cowl. Their dress is nothing special; their deeds are routine. A knight of faith is someone who lives in the here and now, and what they do affect the here and now.
You see, superheroes are regulated to the fact that they will never ability to solve the world's problems and bring about world peace. Sure, there might be peace on earth for awhile but you can always guarantee that peace will not last long, after all, there's sequels to make and comics to sell. The justice they seek, the world they seek will never come to fruition. For the knight of faith, their peace is a present thing. Their ideal state is found in the moment because they realize that in loving and serving others they exercise the kind of fellowship that infinitely sustain humanity. For a knight of faith, peace on earth must be made with every gesture and every action. And it starts by committing ourselves to another person and by helping that person in every way that we can.
Our gospel story this morning frustrates a lot of my friends. They think it's impossible to care for everyone, to clothe everyone, to feed everyone, to visit everyone, to give everyone a drink, or welcome everyone. They're right. It is impossible. A knight of faith knows that spiritually everything is possible but in this world of ours there is much that is not possible. This impossible, however, the knight makes possible by expressing it spiritually, but he expresses it spiritually by forfeiting his claim to it. In other words, the knight of faith gives up the belief that he can be everything to everyone. I believe our passage this morning invites us to give up that belief.
I believe the parable of the sheep and goats is an impossible parable to comprehend if we continue to read it on a global scale. When we look at the passage, when we read the passage, when we hear the passage, we are not being asked to hear on a world wide scale. The task to go all over the world and feed every single soul is impossible. There are those who try, we call them missionaries. But for those of us who are not missionaries, we have the opportunity to take the impossible and make it possible by loving one another as we love ourselves. I stated last week that I believed the gospel could be summed up in three commandments: 1) Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. 2)Love your neighbor as yourself. 3) Go and make disciples of every nation. I believe those three commandments make it possible for us to be sheep instead of goats.
It is because of our love for Christ, for God, with every once of our being that we love one another as we love ourselves. Grounded in that love, we begin to reach out and care for those right next to us, those in our immediate presence. If loved one another, if we cared for another, it begins to show in the way we treat one another. It is in the treating of one another, the caring of one another, that others begin to join. It is out the love of Christ abiding in us that we begin to make disciples of every nation. It is possible for us to change this world for the better, here and now, if become like knights of faith and care for one another in ways that become routine.
Our passage this morning calls for us to be knights of faith. We should aspire to become knights of faith. For it is in that aspiration, we begin to live our lives in the abiding power of love of Christ.
- Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
- Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
- Where there is injury, pardon.
- Where there is doubt, faith.
- Where there is despair, hope.
- Where there is darkness, light.
- Where there is sadness, joy.
- O Divine Master,
- grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
- to be understood, as to understand;
- to be loved, as to love.
- For it is in giving that we receive.
- It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
- and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
- Amen.
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