A long time ago, almost 800 years, there lived a man named Francis. He left behind family and wealth to become a repairer of churches, a deacon, and a friar who organized a new religious order based on humility and poverty in solidarity with the poor.
One day Francis was walking in the woods, traveling from one city to another as he recruited people to join his order. Above his head he heard hundreds of birds in the trees, singing and cheeping and doing all the bird-like things they could, with gusto. He heard in their joyfully noise a message of praise to God. The story goes that he called to the birds, and they flew down from the trees and gathered about his feet, and he began preaching to them:
“My little sisters, many are the bonds which unite us to God. And your duty is to praise Him everywhere and always, because He has let you free to fly wherever you will, and has given you a double and threefold covering and the beautiful plumage you wear.
“Praise Him likewise for the food He provides for you without your working for it, for the songs He has taught you, for your numbers that His blessing has multiplied, for your species which He preserved in the ark of olden times, and for the realm of the air He has reserved for you.
“God sustains you without your having to reap or sow. He gives you fountains and streams to drink from, mountains and hills in which to take refuge, and tall trees in which to build your nests. Although you do not know how to sew or spin, He gives to you and your little ones the clothing you need.
“How the Creator must love you to grant you such favors! So, my sister birds, do not be ungrateful, but continually praise God, who showers blessings upon you.”
It is said that the birds listened attentively, and that when he dismissed them to fly away they formed the shape of the cross in flight. He later joked that animals were more attentive congregations than many human ones he had encountered.
His love for creation as a testimony to the loving provision of God for all of us is something too many of us still have difficulty embracing. We live in a time when our planet is warning us about our lack of care for creation, whether through benign neglect or through outright exploitation of the Earth and her resources. As we look at the historic flooding caused by Hurricane Helene in places that had thought they were safe from climate change, and as we watch the formation of more, even stronger storms in the Gulf of Mexico and all around the world, some of us still view nature as an adversary to be conquered than a gift and revelation of God’s abiding love for us and for all God’s creatures.
This last week (on October 4, actually), it is our tradition to commemorate the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, who is remembered as one who extolled the integrity, the oneness of creation, one who saw all of the universe, from the Sun and the Moon to even the tiniest creatures, as giving praise to the God and Creator of All. Our readings today reflect that spirit of the joyful honoring of creation that Francis taught.
Francis believed that creation revealed the glory and wisdom of God. There are stories of Francis moving earthworms aside so that he wouldn’t step on them, or of him saving a town that was being terrorized by a ravenous wolf by calling the wolf brother and treating it with such tenderness that it laid down at his feet and ravaged the town no more. No animals, from crickets and bees to falcons and pheasants, were too insignificant that Francis couldn’t see God’s generous love to us in the example of each creature.
In our gospel today, Jesus reminds us of the tender care he offers us, urging us to lay aside the striving of he world and lean into our trust in Jesus, whose burdens upon us are insignificant to the fears and anxieties of the world. In our passage from Psalm 121, we hear the voice of God reassuring us that God’s care and love for us never pauses, never ceases. And in our reading from Job, God lists wild animals not known in the ancient world for their wisdom and nonetheless asserts God's providential care. That generous, abundant provision is not just for domestic animals, as we humans sometimes emphasize, but on all creatures, especially wild beasts that roam free Jesus tenderly reminds us about the joy and beauty present in the most common things we tend to overlook in our distracted race through each day. In calling us to trust and awareness of all for which we could be grateful, Jesus calls us to live in each moment joyfully, bathed in God’s love.
Because it is so hard to fully live into each moment, we instead too often fall into the trap of feeling isolated from each other. That false sense of isolation leads to anxiety like Jesus was addressing, and that anxiety fools us into believing we are separate from one another. We see the effects of this belief right now in our city and throughout society. Anxiety and fear and isolation make us forget God’s promise of love and care.
Yet God’s promises to us are written into the very bonds of love that bind us to God, to each other, and to every living thing on the earth. That covenant that God established after the Great Flood was not just with Noah, but with both humans and all creation, plants and birds and all that lives, which, some scientists maintain, includes our very planet itself as a living organism, if one takes a broad enough view. The covenant story we heard from Genesis reminds us that creation is a full partner in our relationship with God, and gives God praise and glory.
Jesus reminds us that God’s love restores and renews us, so long as we center ourselves within each moment enough to feel that shared love. It is there in the joyful songs of birds whose welcome sings the morning into being. It is there in the lowliest, tiniest wildflower growing in a roadside ditch, turning its hopeful face toward the sun.
Instead of worry, Jesus calls us back to mindfulness, an important spiritual practice in many world religions. And not just any mindfulness, but the mindfulness of remembering how fully and thoroughly God loves us and through that love binds us together. Coming back to awareness of our unity with all living things is a wonderful place to start.
We see here in this anecdote that Jesus was a keen observer of the beauty of creation, and that he had spent time savoring the awareness of the birds singing and building their nests, and the sight of wildflowers—what some might call weeds—cloaking the fields and hills in beauty in a myriad of colors, all the hues of the rainbow mentioned in our first reading. Both the rainbow and the raiment of the most humble flower are signs to us of the promise God maintains with us and with all creation to love us and care for us always—not just in the distant past but right now and forever. Every living thing reminds us that God’s wondrous love bears the world into being and sustains it in every moment.
Luckily, we are also reminded of God’s love especially in the love and faithfulness of our companion animals, whose steadfast joy in us models to us the love and devotion we ourselves are made to exhibit toward our God.
At our pet blessing yesterday, those who gathered spoke of beloved canines and cats, fishes and rats—these creatures who show their devotion to us unswervingly. The very presence of all these living creatures in our lives remind us of God’s love. They remind us, also, that we are charged from the very first story in scripture with service to the earth and all the living things upon it and within it. Even the smallest creature has been placed on Earth to support the web of life on this planet, from humans to honeybees, and none is dispensable—not even wasps or mosquitos, who, I have to admit, are not my favorites. But we spoke of the ways that our pets’ devotion reminds us of the unswerving devotion and trust God’s abundant love elicits from us when we contemplate all the things for which we can be grateful in each day we live.
As we begin our stewardship campaign this year, I ask that you consider the way in which God has knit us into this huge community of creation, and consider the generous blessings of the natural world that make our lives possible. But I also ask that you remember how much the amazing community we have formed right here at St. Martin’s also finds ways to testify to God’s abundant love and grace each and every day, and ask each of you to recommit to supporting it
Our companion animals’ devotion exemplifies the devotion we owe God. Their love exemplifies the love we are called to bear for each other, no matter our differences.
St. Francis reminded us that all of creation participates in demonstrating God’s love—the same lesson Jesus taught us today in this gospel passage from Matthew. Each creature is a reminder of God’s blessing to and love for us. It is that holy and limitless love that binds all things together, just as mutual forces of gravity and attraction hold galaxies and stars in their courses as they dance through space. They walk alongside us as we seek to walk in love as Christ loved us, and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Amen.
Preached at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO on October 5-6, 2024.
Readings:
Image: "God's Fool," statue of St. Francis in Sts. Peter and Paul Cemetery, from Naperville, IL
