Francis’ starting place was human suffering instead of human sinfulness, and God’s identification with that suffering in Jesus. That did not put him in conflict with any Catholic dogmas or structures. His Christ was cosmic while also deeply personal, his cathedral was creation itself, and he preferred the bottom of society to the top. He invariably emphasized inclusion of the seeming outsider over any club of insiders, and he was much more a mystic than a moralist. In general, Francis preferred ego poverty to private perfection, because Jesus “became poor for our sake, so that we might become rich out of his poverty” (2 Corinthians 8:9). Richard Rohr The Franciscan Way
The gospel text for this past Sunday was Matthew 16:21-28. Jesus had just celebrated Peter’s response to the “Who do you say I am?” question. He praised Peter as the rock upon which the church would be built, giving him the keys to the kingdom of God. But this praise quickly became chastisement as Peter, the rock, for a moment becomes Satan the accuser—the one who tempts Jesus with another way. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” The way to God is not through power, status, or winning the culture war; the way to God is only through the way of Jesus. The way to God is down not up.
No one exemplified this better than St. Francis of Assisi. When his path to nobility and social status came crashing down following his imprisonment in Perugia, he wandered aimless, seeking purpose and meaning. His old life made little sense to him anymore, so he started hanging out in a dilapidated church outside of Assisi. He prayed in front of the crucifix, waiting for God to speak. Finally, Jesus spoke, but not in a way we might expect. Jesus spoke to him through the lepers, through the sick and the poor. It was the suffering Christ who asked him to rebuild his church, and the words came to Francis in the people he encountered, through the created world that became a sign of God’s love and presence. In a world obsessed with power and security, Francis became a sign of love and grace.
“For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of the Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done.” In Matthew 25 Jesus describes the time of final judgement. What’s fascinating about this text is what’s missing: no where is there mention of belief. The great separating of the sheep and the goats is based upon the response of individuals to the presence of Christ in the poor, the sick, and the imprisoned. In Matthew 25, how the outsider is treated is at the heart of salvation. This doesn’t sit well with the rich and powerful, those who prefer salvation be based upon abstract beliefs that never require engaging with the messiness of this world. In this text Jesus plainly tells us that our neighbor is the word that God speaks to us. This is what Francis believed, and this is how Francis lived.
“Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” Like Adam and Eve in the garden, we want to become more than what we were created to be. We want to build our identity, to become something or someone, to establish security. Unfortunately, religion becomes part of this upward movement. Doctrinal and moral principles are used to demarcate our territory, to determine who is in and who must be left out. Divine justification become a form of ideology that confirms the way of life we construct. In this context, total depravity does not claim that humanity is evil; it is the recognition that Adam has unleashed a sinful condition into the world—we cannot get outside of ourselves, we are caught up in the desire to become something more. In response, Jesus calls us to follow him on the path of letting go. To relax our grip and follow him back into the world where we can once again be human. To hear God speak to us, not in some abstract voice that merely confirms our desires, but in our concrete neighbor. This is how Jesus speaks to us, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer describes this way:
Jesus stands at the door knocking (Rev. 3:20). In total reality, he comes in the form of the beggar, of the dissolute human child in ragged clothes, asking for help. He confronts you in every person that you meet. As long as there are people, Christ will walk the earth as your neighbor, as the one through whom God calls you, speaks to you, makes demands on you. That is the great seriousness and great blessedness of the Advent message. Christ is standing at the door; he lives in the form of a human being among us. (God is in the Manger)