​I’m going to start this morning with a brief history lesson
            (I guess I’ve been inspired by all the Bible teaching I’ve been doing this fall)
In the 7th century before Christ, the kingdom of Israel was conquered by Assyria.
A little more than a century later, the kingdom of Judah was conquered by Babylon.
The temple in Jerusalem was destroyed,
            and the people of Israel and Judah were scattered.
Generations lived in exile and struggled with what it meant to be the people of God –
the God of Abraham and Sarah, of Isaac and Rebekah, of Jacob, Rachel and Leah –         when they had lost their homeland and their temple.
 
Jeremiah was a prophet in Judah in the years leading up to, and following, it’s destruction.
He warned the people that they would be destroyed for their unfaithfulness to God.
He is known for his lament, his bitter wailing over the destruction and exile,
            and is credited with writing the book of Lamentations.
But in today’s reading, toward the end of his book, Jeremiah has a different message.
Thus says the Lord, ‘Sing aloud with gladness for Jacob, and raise shouts of the chief of the nations; proclaim, give praise, and say, “Save, O Lord, your people, the remnant of Israel.
Jeremiah is promising restoration to those who have been lost.
God will gather the scattered remnant of Israel and Judah,
            to return them to their spiritual home.
 
Jeremiah introduces a theme that runs through today’s lessons –
            that God desires the restoration of those who are lost.
The kingdom of God is marked by restoration of those who are in exile –
            who are marginalized, rejected, and scattered.
 
Psalm 126 has a different take on the restoration of Israel.
It is a song of ascent – a song sung by pilgrims as they walked the road upward into Jerusalem to worship at the temple.
It is a song of celebration, that looks back at the return from exile as a gift from God.
The singer looks back at what God has done in the past,
            restoring the fortunes of Zion.
Even the surrounding nations recognize what a great thing God has done,
            and the people of God are filled with joy.
 
 
Therefore, because of what God has done,
            the community trusts their future to God as well.
Restore our fortunes now, they cry.
We who have sown with tears will reap with songs of joy.
We will trust in God to restore us, as God has restored our ancestors.
 
We do not know what struggles the pilgrims bring with them to Jerusalem.
But perhaps their experiences of exile and separation
            are not unlike what we experience today.
We, too, gather to worship with various wounds and struggles to bring before God –
            loneliness, broken relationships and addiction,
            joblessness, illness and grief –
any of these things can feel like exile, like separation from community and our sense of what life is supposed to be like and who we are meant to be.
We all know what it feels like to feel lost – to cry out, “Have mercy on me, O God.”
Yet we gather here to hear the stories of what God has done for God’s people.
We gather here to hear the promise that God intends to restore the lost –
            even as the shepherd who goes after one lost sheep.
 
 
The story of Bartimaeus is also a story of restoration,
            and a few things in particular caught my attention this week.
           
The first is how certain Bartimaeus is that Jesus will help him.
Bartimaeus is a blind beggar – not, apparently, blind from birth, but someone who has become blind during his life.
His blindness has separated him from meaningful work
            and from a place in the community.
He has heard stories of Jesus, and knows what Jesus has done in other places.
He seems to trust completely that Jesus will restore him to wholeness.
What’s more, he recognizes what even Jesus’ own disciples struggle to understand –
            that Jesus is the Messiah.
When he calls out to Jesus,
            he is not looking for the help of an itinerant preacher and healer.
He calls, “Son of David,” a name for the chosen Messiah of God,
            who will come to restore God’s people.
 
At first, the people traveling with Jesus try to keep Bartimaeus from him.
As if they need to protect Jesus from the rabble,
            they shush Bartimaeus and try to hurry Jesus along.
Now, Jesus could let loose a sigh of frustration – will they never get it? –
            move past the nay-sayers, and walk right over to Bartimaeus.
 
Instead, he guides his followers to participate
            in the healing and restoration of Bartimaeus.
He tells them, “bring him to me.”
He is showing them what it means to be his followers.
It means being a part – an active part – of the restoration of those of the margins and the healing of those who suffer.
 
It is like the time the disciples try to keep the children from bothering Jesus,
            and he says,
Bring the children to me.
 I have come for the little children – and for whoever can receive me, in simplicity and trust, as a little child would.
 
It is like the time the disciples are worried about how the huge crowd will get home in time for dinner, and Jesus says to them, “You give them something to eat.”
He blesses the loaves and fishes, and has the disciples pass them out to all the people – to give them practice in the work of being his followers by serving others.
 
When Jesus heals Bartimaeus, he restores not only his sight, but his purpose in life.
In fact, he gives Bartimaeus a new purpose,
            as Bartimaeus immediately chooses to follow Jesus on his way.
He has experienced the rich blessing of God, and now chooses to follow Jesus,
            to be a part of sharing that blessing with others.
 
 
 
The annual diocesan convention took place this weekend here in Albuquerque,
            and one theme I heard repeated again and again was this:
God provides all we need,
            and it is our job to get what God provides to the place it needs to be.
It especially resonated with me when spoken by Susan Hutchins, a transitional deacon who works at the border with the poorest of the poor –
            immigrant families in the US and families in Mexico as well.
Borderland Ministries provides tons of food, clothing, and basic necessities for hundreds of families.
Susan spoke of recently visiting a colonia in Mexico where they are preparing to expand their ministry, and feeling overwhelmed by the need she saw.
Then she took a breath, remembering that it is not her job to fix it all –
            just to help each family and person that she can with what God has provided.
I was moved by her commitment,
            her trust in God and commitment to caring for God’s people.
I was glad that the youth in Albuquerque will be helping, in our own small way,
            when we gather next month to put together Christmas boxes for 20 families.
 
It was wonderful to hear such stories, and be reminded of the work of our church across the state of New Mexico and in far west Texas.
Ministry with the homeless.
Campus ministry at universities and colleges across the state.
Weeks at Camp Stoney that share the love of God not only with our own kids,
             but, during Grace camp, with kids who have a parent who is incarcerated.
We are part of a larger church body that shows up for people in need and reaches beyond it’s own borders to build God’s kingdom of restoration, mercy and peace in this place and time.
 
As a community, we know what it is to look back on God’s faithfulness to us,
            to sing praises for our abundant harvest, and to follow Jesus into the future.
The abundant blessing of God is evident here in so many ways –
            in our inspiring music,
            and the care with which our worship space is tended and made beautiful;
            in our outreach to the community and our gifted pastoral care team.
It is evident in Godly Play and our preschool, and in the people coming forward this fall to be in ministry with our youth and children.
 
And we know, with the Psalmist,
            that abundance of gratitude brings more abundance.
Perhaps Psalm 126 can be our Psalm of Ascent this fall
            as we move through our pledge campaign,
            not with an attitude of, “what will we do? will we have enough?”
but with deep conviction that God has richly blessed us,
deep gratitude for our community and our current ministries,
            and vibrant hope and expectation for what we can do together in new ways
            to build God’s kingdom in this place.
 
 
Sing aloud with gladness; proclaim, and give praise.
The Lord has done great things for us, and we are glad indeed.
Alleluia, alleluia.
Amen.

“May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” (Gal. 6:14)
Francis is among the most beloved of saints, especially here in the American southwest. Franciscan Friars were among the first Christians to come to this land, and Archbishop Lamy’s imposing cathedral basilica in Santa Fe is named for Francis; statues of Francis adorn countless gardens (as does one here in church today), and congregations enthusiastically bless animals each year on the Feast of St. Francis (as we shall ourselves do this afternoon). Even the current pope has taken Francis’ name, hoping to signal a new era of humility and concern in the church for the poor, the earth, and the refugee.

So to invoke the name of St. Francis brings to mind many images, and none as strongly as his idyllic relationship to nature. Francis called the animals as well as the sun, moon and stars his brothers and sisters—even death itself he regarded as kin. In this naturalistic vein, we may also recall Francis’ famous sermon to the birds, when he celebrated their own giftedness as God’s creatures, reminding them to “praise your Creator and always love him; for he gave you feathers to cloth you, and wings so that you can fly.” 

These images, however, are actually a rather sanitized version of the real Francis. The historical Francis of late 12th century Italy was more like an Old Testament prophet, living a life of peculiar eccentricity and isolation, while preaching a vehement message of repentance to a corrupt and complacent church and society. Indeed Francis’ preaching to the birds was not just an affectionate gesture toward these creatures, his brothers and sisters, but it was also a prophetic denunciation of the papal court of Rome where his calls for spiritual reform had found few sympathetic hearers—perhaps, he reasoned, if he left the city and went into the fields, at least the birds might listen!

But the dimension of Francis’ life that we most often miss in the rather idealized portrayals of him to which we have become accustomed, is his complete personal identification with the crucified Christ. Francis was absolutely insistent, like Paul in today’s epistle reading, that the only thing in which human beings can put their trust and confidence, is the cross of Jesus. “Even one demon,” he once wrote, “knows more than all of humanity put together. But in this we can glory: bearing daily the holy cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” In fact, so close was Francis’ identification with Christ’s sufferings that he is said to have received the stigmata, the sign of Christ’s wounds, into his own flesh. Be that as it may, one thing is clear: the driving energy behind Francis’ itinerant mission was nothing other than an intense and unrelenting awareness of walking the way of the cross.

But here is the remarkable thing: one might think that by focusing on Jesus’ suffering, Francis would have succumbed to a rather gloomy and despairing worldview, as much of medieval spirituality did. Yet for Francis, Christ’s willingness to die on the cross to redeem humankind opened for him a new world of possibility and hope. Francis was able to imagine a world entirely restored and recreated in Christ, and so his life and preaching was dedicated to the proposition that while Jesus calls to us from the cross to confront the darkest and most hidden places of ourselves, he does so in order to bring to those dark recesses of our souls light, beauty, forgiveness, restoration, and renewal.

The great gift Francis gave to the church, if you like, was an ability to imagine what the Kingdom of God might look like in the world of 12th century Italy, and he set out to bring that vision to reality. In a world of crusades, plagues, and wars, Francis could imagine a world of gentleness and peace; a world of beauty and wonder; a world of harmony and equanimity that could be brought about by the practice of Christian virtues such as humility, generosity, charity, and patience.

And whether we realize it or not, this I think is the real source of our enduring affection for Francis. More than just being a companion with nature, he seems to have found a way to inhabit the Kingdom of God in a manner which we desire to live as well. Like him, we too want to have a sense of belonging gently and easily in the world; we too want to feel that sense of fraternal warmth with our fellow human beings that Francis had not only with his monastic brothers, but the whole of creation; we too want to have the sense of life abundant without having to be weighed down with abundant possessions. In short, at some deep level we want to live in the world in which Francis lived; to inhabit the same spiritual terrain as he did; to have the same confidence and hope with which he met the trials of his day.

Like Francis, I think that we at St. Michael’s have been blessed in some measure with the spiritual imagination to think of what the world might look like if it were lived as the Kingdom of God—not in Francis’ 12th century Rome, but our 21stcentury Albuquerque. We see a world in which there is a place for everyone at the table; a world in which the poor are fed and the homeless sheltered, yet also given the hope for opportunity and success; a world in which children are loved, clothed, inspired and educated; a world in which those who grieve are consoled, those who are ill are comforted, and those who are at work are encouraged; and a world in which those who seek to know God more deeply are not only welcomed, but joined in their spiritual pilgrimage. Open hands, open hearts, and open minds: that is the vision to which we recommitted and pledged ourselves at last Sunday’s celebration of new ministry.

Now this week you will be receiving (if you have not already) an invitation to consider how you will help make possible the realization of this vision for Building the Kingdom of God in this parish through your own financial generosity in the coming year. As you do so, it would be good to recall that like the life of Francis, our own Christian lives are nothing less than a rich fabric of life-long practices through which we nurture a vision of that world, that Kingdom, which we wish to inhabit, and which we are each helping to build. Generous giving—giving with enough abandon to feel true joy in the doing of it—is one of those practices that makes up Christian living. There are others (hospitality, stability, honesty, patience), but giving is one that especially opens us to God’s grace, because giving is God’s own primary relationship with us. Seen in this light, giving toward the work of the church is not paying a due or meeting an obligation, but rather a cultivation of that pattern of generosity in ourselves which we long for in the whole of God’s Kingdom. 

Francis was deeply convinced that one person, every person, makes an decisive difference by how he or she lives. “Sanctify yourself,” he said, “and you will sanctify the world.” Perhaps on this occasion, as we ponder the commitments we will make, we might paraphrase that thought to read, “Give generously, and you will make the world generous.”

As Francis himself prayed: “All-powerful, most holy, most high, and supreme God: all good, supreme good, totally good, You who alone are good; may we give You all praise, all glory, all thanks, all honor: all blessing, and all good things. So be it. So be it. Amen.”
© Joseph Britton, 2015