A Truly Transformed Life
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[00:00:00] I pray that God's word is spoken and that God's word is heard. Amen. Please be seated.
So I have two stories to share with you and it's, it's going to be a departure from the sermon I thought I was going to give. But God is funny that way. Um, two things happened yesterday, sort of St. Francis Day miracles, and I want to share them with you.
The first one is the cute one. It's cute, but I'm going to share it with you anyway. So we had our outdoor St. Francis service yesterday at 5 o'clock. And we had a nice turnout. We had Pepe. Pepe was there, Sue Anderson's cockatoo. Um, as vocal as ever. Pepe was having an ongoing conversation with the canines in attendance, as Pepe does, including barking at them, as only Pepe can.
Um, and one of our parishioners had brought their parents and children and their [00:01:00] dog, um Emmylou, Emmylou Coffey. Emmylou is a adorable rescue. Looks like she might be part lab, maybe part pointer. She's got socks with dots, spots on her socks.
And she's adorable. And her ears are really unique. When she was, she was sitting there and she was staring at me on the other side of our little makeshift altar out there. And her, I just wanted to whip out my camera and get a picture because her ears were so... They were, it was just a moment. These ears, right, I've got a point.
There's a point to this story, I promise. It's not just cute. No it was, painfully so. So we, we had the service. We, we blessed the animals. One young man was there to talk about greenery. You'll be hearing about greenery again soon. It is that most wonderful time of the year when our youth sell greenery.
And he came, and he was actually like this animal whisperer. He soothed Pepe. He got Pepe to just like quiet down. I was amazed. And then the dog that was most hyper the whole time. There's [00:02:00] always one in every crowd. Um, not so much today, this morning, but maybe your dogs are half asleep. But he got that dog to be calm.
I was like, whoa, this is really cool. It's really chill. I was like, this is just a really lovely, beautiful outdoor like we used to do it St. Francis service. And I, I went home really pooped because we did our Vestry retreat this weekend on top of all the excitement of St. Francis Day. So I was kind of toast and I kicked back and I sat on the couch with Josie while she was watching her cartoons and I thought I'm gonna check my email one more time.
I open up my phone and I don't usually check all the next door emails, right? I mean, who does? For some reason I was compelled to click on one. It was not the usual one I would respond to either. It was about road rage at the mall. I was like, why am I responding to this? I don't know why I'm pushing on my phone right now.
But I did. And it opened up and that post had been deleted. Sometimes they are. And I see her ears. And [00:03:00] Emmylou was on next door. And she'd been found. She'd been found on Delmar Heights Road. On the sidewalk. Cause she's not a dumb dog. She's on the sidewalk on Delmar Heights Road. Like, Emmy Lou! What are you doing on next door?
Screenshot. I'm sending it to her owners. And God bless Charlie was biking up and down Delmar Heights Road trying to find Emmy Lou when he picked up my call. Right! Those ears! Those ears were unmistakable in her little socks. And everyone on next door, including the Coffey family, felt like it was a St. Francis Day miracle.
She had been rescued by kind people who were professional dog care people, who made Charlie bring a picture of her to prove that she was his dog. I was grateful for that. And Emmylou was reunited with the [00:04:00] kids and, and visiting parent had accidentally put Emmylou in a place that was not as secure as we thought Emmylou was going to be, and she got home safely.
If it had been any other day of the year, any of the other 364, I wouldn't have recognized Emmylou. But I saw her looking at me across that altar, with those ears. And within an hour of that post on next door, she was home. So Charlie gave me permission to share that story. with you.
That little St. Francis Day miracle, which was really a cute St. Francis Day story and I will never forget those years. It's one of those things where you, you just sort of do what you feel like you're supposed to do even though it doesn't always make sense and somehow it works out.
St. Francis did a lot of that actually. St. Francis. He [00:05:00] was actually born into a lot of wealth and privilege, tons of wealth and privilege. He would have fed in just by the Del Mar or La Jolla or the ranch. He would have been, would have been the space that he had been raised in, and, um, one of the big houses. His dad was a cloth merchant. And one day Jesus called to him "to rebuild my church."
There was this old broken down wreck of a church. And St. Francis thought God meant rebuild St. Damiano's. So you know what he did? He sold all of his dad's inventory and gave the money away, used it to start rebuilding St. Damiano's and dad wasn't happy. As you can imagine. So he gave up everything that belonged to his father, including [00:06:00] the clothes on his back, and walked away from the city square naked, because he wasn't even going to take a thread of his father's belongings with him.
I'm sure God appreciated rebuilding St. Damiano's, but what God really meant was rebuild my church. And the ministry of St. Francis and the Friars Minor -they insisted on being Friars Minor, they didn't want to be monks, didn't want to be elevated in any way -would transform the church.
Didn't make a lot of sense at the time in any worldly way.
We are drawn to the St. Francis statues in our gardens. They're charming. The stories of him making friends with the wolf, or with... preaching to the [00:07:00] birds or those things warm our hearts. We love his creation loving lyrics, and we sing them with joy, and we should. But if we stop there, if we stop there, we miss the part of St. Francis's life and faith that really was responsible for rebuilding the church.
He kissed lepers, friends. Would we do the same?
If we only pay attention to the charming statue in the garden, we miss some of the most transforming aspects of who Francis was.
So I preached a sermon kind of like that last night, [00:08:00] and, um, a gentleman who had come to the retreat, actually during the day, and said, "Can you bless my dog now? I'll probably come back later, but can you bless my dog now?" -His name's Arlo. Arlo's adorable. I blessed Arlo. The gentleman's name was Thomas. Um, they came back for the service.
And at the end of the service, after the dismissal, he said, "If you guys have a moment..." because I had always done when I do, I like, I sort of don't give you answers, I give you lots of questions. I said, I don't know what it looks like for you, but figure out who the leper is who you're supposed to kiss, right?
Figure out what living like St. Francis means for you in your life. We're not all called to give away all of Dad's stuff. We're all called to do something. So I did that thing that I do in my sermons where I don't try to answer the question for you, but invite you to ask the question in the week ahead. I try to send you out with something to do, homework, right?
So I had done that and he said, "I actually have an answer." He said, "I [00:09:00] gave up everything. I preach God's love in Imperial Beach. During COVID, I gave up everything and I started journeying to the West Coast. I gave up all my worldly goods, really, and I never prayed for anything but for more people with whom to share God's love. But I've never wanted for anything. God even gave me my dog, Arlo. I've always had what I needed, and I'm free."
And we all just kind of rocked back on our heels and went, "Oh my gosh, God brought us a 21st century Francis to join us for our service tonight". Someone who had completely unburdened himself of all the heavy yoke of this world to share God's love.[00:10:00]
Inspiring? Yes. Terrifying? Yes. But wow. Here was a person who was truly free... except for Arlo. Cause he's got, he's got, he has someone to love now, and someone who loves him, and someone who he's responsible to in Arlo, and that's important, but he has everything, everything he needs, including the mission of sharing God's love with the world.
Now he has another church he's going to this morning, he said he might pop by, but there is another community he spends Sunday mornings with.
So, it is not impossible. So, to do that thing Francis did, lest we think it is, we were proven wrong last night. [00:11:00] We're not all called to do exactly that, but someone has, today. Not just in the 13th century, but the 21st. So I do invite you to be prayerful about what is the Francis lesson God is inviting you to explore; to follow God with such faithfulness that it leads to your freedom.
And what burdens of this world might God be inviting you to let go of? We heard, we heard the man say it, my yoke is easy, my burden is light. The burdens of this [00:12:00] world are weighty, friends. They are weighty. Not all of us are called to relinquish all of them.
But is there something God is inviting you to hold more loosely? Or release entirely?
How is Francis going to walk with you this year, and how might your life be transformed by enjoying the journey with him?
