by Bryan M. Cones

For years my mother’s front flowerbed has been adorned with a single statue: A simple little monk with a characteristic tonsured haircut standing — you guessed it—in a birdbath! Even in my largely Southern Baptist Tennessee hometown, Francis of Assisi occupies many a front yard, serenely presiding over the birds to whom legend claims he once preached, admonishing them to be thankful for the plumage and the food God provided them. (The legend says they all stayed and listened to the whole sermon.) "Look at the birds of the air," Jesus told his disciples (Matthew 6:26); Francis took him seriously.

That same Francis of Assisi has found a home among Christians of many denominations. His feast day on October 4 finds churches filled with pets of every kind — including some who don’t always get along! Such a gathering is surely appropriate for a man who named every creature, indeed the entire natural world, his brother or sister, once even persuading "Brother Wolf" to stop eating the local townspeople.

Yet for all his popularity and for all the stories that endear him to us, it can be easy to miss the challenge of Francis, who can teach us about much more than love for animals. After all, Francis took profoundly to heart one of the most basic of Jesus’ teachings: "If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me" (Matthew 19:21). Or, as Luke bluntly puts it, "Blessed are you who are poor" (6:20). Indeed, it is for his poverty that Francis is most well known, and tradition has called him Il Poverello, the poor man of Assisi. That poverty has much to teach us today.

A man of his time
Like every person, Francesco Bernardone came from a specific time and place, and his story is best understood in its context. Born in 1181 to a member of the new merchant class — Francis’ father Pietro was a successful cloth dealer — Francis was among the nouveau riche of his day, enjoying a lifestyle not unlike that of the upper middle class of our own society. As a young man, he too was often driven by the desire for fame, wealth, and good times that characterizes our own well-heeled young (and not–so–young) people.

Like our own society, medieval Assisi was marked by a vast chasm between the lives of the wealthy few and the great many desperately poor. So when Francis, who had begun a slow turn from his "work hard, play harder" lifestyle, publicly renounced his father’s wealth, it’s not hard to imagine everyone’s surprise. He famously gave back even the clothing his father had given him — in the town square!

Francis, however, was not alone in choosing poverty. The church of Francis’ time had been influenced by the new wealth of growing trade within Europe. Many bishops and other clergy had become quite rich, and they were losing the confidence of common people.

Already around the time of Francis’ birth, Peter Waldo, another merchant who renounced wealth, had begun a movement similar to the one Francis would found, an order of mostly lay Christians who embraced poverty and preaching as their mission. The Waldensians, as they came to be called, were eventually condemned as heretics, though their church survives today.

At the same time, the Cathars (also called Albigensians for their French hometown of Albi), a group whose elite members fasted unto death, had also impressed the masses with their detachment from all things material. (Cathar is derived from the Greek word meaning pure; their goal was to be pure of anything earthly.) They became so popular in part of France that church leaders ordered military action, beginning the Albigensian Crusade of the early 13th century.

Francis’ own choice of poverty reflected the same hunger for a simpler, gospel-driven Christian life that was growing among believers. Within a few years he had attracted thousands — rich and poor, men and women alike. Francis, however, managed to remain in the good graces of the church of his time, mostly anyway. He resisted ecclesiastical honor as much as any other (he was ordained a deacon only under protest), preaching always the wisdom of Lady Poverty, whom he called his spouse.

When one bishop expressed horror at the extremes of Francis’ poverty — after all, Francis ate from the garbage and wore little more than rags — Francis simply replied, "If we had any possessions we should need weapons and laws to defend them." In our own time, in which both individuals and nations battle over finite earthly resources — oil, minerals, even land and water— Francis’ wisdom is prophetic.

A generous spouse
Indeed, it seems that one of the many gifts Lady Poverty offered Francis was freedom. Without property to defend, Francis could follow his heart — even recklessly. During the Fifth Crusade against the Mus lim kingdoms of the Holy Land, which Francis condemned as brutal and un–Christian, he braved death to preach the gospel to the Egyptian Sultan al-Malik al–Kamil. He was sure that if the sultan would accept the gospel, the fighting would end. Though Francis was unsuccessful in converting the sultan, al–Kamil did express admiration for Francis and released him and his companions unharmed. (Who knew that the guy in the birdbath was a pioneer in inter-religious dialogue?) Poverty, it seems, allowed Francis to be the "instrument of peace" he prayed to become in what we now call the Prayer of St. Francis.

But even more than freedom, perhaps, poverty brought Francis humility in its most basic, grounding sense. By living in utter dependence on God, he found oneness not only with the poor of humanity — he kissed lepers and gave even the rags off his back to those in need — but with the whole natural world, with all of God’s creation.

In his Canticle of the Sun, Francis announced not only his love for the natural world but his dependence on it as well: "Be praised, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air, and clouds and storms, and all the weather, through which you give your creatures sustenance. Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Water; she is very useful, and humble, and precious, and pure. Be praised, my Lord, through our sister Mother Earth, who feeds us and rules us, and produces various fruits with colored flowers and herbs."

We don’t have to wonder what the man who thanked God for all the weather would say about climate change, or how he might lament the pollution of precious Sister Water or the degradation of Mother Earth. Francis is called the patron of ecology for good reason, and he would no doubt weep over the destruction of the environment as he mourned the deaths of his human sisters and brothers.

Patron for what ails us
And that may be Francis’ great lesson to us: In his poverty he learned what so often we forget. Not only are we as utterly dependent on God as the birds of the air, we are no less tightly woven into the tapestry of creation. We belong to a vast web of created things, each linked to the others, and we, perhaps, need them far more than they need us. Francis reminds us that as we watch the destruction of God’s creation around us, we are watching also our slow demise.

His joyful poverty, too, is a counterpoint to the modern myth that money brings happiness. Our desire to control and consume, to have and hoard, cannot give us the desire of our hearts. Yet Il Poverello, who stepped off the 12th–century version of the materialistic merry–go–round, perhaps lived more fully in his 45 years than some who live to 100 — all without owning a thing, except for that nasty rag he called a monk’s habit, which you can see to this day in Assisi.

As he lay dying, it is said that Francis asked his brothers to place him naked into ground, to let his body rest as close as possible to the soil, the humus (the root word of "humility") from which he (and we all) came. In his welcome of "Sister Bodily Death, from whose embrace no living person can escape," he reminds us that we all go down into the dust with nothing but our faith and the love of those around us. Francis had nothing to cling to and so could praise God.

Though we may never have the courage to wed Lady Poverty ourselves, perhaps we may learn the wisdom of one who did.

Bryan M. Cones, a Chicago writer and editor, holds a master’s degree in theology from Catholic Theological Union at Chicago.

Evangelical Lutheran Worship (ELW) commemorates Francis of Assisi on October 4. The text of the hymn "All Creatures, Worship God Most High" (ELW 835) is based on the Canticle of the Sun, written by Francis. You can read the prayer, "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace," attributed to Francis, on page 87 of ELW.