Radical Love can be Hard
During our recent Visioning process, we defined four Congregational Values: Spirituality, Openness, Care for the Common Good, and finally, Radical Love. But, what is Radical Love? This question came up several times during the Visioning process.
If you ask Google about Radical Love and Scripture, you get several scripture passages, two of which we heard this morning.
The first Reading today, “Love your God and Love your neighbour”, is repeated a number of times in Scripture and is called “The Great Commandment”.
But at one point in scripture, a Pharisee asks Jesus “But, who is my neighbour?”, and Jesus responds with the Parable of the Good Samaritan. So, we realize that a normally despised ethnic group in Jesus’ time also could be considered neighbour.
Today’s second reading, from the Sermon on the Mount, is a hard one, because we hear “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, turn the other cheek, give them the shirt off your back, and don’t expect anything in return”
Jesus prefaces that reading with “But I say to you that listen”. He knows it is a hard message and our instinct will be to say “I don’t want to hear this!” So how do we live into this message?
As I reflected the meaning of “Love your enemy”, I realized I knew a Christian story that embodied this difficult piece of Scripture.
Assisi – a hilltop city
Four years ago, I spent ten days in Assisi, a hilltop city in Italy, about three-hour drive north of Rome. Assisi was the home of Saint Francis, as he is known in the Catholic Church, or Francis of Assisi for us Protestants. Saint Francis lived during the Thirteenth Century when there were constant wars between City states, and huge Crusades to the Middle East, trying to recapture Jerusalem from the Islamic Empire.
An Assisi Street
Today, Assisi is a beautiful walled medieval city, visited by millions of Pilgrims and tourists each year, wanting see where Francis lived and had his ministry, as well as to experience a well-maintained medieval city.
Basilica of Saint Francis
This is Francis’ main Basilica, completed in 1253, and it is actually three churches in one. The upper church has twenty-eight magnificent paintings illustrating Francis’ life. Upper Basilica of Saint Francis
You might wonder “Why so many paintings?” but in Medieval times, most people were illiterate, so the paintings told the story of Francis’ life in a way that everyone could understand. The lower church has another magnificent worship space. There is also a basement crypt where Francis’ remains are buried. Even the crypt can seat over a hundred people.
So, who was Francis and why do millions of people visit Assisi each year, and what does it have to do with Radical love and “Loving your enemy?”
Francis’ father was a rich clothing merchant who lived in Assisi but who travelled to buy cloth. His father was part of the rising merchant class, becoming very wealthy by trading different goods with other lands. The various City States would often declare war on one another if they thought they could gain an advantage over a neighbouring City. The Catholic Church was the only unifying force across all of Europe.
Francis grew up well dressed in his father’s cloth, with a circle of wealthy friends. He considered himself quite a “man about town” and dreamed of becoming a famous knight doing chivalrous deeds. When the neighbouring hilltop city of Perugia, about 15 miles away, declared war on Assisi, all the young men rushed to acquire weapons and armour and to prepare for battle.
The battle, however, was a disaster, and many of the Assisi soldiers were slaughtered by mounted cavalry as they retreated. Many of Francis’ friends were killed, and he survived only because his rich clothing and weapons made him valuable as a prisoner to be held for ransom. He was held in a dark dungeon for a year, until his father raised a large ransom. Francis returned to Assisi a sick and broken man.
As he recovered, he found his father’s clothing business held little interest any more, and he began to spend more time in nature outside the town’s walls. He also began to have spiritual experiences, and to encounter the poor and the sick who lived outside the town’s walls. Once, he was so overcome with compassion for a leper he’d encountered, that he kissed the leper’s hand.
Another time, he was praying in a ruined church when he heard a message to “Rebuild my church which you can see is falling down”. He sold all his possessions and also some of his father’s expensive cloth to start the church repairs. This led to a complete break with his family, as he began to live and work with the poor and beg for what he needed.
Other young men were inspired by Francis’ example of living without possessions and working with the poor and sick, and wanted to join Francis. At that time, the church and its monasteries were obvious centers of power and wealth, and Francis’ message of simplicity and love for others provided an alternate path that was attractive to young religious men, echoing the original example of Jesus.
Over the next few years, thousands of young men, impressed by Francis’ preaching and example wanted to join different communities, living in poverty and simplicity as Francis lived. But, so many monks and communities required organization and Rules, and a blessing from the church hierarchy.
To form a new religious order, Francis needed to get the Pope’s approval. So, Francis travelled directly to Rome to ask the Pope to approve his new Order with its unique Rules of poverty, simplicity, and serving the poor and the outcasts. Pope Innocent III reluctantly granted his papal blessing in 1209 to form what is now the Franciscan Order.
Francis travelled widely across Italy over the next few years preaching and spreading his message of simplicity, love and service to the poor, and inspiring new Franciscan communities. Francis often spent time praying alone in nature, one of many parallels between Francis’ life and Jesus’ life.
So, what did Francis look like? There is a tiny image of a monk in the corner of one of the huge paintings in his Basilica. The painting doesn’t even face the main part of the church, but it was painted when people who knew Francis were still alive, and this has become the definitive image of Francis.
Image of Saint Francis
He also was a small man, less than five feet high. One of his rough brown woolen robes, full of patches, hangs in the Basilica’s Museum. But he was well known throughout the church, for his inspiring preaching, his simple living and his example of trying to emulate Jesus’ life, in obvious contradiction to the opulence of the church hierarchy.
Francis lived in a tumultuous time, a time of Crusades to the Holy Land, sponsored by the Pope, and a time of the Inquisition. The Islamic Sultan Saladin had captured Jerusalem in 1187, an event that shook the Christian world, and it generated eight Crusades over a hundred years to try to recapture Jerusalem.
A modern journalistic History of Francis and the Sultan – 2009
By the way, many of the following details come from a 2009 book “The Saint and the Sultan” by Paul Moses, a journalism professor from New York who reviewed many different histories of the Fifth Crusade.
Pope Innocent III, the most powerful of the Crusader Popes called for a Fifth Crusade in 1213. It took five years to assemble the Crusader forces from across Europe, but they finally set sail from Italy. The Pope had the power to excommunicate a Prince or a King who didn’t provide an army or money to support a Crusade. Although the crusades are often labeled “Christian”, history actually reveals very un-Christian behavior, often driven more by greed, ambition and evil, than any Christian principles.
Cardinal Pelagius was the Pope’s personal representative on the Crusade and he was determined not just to free Jerusalem, but to defeat all of Egypt, urged on by the merchant cities of Genoa and Venice, who wanted access to the riches of Egypt. The Cardinal had little military experience, but the Crusades’ military leaders relied on the Cardinal to dispense the Pope’s funding, so he had the ultimate power.
By the end of 1218, the Crusaders had laid siege to the walled city of Damietta on the edge of the Nile, at the Mediterranean coast, which controlled access to the Nile, all of Egypt and surrounding territory. The Sultan of Egypt, Malik al-Kamil, moved his army north from Cairo to try to free Damietta from the Crusader siege.
Crusaders Attacking Damietta
The battles were brutal with huge catapults, battle rams and long ladders trying to overcome the walled city’s defenses, while the defenders used burning oil and archers to resist the attackers. The Sultan’s forces had cavalry and foot soldiers to attack the Crusader’s mounted knights and soldiers on foot. Tens of thousands of soldiers on each side fought hand-to-hand.
There were multiple battles over the next six months trying to breach the walls of Damietta, with thousands of deaths on both sides. The Sultan’s forces also kept trying to relieve Damietta by attacking the Crusaders from the south.
The Sultan finally proposed a truce to the Crusaders that would give them access to Jerusalem for 30 years.
There was great argument within the Crusader camp about whether to accept the Sultan’s offer of access to Jerusalem, which was the original reason for the Crusade, but Cardinal Pelagius was adamant he wanted all of Egypt, even though the military leaders knew they didn’t have enough troops to defeat the Sultan’s army.
Francis, still back in Italy, had always wanted to find a way to preach to the Sultan. He was a powerful preacher and felt that his message of peace could reduce the horror and bloodshed of the Fifth Crusade, where both sides fought in the name of God. He had made a previous attempt to go to Egypt, but had ended up shipwrecked after days of strong winds.
Francis appointed two vicars to lead his Order, and Francis with a few monks sailed to Egypt. They arrived in the Crusader camp in August 1219, just after a major attack by the Sultan to relieve Damietta had been repelled, but with horrendous cost on both sides. The Cardinal and military leaders were respectful of Francis, but said his plans to preach to the Sultan were foolish.
Cardinal Pelagius was planning to attack the Sultan directly, despite warnings from his military leaders. The night before the battle Francis had a dream that convinced him the Crusader’s attack would fail.
Francis preached against the battle as the troops readied themselves, putting him directly in the middle of the argument between the religious and military leaders. The troops were ready to fight though, and they jeered little Francis in his tattered robe. As the Crusader troops advanced, the Sultan’s troops withdrew, drawing the Crusader troops into an area without fresh water and they soon wilted in the blistering August heat. The Sultan’s troops then attacked killing and capturing several thousand Crusader troops in a disastrous retreat.
After several more peace initiatives from the Sultan, which were all rejected by the Cardinal, Francis decided to go himself with one other monk, to preach the Gospel directly to the Sultan. Always want appear obedient to the Church hierarchy, Francis asked for the Cardinal’s approval, but the Cardinal refused. Francis argued so strenuously that the Cardinal finally threw up his hands and said Francis was going to a certain death.
In early morning Francis and his companion crossed the battle lines, through the carnage from the previous battle, a difficult task for Francis with his past wartime trauma. They were soon captured by the Sultan’s troops, but when they shouted “Sultan, Sultan”, the troops assumed they were carrying a response to the Sultan’s peace offers, and took them to his camp.
Francis greeted the Sultan with his standard phrase “May the Lord give you Peace”, invoking the name of God, not the Pope. The Sultan was surprised at this greeting, since he was familiar with Christian ways from the many Coptic Christians in Egypt.
Francis was a skilled but gentle preacher and the Sultan, who was an educated man with an interest in different religions, was intrigued, both because of Francis’ loving Presence, but also his audacity.
The Sultan’s religious advisors said the foreigners were not allowed to preach, but the Sultan was the ultimate religious, military and political authority in his kingdom, and he let Francis continue. History records many other examples of Sultan al-Kamil’s compassion and mercy when dealing with other cultures or religions.
Modern Image of Francis preaching to the Sultan
Official Church histories record the Interactions between Francis and the Sultan as a confrontation with Francis, who proposed a “Trial by fire” to prove his faith was more powerful. Earlier accounts by people actually present on the Fifth Crusade portray their discussions as conversations and debates between two men honestly seeking God in their own way.
The discussions went on for close to a week, and probably involved other religious scholars, with the monks treated as honoured guests. Francis would have been careful to avoid criticizing Mohamed and Islam directly, focusing on the love of God, in both Christianity and Islam.
Eventually, it became clear that, however much they enjoyed the discussions and respected the other’s position; they were both trapped by their own roles and systems of belief.
Before Francis’ departure back to the Crusader camp, the Sultan offered him many lavish gifts, which Francis declined, further impressing the Sultan. The only gift he did accept was an ivory horn with silver chains, which is still kept in Francis’ Basilica.
An Ivory Horn – a Gift from the Sultan
The Sultan also gave Francis documents to ensure his safe passage back through the battle lines.
Francis must have been disappointed not to have converted the Sultan, but he had shown the Sultan that a true Christian could follow Jesus’ call to “Love your Enemy”.
After another month of battles, the Crusaders finally occupied Damietta because few of the defenders remained alive inside. A city of 80,000 had been reduced to 3000 sick survivors. The Crusaders ended up arguing and fighting over who would get the riches of Damietta. Francis was so disgusted at the greed shown by the Christians, that he left shortly afterwards, to travel to other Christian sites.
While travelling, Francis received word that there was a rumour circulating in Italy that he had been killed in the Crusade and that the vicars Francis had left in charge of his Order were making significant changes, including buying property and constructing monastery buildings. He returned immediately to Italy, but a year had past since he had left for the Crusade.
Saint Francis
For the rest of his life, Francis still had influence and moral authority among his monks, but his Order was now in the hands of others who were changing Francis’ original vision.
The Fifth Crusade continued for another year after Francis left. The Sultan eventually defeated the Crusader army and they signed a truce that included the surrender of Damietta. While they waited for ships to transport the thousands of Crusader troops back to Italy, they ran short of food. The Sultan provided the Crusaders with food for several weeks, and even threw a feast for the Crusade leaders.
When the official histories of Francis’ life were written, his time in Egypt was portrayed as confrontation, a brief unsuccessful attempt to convert an evil Sultan. After all, the Pope had called for the Crusade and one of his Cardinals was leading the Crusade. The risk of Excommunication or the charge of Heresy faced all those who resisted a Crusade, so the history had to make Francis’ meeting with the Sultan into a confrontation.
Modern scholarship and the discovery of other accounts of Francis and the Sultan’s encounter provide a more complete story and suggests that what really happened was a “meeting of hearts and minds” and friendship. Even so, both Francis and the Sultan were still trapped by their own worldly roles and responsibilities.
So, what can we learn about this meeting of Saint Francis and the Sultan eight hundred years ago? Francis’ whole life was to follow Jesus’ example, and to seek peace and harmony with others. Francis showed that it is possible to “See the Other” as they really are, even to the extent of coming Loving your Enemy!
But, our own fears and the institutions of the world make Radical Love hard, and it requires great courage. As Jesus said, “But I say to you that listen”, knowing that not everyone will listen. The challenge to “Love your enemies, turn the other cheek, give them the shirt off your back, don’t expect anything in return” is still just as difficult for us today, as it was in Jesus’ time or in Francis’ time.
May the humble example of Francis walking through a war zone to preach to the Sultan be an example to us now. Our “Enemies” may be different, but the challenge of loving them can be still just as hard.
Amen