Celebrating Clare of Assisi - and her example of Missional Community

 Gate Pa – August 12 2012

Readings:

Hebrew Scripture:          2 Samuel 18: 5-9, 15, 31-33

Psalm:                            130 (confession)

Epistle:                           Ephesians 4: 25-5:2         

Gospel:                           John 6: 35, 41-51              

What I want to say:

Introduce people to St. Clare and some of her gift to the Franciscan story

Use her story to explore the readings

These help us understand the gift of being God’s people, a missional community

What I want to happen:

St. George’s people to more intentionally embrace being a missional people in how we treat each other and those we cross paths with, like Brian

The Sermon

1.      Introduction: - who is Clare?

Born 1193 or 1194?

Great noble families Assisi

Role was to marry as directed

Always prayerful, spent significant time alms giving

Refused two offers of marriage

1212 she heard Francis preaching and was so impressed that she determined join him in life poverty

Palm Sunday March 1212 Clare secretly left home and joined Francis at Portiuncula outside Assisi

Uncle not going tolerate that – marriages arranged each

But when tried to lift them they were unable to…. left with Francis

Sister Agnes Later, her widowed mother joined her

not stay with with Francis – placed them with Benedictine community

In 1215, when the number of adherents had grown, Francis set up the small community in a house near San Damiano, the church just outside Assisi he had repaired a few years earlier. Clare remained there for next 40 years

became first home poor clares – came to be known

She died in 1253. She was canonised two years later.

talk about two key principles in way Clare

·         “The Privilege of Poverty” Pope Innocent IV granted Clare, a papal grant which ensured that the three early houses of Assisi, Perugia and Florence should never be endowed but depend solely on alms

·         crucifix was mirror in which all were to look

2.      Privilege of poverty

            Radical vision of community based on gospel

cf other monasteries

            embraced poverty

all equal

all marks of previous life wiped

all contributed equally life community

all benefited equally

all relied on alms others

become very dour and austere

life Clare sisters marked by gentleness, love and joy, and generosity

people were inspired by what they saw and heard

saw God at work in these women

Order quickly spread

Privilege of poverty was granted by Pope Innocent IV just before her death, a papal grant which ensured that the three early houses of Assisi, Perugia and Florence should never be endowed but depend solely on alms

 

3.      Ephesians and missional community

Reading heard Ephesians is also about this kind of radical community

not embracing poverty in the same way

describes community that had potential to stand out

to inspire

to draw people to God

call this a missional community

written church struggling to hold Jew and non-Jew (gentile) together

old ways thinking hard break

writer offering insights into how to live out relationship with Christ, and through that, relationship with one another

much more set rules to be applied to everyday life as it sometimes is interpreted

inviting readers into a new state of being out of which new way of being community was possible

Describes readers, us, as members or limbs of each other – we need each other

what he is doing is describing how we might live in such a way that we honour each other as our fellow limbs

Because we belong to each other exhorts readers put away all falsehood

            more than telling truth or not telling lies each other

being honest with ourselves and each other about who we are

how we feel

            ok to be angry

            be honest about what causes it and root emotions of that

                        do something about it,

don’t let it fester because that will destroy you

and your community

exhorts them to turn greed (*theft) into generosity – how often we leave out the second half of that sentence.

speak in such a way that others are built up, not diminished – “our words may give grace to those who hear”

encouraged to be imitators of God

è what does that mean to be an imitator of God

o   means being able to identify the qualities of God that we are to imitate

è what are those qualities?

è these are qualities that are to mark Ephesians

è and those are qualities that are to mark us as todays readers

o   are to mark the way we treat each other

o   those we come across in our daily lives

è those qualities marked Clare and her sisters.

how do we attain these qualities as individuals and as a community?

that leads us to the second facet of Clare’s spirituality

4.      Second facet of Clare’s spirituality – praying before the crucifix

            Sisters were to pray before, gaze into face crucified one each day

            no glass mirrors

Christ was to be their mirror – mirror into their souls

who they are much more important what look like

place who they are before the one who died for our love

Clare inviting sisters place their heart into the heart of God

recognise who they were are in the eyes God

o   beloved

ð  able to be honest about who they were to each other

ð  in doing do their eyes and ears opened to the mystery Christ present in world around us

ð  as compared to conventual monastic spiritualty taught one look beyond the distractions of this world to find God

·         one key elements Franciscan spirituality, is that through incarnation, God is found in this world, in beauty nature, and in the people live among

·          recognise that fullness of who we are in Christ can only be found in the other

that feels like lot of what Johns material about Jesus being the bread of life is about, but that is next weeks sermon.