Previous Post – Should We Follow The Sermon on the Mount?

This coming week marks my return to pastoring at Little Flowers Community after a brief time off to help Micah get adjusted to being home.  The timing as great, as the coming week is when we celebrate the Feast of St. Francis.  In honour of that, I will be doing a few Franciscan posts.  Here is a repost of my most popular St. Francis post ever, from June 2009.  Enjoy!

“Preach the Gospel at all times.  When necessary, use words.”

While this well known quote is almost always attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, most of us already know that it is very unlikely that he ever said those words.  However, they can still elicit powerful responses, both from those who embrace it as great wisdom and those who reject it as compromise.  A recent online article by Mark Galli at Christianity Today’s website (and some of the responses it has drawn) demonstrates this quite well.  And yet, after spending the last several years immersed in all things Francis, I think many are still missing the mark.

Though Francis never made this statement, it is in many ways a very Franciscan sentiment.  In fact, it was likely inspired by these other quotes from Francis:

“It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.”

“…As for me, I desire this privilege from the Lord, that never may I have any privilege from man, except to do reverence to all, and to convert the world by obedience to the Holy Rule rather by example than by word.”

While the nature of hagiographic records makes it difficult to know if Francis truly said anything attributed to him, we can be assured that all three quotes are reflective of the example and tradition he left behind.  They demonstrate the Francis was deeply committed to both the proclamation and embodiment of the Gospel.  Mark Galli makes an important point when we notes how the quote can be too easily co-opted by the postmodern tendency to mistrust of words.  If this quote is used to diminish the importance of verbal preaching/proclamation, then it is a betrayal of the spirit of St. Francis.

Perhaps to better understand this quote and it’s underlying message we must better understand St. Francis himself.  First, it must be noted that Francis lived in a largely pre-literate society- that is, most of the population could not read or write.  Therefore the role of public preaching played an essential role in spiritual formation.  This does not diminish the importance of proclamation today, but we must acknowledge the elevated importance of verbal communication as a means passing on knowledge and information.  And those who heard the majority of his preaching were the nominal Christians of his era, already passingly familiar with the faith.

Knowing this, then, we can read this quote in a new light.  It is not spoken as a universal truth where words should always be of secondary in importance to actions.  Rather it is a context specific corrective to an age and culture that gave lip service, verbal allegiance to the faith, but whose actions betrayed entirely different beliefs and values.  In the same way, the church today is at risk of making the same mistake.  Again, acknowledging the risk of undervaluing preaching, the church in the West has lost much authority in its failure to live the Gospel it preaches.

Francis was given authority by the Roman Catholic Church to preach in churches, which he did often.  However, he was far better known for his extra-liturgical preaching, sermons given in the open air of piazzas and pastures.  He used styles and tactics borrowed from the troubadours of his day, both through romantic prose and foolish frolicking.  Without rejecting the traditional liturgies of the Church, he broke past the norms and conventions of both the church and the culture to preach in ways that caught peoples attention.  He was attractional at its very vest!

Even when he did preach in churches, he would use living examples and props to bring life to the message.  One of the most well known traditions popularized by St. Francis was the live nativity.  While we might see this as a creative and sentimental example, it was, in fact, a powerfully prophetic gesture.  He brought into the heart of the church and the Scriptures the messy reality of the nature of the incarnation (cow manure and all).  He saw the story of Scripture to be something to be lived and experience, not merely commemorated.  So, while we can defend preaching is central to Francis’s example, we cannot do so without recognizing that he preached in ways that were intentionally disruptive to nominal faith, pointing instead to active participation in the Communion of Christ as His Body.

St. Francis never sought to elevate action over speaking in the task of bringing the Gospel, but neither did he believe that Gospel was only a message to be communicated.  Francis recognized that the Gospel was all consuming, the work of God to restore all of Creation unto Himself for His glory.  He embraced the truth that the authority of the Gospel he proclaimed with his mouth was given authority by the Spirit-empowered life that reflected the reality of its transformation.  And in the same way, he knew that, even in the imperfect, clumsy and often sinful lives that we lead, the inherent authority of the Gospel message would still touch the hearts of those who needed to hear it and therefore must be preached.

Inevitably, out of the diversity of our giftings and experiences, out of the brokenness and strengths of our culture and understanding, each of us will find ourselves at different places of emphasis on this issue.  This should not be seen as disunity or division, but necessary dynamics in a Body with many parts, held together out of mutual submission and love and accountability.

Therefore, preach the Gospel at all times, in both word and deed.