THE RADICAL FREEDOM OF LETTING GO
Introduction: Beyond the Garden Statue
In the name of God: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today, across the Anglican Communion and here in the Episcopal Church, we mark the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi (1181- Oct 3,1226). If you look at popular culture, Francis is often reduced to a sweet, harmless caricature. We see him in concrete statues tucked away in our church gardens, frozen in stone with a bird perched peacefully on his shoulder. We imagine him strolling through the landscape of quiet, sentimental comfort. But if we see St. Francis only as a gentle nature lover, we miss the radical, disruptive reality of his life entirely. Francis was not a safe or comfortable man. He was an economical radical, a social rebel, and a spiritual revolutionary. He looked at the consumerism, the endless warfare, and the rigid social hierarchies of the 13th century and said, “There is another way to live.”
Today’s scriptures pulls back the curtain on why Francis lived the way he lived. They challenge us with a deeply uncomfortable question that lies at the very heart of our baptismal covenant: What are we holding onto so tightly that it prevents us from being truly free?
The Illusion of Ownership & the Panic of scarcity
Let’s begin where Francis began—with the Gospel reading. In Luke 12:13-21, a man comes to Jesus with what sounds like a perfectly reasonable legal request: “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.”(Vs 13) But Jesus diagnoses the deeper spiritual sickness instantly. He warns the crowd, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”(Vs 15) Then, he tells the parable of the Rich Fool.
This rich man’s land produced abundantly. He didn’t steal his wealth; he just had an incredibly successful harvest. But look at his vocabulary. His mind is completely choked by first-person pronouns: My crops, my barns, my grain, my goods. And finally, he talks to his own soul: “Soul, you have made ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”(Vs 19)
The tragic irony of the Rich Fool is that he thinks his barns can protect his soul. He confuses net worth with self-worth. He builds bigger walls to isolate himself because he is secretly driven by a seep panic of scarcity. He looks at his massive blessing and can only ask, “What shall I do, for I have no place to store my crops?” his solution to having too much is to lock it up, squeeze it tight, and build bigger silos to keep others out. And God says to him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”(Vs 20)
Francis of Assisi read this exact Gospel passage, and it rewired his entire existence. As a young man, Francis was the definition of luxury. His father was a wealthy silk merchant, and Francis spent money without a care. But when the Holy Spirit broke through his defenses, he realized that his wealth was actually a prison. In a famous, dramatic public trial before the Bishop of Assisi and his own angry father, Francis stripped off his expensive clothes, handed them back to his dad, and stood naked in the public square. He declared, “From now on, I will not say “My father, Pietro Bernardone,’ but “Our Father, who art in heaven.’”
Francis realized what our Episcopal Catechism explicitly reminds us: Stewardship means recognizing that everything we have belongs to God. Ownership is an illusion (Acts 4:32). When we spend our lives building bigger barns—whether those are bank accounts, status symbols, or emotional walls—we are merely storing up things that cannot save us (Luke 12:15, 20-21).
Cf Matthew 6:19-21 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
“Plenty Good Room” in the Kingdom
The Rich Fool looked at his life and cried, “I have no place!”(Vs 17) but the Gospel of Jesus Christ responds to our panic of “no place” with a radical, expansive song of abundance. In the African American tradition, enslaved Christians who owned absolutely nothing in this world captured this divine reality in the magnificent spiritual: “Plenty Good Room.”
Think about the profound defiance of that song. People who were legally treated as property, who were crammed into slave quarters, who were told every day that there was no place for them in society, looked at the architecture of God’s cosmos and sang:
“Plenty good room, plenty good room,
Plenty good room in my Father’s kingdom.
Plenty good room, plenty good room,
Just choose your seat and sit down.”
Where the Rich Fool looked at his life and saw a storage crisis, the singers of the spiritual looked at God and saw a mansion with infinite seating. They knew what St. Paul would later write to the church in Corinth—a verse that serves as the perfect antidote to the Rich Fool‘s anxiety. In 2 Corinthians 9:8, Paul declares: “And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work.”
Look at the weight of Paul’s words: All grace, always, all sufficiency, all things, for every good work. God does not operate out of a scarcity model. He is God of overflow and Jehovah Jireh (God our provider) is His name. God’s grace is not an inheritance that must be violently divided between bickering brothers. God’s Kingdom is a banquet of absolute abundance. There is plenty good room. There is enough grace, enough love, enough mercy, and yes, enough physical resources for every single creature if we stop locking them up in private barns. Each one of us can make an impact if we open our hands and share the little or the much God has entrusted us with, as faithful stewards of His resources.
Francis understood this completely. Because he believed in this ”all-sufficiency” of God, he could look at the wild donkeys, the mountain goats, and the ostrich in Job 39 and see his “brothers” and “sisters”. He didn’t view nature as property to be hoarded or monetized, but as a vast, open sanctuary sustained entirely by the sovereign care of a loving Creator.
Francis understood the book of Job deeply. This is because he lived in absolute poverty, he relied completely on the providential care of God, much like the wild animals. He didn’t view nature as a resource to be exploited, but as a family. The sun was his brother; the moon was his sister; the earth was his mother. We therefore need to realize that the same God who guides the wild mountain goats is watching over us. We dont have to claw and stress to secure our own existence. We must have the freedom of letting go for we know who helps us as Psalm 121:2 echoes: “My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.”
Total Transparency vs. the Kept-Back Gift
This brings us to the radical community that Francis attempted to build, which directly mirrors the early Church in our reading from the book of Acts.
When you truly believe that God’s grace abounds and that there is plenty good room, you lose your fear of scarcity. In Acts 4:32-35, we see the natural, joyful overflow of this trust: “No one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.”(Vs 32) They tore down their private barns and opened up their lives. In that, great grace was upon them all because there was genuine sharing and fellowship. When we truly believe that Jesus has conquered death, we lose our fear of scarcity. We look at our needy neighbors, the homeless, the immigrants and say in confidence and sincere love, “What is mine is yours we will share”.
But then, we encounter the cautionary tale of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5:1-11. They wanted the spiritual prestige of being part of this radical community, but they were still trapped in the Rich Fool’s mindset. They sold a piece of property, but they secretly kept back a portion of the money while pretending to give the full amount.
Their sin wasn’t that they kept the money; the land belonged to them even before selling it. Their sin was duplicity ie being deceitful or double- minded by hiding their true intentions and living a life of hypocrisy. They wanted to look like they trusted the boundless grace of God while secretly maintaining their own private safety nets. They wanted to sing “Plenty Good Room” while quietly building a mini-barn just for themselves. And that spiritual division was fatal to their souls.
Francis encountered this exact temptation within his own movement (The Franciscan Movement that led to the Franciscan Order approved by Pope Innocent III in 1210). As thousands of people flocked to join his order, many found his rule of absolute poverty terrifying. They argued, “Francis, we need to own buildings. We need books. We need a safety net for us when we get sick.” But Francis resisted. He knew that the moment a community starts building private barns to protect its future, it stops relying on the abounding grace of God. He knew that property kills community. He wanted a life of total transparency—where we trust that God will provide exactly enough, sufficient for every good work.
Conclusion: Choose Your Seat
My friends, eight hundred years ago, Francis was praying in the crumbling, broken-down church of San Damiano. He heard a voice as he knelt before the crucifix say, “Francis, go and repair my church, which, as you can see, is falling into ruin.”
Initially, Francis thought the Lord was talking about literal brick and mortar. He began physically gathering stones to rebuild the broken walls of that local chapel. But it did not take long for Francis to discover that God was after something deeper and that He wasn’t looking for a contractor. The house that was in ruins was not made of stone- it was the human heart.
Francis didn’t repair the Church by launching a capital campaign to build bigger barns (Luke 12:18). He repaired it by emptying himself. He repaired it by stepping into the wild i.e wonderful, amazing, abounding grace of 2 Corinthians 9:8, trusting that in God’s kingdom, there is always plenty of room. Everyone has a place, everyone is important, everyone is appreciated and everyone has a role to play don’t be a spectator.
Today, we face a world that is still very much falling into ruins. It is a world exhausted by consumerism, fractured by the anxiety of keeping up, and terrified of scarcity. We are constantly tempted to play the part of the Rich Fool—anxiously building bigger digital and financial barns—or the part of Ananias and Sapphira, trying to look generous while holding back our hearts in fear (Acts 5:1-2).
On this feast of St. Francis, Jesus looks at us and offers us a pathway to radical freedom. He invites us to step out of the narrow prison of ownership and into the expansive freedom of grace. As we lift our voices together this day—offering our praises, our confessions, and our lives back to the One who creates and sustains us—the invitation is clear. God has already made all grace abound towards you. There is plenty good room in this family and community. May the spirit, zeal and the love St Francis had be rekindled in our lives as we examine our hearts. Ask yourself,
*What are the “barns” you are relying on for security like the Rich Fool instead of God?
*Where are you keeping back a portion of your life from the Holy Spirit that you behave like Anania and Sapphira?
Let us pray for the courage of St Francis. We need to let go of the things that weigh us down, so that we might finally inherit the wild i.e undomesticated, abundant, and beautiful kingdom of God.
So, in the words of the old African American magnificent spiritual I say to us: Just choose your seat and sit down as you enjoy in the freedom of letting go, for indeed there is Plenty Good Room.
In the name of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen!