No Clip-Art Saints

The Rev’d Devin McLachlan

18th Sunday after Trinity & Feast of St Francis

4 October 2026

St Bene’t’s, Cambridge

 At different times in my ministry I’ve dabbled in graphic design — at Harvard and then at seminary, and during my years as a self-supporting priest, running ‘Plan Bede’, a tiny design business for small churches.

 Throughout all that time, there was one thing that was the bane of my work.

Of course there were other challenges,  such as wrangling Adobe software and my complete inability to spell. But those were struggles I could manage.

The worst was this: Bad Christian Clip Art.

 I’m sure you’ve seen the stuff: poorly drawn works, heavy-handed and twee, artistically and theologically suspect.

 Just a couple of days ago I was looking for a colouring page for one of our young people Preparing for First Communion. Google Image threw up — I use the phrase advisedly — a colouring page of a rather blobby cross, surrounded by hearts and Easter eggs, above which was written in cheerful script:

‘Jesus Died for Us!’

A smiley-face emoji was, thankfully, implied rather than actually included.

 I bring this up because the deeply uncomfortable pairing of the cutesy twee cross and the Comic-Sans declaration of Christ’s death points to our discomfort with Saint Francis — and indeed, with the Parable of the Vineyard, and with Christ…

 As G.K. Chesterton writes in his biography of Francis:

 You will not be able rationally to read the Gospel and regard the Crucifixion as an afterthought …. It is obviously the point of the story like the point of a sword, the sword that pierced the heart of the Mother of God.

And you will not be able rationally to read the story of [Saint Francis] presented as a Mirror of Christ without understanding his final phase as a Man of Sorrows…. receiving, in a cloud of mystery and isolation, inflicted by no human hand, the unhealed everlasting wounds that heal the world.[1]

 To hold in one person in blessed Francis the man who spoke in kindness with Brother Wolf, and who bore in his body the stigmata of Christ’s wounds; who preached to the birds and who suffered physically, mentally, emotionally and social throughout his life.

 Without Francis’ suffering, he becomes a twee caricature, a clip-art saint.

Yet, as with the Cross, the story is not that God delights in suffering: in fact, one of the miracles associated with St Francis is a miracle against needless suffering,  the miracle of the thornless rose:

 Legend says Saint Francis was besieged by temptation, leaving him feeling inadequate about his faith.

He threw himself naked amongst the thorn bushes thinking that if the thorns made him suffer, his doubts and temptation would go away.

But on contact with the saint’s body, thorn-less roses began to bloom. They still do to this day in Assisi.

Suffering is not an end to itself, but we can chose to find connection and offering even in suffering.

In his suffering, Francis found union with Christ. In every wound he bore, he saw Christ’s love pouring through and he offered that suffering to God:

“I urge you, brothers and sisters… offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.” Paul tells the Romans. (Rom. 12.1)

An offering not to romanticise suffering, but because in our wounds — physical, mental, spiritual, social — we may meet Christ, who suffered for us and who carried our sins, that he might meet us — even in the violence of the vineyard.

Offering our suffering, rather than running from it, lifts us up to Christ’s suffering —  and lifts our eyes to Christ’s justice:

Jesus’ parable of the tenants would have been, to his Jewish hearers, a clear call-back to the vineyard of the prophet Isaiah,  which our ordinand Chris read:

For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; he expected justice, but saw bloodshed…. Isaiah 5:7)

 Our somewhat timid lectionary, however, stops right before the next verse:

Ah, you who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one but you, and you are left to live alone  in the midst of the land!    (Isaiah 5:8)

 I wonder if Jesus’ listeners, hearing the greed and violence of the tenants, remembered Isaiah’s words too. Yes, the violence of the vineyard was sometimes found in the tenants — but found also in those who, through greed and covetous acquisition, widened beyond imagining the gap between rich and poor.

In a secular world,  we would struggle to draw a line from the tenants of the vineyard, to those who buy up vineyard after vineyard. Renters and owners, the economic underclass and the wealthy.

But: “All things come of thee O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee” as you may recall from offertories of yesteryear.

We are all of us, be we as rich as an oligarch, or with no safe space to lay our heads this night — we are all of us mere tenants, for nothing in this world do we truly own but that it is God’s in truth.

Here at the end of Creationtide, and on the Feast of St Francis, can we see ourselves as tenants in this world, living in solidarity with all who suffer?

To lift up our eyes and find, as Francis did, Christ in a landscape of injustice — amid thorns and thistles of violence, fear and greed, the pollution of our streams and atmosphere, the fraying of our social fabric, peoples and nature both exploited for the wealth of a few, a violent refusal of relationship with the One who has set the stars in their courses…

Can we confess that we too have joined in the wicked tenants’ irrational cry:

“Come, let us kill and get the inheritance”

It sounds madness when the tenants shout it as they kill the son. Yet I suspect that our naked greed as a society — at the expense of clean water, clear skies, even the very future of our children — will seem equally wild and violent to those who may yet read the book of our history.

There are other ways to live. Francis of Assisi knew this, and invited others to re-discover the generous way of Christ, fearless of suffering and committed to relationship with all of Creation:

            the birds of the air, yes, the Earth and the Sun.

            and as well —  the lepers amongst us ,and even sister death

Fearless of suffering. Committed to relationship. It can’t be done by clip-art saints.

 To enter into true Christian relationship we must choose, like Francis, to let our hearts be transformed by suffering.

My first church some 20 years ago, knew this. When I first arrived as their rector, I read through their parish history and discovered this passage:

“The first official act of the Vestry [the PCC] after the fire [which destroyed the church in 1943] was to raise our Parish pledge to Diocese and General Church Funds some 40 per cent.

We realised more fully than ever before the need in all the world”[2]. In the midst of a world war, with the stones still warm from the destroying fire, we realised more fully than ever before the need in all the world.

In the coming years, in times of war, disorder, and sin, there will be churches afraid of suffering — Christians who will choose nationalism, racism and homophobia, communities who will revel in violence and fear.

But we can continue to live unafraid of suffering and choose solidarity, as Francis did, seeking Christ in the face of the stranger, seeking our Creator in the face of creation, meeting suffering with generosity, despair with hope, hatred with love, and the shadow of fear with light.

[1] G K Chesterton, St. Francis of Assisi, 1920. From Chapter 1: The problem of St. Francis 

[2] The Messiah Miracle: A History The Church of the Messiah of West Newton and Auburndale 1871-1971 (privately published, 1971)