When the world came to an
end, it was the summer of the year 410. Rome fell – civilization was erased. A
century and more before, Roman officials had executed a Christian martyr in
Britannia, one Alban. Then Constantine took legions to the continent and won
the imperial throne. But now a century after these events Rome crumbled before
the onslaught of a Visigoth horde.
Arthur held together some
promise of hope in Britannia. He called it Logres – kingdom of the Grail. And
Ninian set sail for the north, Galloway in Caledonia. On the shores looking
west and north to Hibernia, however, Irish pirates came across the water and
they brought chains. They came for slaves.
One son of a patrician house,
now we call him Patrick, was too near the shore, and he was taken. He found
himself far across on the other side of a strange island and it was not until
he was a teenager (and more) that he left the sheep he’d been set to herd – and
walked away, across the island and back across the sea – but to a new future.
He fetched up in a monastery
started by Martin of Tours, and he learned a new depth of Christian hope and
practice. He was going to be a priest.
Strangely enough it was,
then, that this trafficked human, enslaved by the Irish, saw in a dream his calling:
to serve those who’d enslaved him, to free his captors. “Come here and walk
among us!”
So to Ireland Patrick sailed.
He even sought reconciliation with his old master. And he became a champion,
confronting the evil of the slave trade, human trafficking. When in turn Irish Christians, ones he
himself had baptized, were captured by British Christian slavers, he wrote an
excoriating letter, naming and rebuking one Corocticus, making a plea (a
strongly worded one) that the slave-master set his fellow Christians free.
Patrick and other mission
bishops brought the gospel to fertile soil in Ireland. They were a people ready
to receive the word, and it quickly grew, in part because of the form, or lack
of it, he used to carry it.
The world had come to an end,
the Roman world, and there was little left to hold onto, few elements of the
sacred, clad lightly in poverty – not wealth.
But he embraces that poverty,
poverty of worldly means, as he taught people to embrace the only things that
mattered, that remained (and as long as we have these, Herbert O’Driscoll
taught us, we’ll be all right).
These are just a few things –
look at the postcard – six words to define the church – and here are six:
story, water, oil, bread, wine, people.
We are the water oil bread
wine story people.
We have the gospel – the
story of God’s love for humankind, the Spirit’s restless seeking for our souls.
We have the baptismal waters
and the oil of Chrism (“you are sealed as Christ’s own for ever”).
We have bread, the bread we
need, and wine – sustenance and reminder of the Godly provision of Christ our
Savior.
And we are the people imbued
by the Spirit, called and gifted to tell the story, immerse and bless, share
the Table’s abundance, and – gather others in. For these gifts are not ours to
keep to ourselves – they take us, break us, transform us, and make us
ambassadors for Christ.
And we love to tell the
story, and spread the news. He whom Mary wept over and anointed and served is
the One who shed more than tears for us, who died indeed and rose to new life,
that he might take us with him, and with us others, that all may be reconciled
to God, all be freed.
Working for the simple
physical liberation from slavery of trafficking victims, we work also for the
liberation of souls – even of those who enslave.
May we live into this costly
freedom, heed God’s call, and follow the dream of our own calling, that we may
come over and bring Jesus even to those once separated from us by far more than
a sea. May we be one in Christ, reconciled to one another God through the power
of the Spirit, and the work of our Savior, in whose name we pray, Jesus Christ
our Lord. Amen.
Isaiah 43:16-21
Psalm 126
Philippians 3:4b-14
John 12:1-8
Fifth Sunday in Lent
Herbert O’Driscoll – 10:30 Service January 31, 2010
JRL+
