If I forget thee, O Jerusalem…

Two friends, one Palestinian, one Israeli, who run a restaurant together, remarked of their common home, –

“It is more than 20 years since we both left the city. This is a serious chunk of time, longer than the years we spent living there. Yet we still think of Jerusalem as our home. Not home in the sense of the place you conduct your daily life or constantly return to. In fact, Jerusalem is our home almost against our wills. It is our home because it defines us whether we like it or not.

“… a city with 4000 years of history, that has changed hands endlessly and that now stands as the center of three massive faiths and is occupied by residents of such utter diversity it puts the old tower of Babylon to shame.”

(Yotam Ottolenghi & Sami Tamimi. Jerusalem: A Cookbook. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press. 2012. 9.)

Where is your Jerusalem? Where is that place in your heart that lives as home whether you are there or not, or whether you have ever been there or not?

Is it California? Is it Tucson? Is it imaginary or real? In their hearts many people have yearned for Jerusalem. “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem” says the psalmist. And Jesus, gazing upon the city itself, calls “O Jerusalem Jerusalem how often have I longed…” We long for a place we do not know… or perhaps we do. A city that we have never visited, as the poet Auden said, that has awaited our arrival for years. (Hymn #463)

But the real Jerusalem, like the real Belfast, or the real Tucson, has its woes and troubles as well as its ecstatic charms and mysteries. In 2015 on a pilgrimage into the Holy Land I found myself looking through a window, and through the arms of a cross, out across the Kidron Valley to the Old City of so many longings.

On the Mount of Olives, once we walked down from the churches at the top, through the graveyards of so many, we came to the church of Dominus Flevit, which means “the Lord wept”. It was from this vantage point, sitting in the front row of the congregation, that I found myself with that view. Through the arms of the Cross across the Valley to the Temple Mount, the Dome of the Rock, the Haram … and beyond it the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

It is well to be reminded that that church has another name: the church of the Resurrection. But let us not get ahead of ourselves. It is not Good Friday yet, not to mention Holy Saturday, or –

Recently I was reminded of something I had carelessly forgotten: this is the weekend just before the feast of Saint Patrick, apostle bishop of Ireland. Patrick had no city to remember, none to yearn for: there were not many in his time and he did not hope for Rome. Instead he went to the edge of the world, to the land where he had once tended sheep as a slave, to bring the good news they had to hear: the news of Jesus. The same news we know: and are not likely to forget.

Maybe that is the city we need to remember. Not the earthly city at all but the “new” Jerusalem envisioned by the Apocalyptic saint John. A city not made by human hands, but where all humanity in all our flavors are to be welcomed.

I mention Belfast because it is a city under contention. 27 years after the end of the Troubles, their euphemism for civil war, so many pieces, so much damage, is yet to be healed and resolved. This past week I got to hear again from the Rev. Dr. Gary Mason, a Methodist minister of that city, who was talking about what divides people and what can be done about it.

He told us that the Good Friday agreement was one of the peak achievements of American diplomacy of the last fifty years. That was a peace facilitated by George Mitchell and Bill Clinton. Indeed I remember when we were in the western islands of Galway our innkeeper made a point of telling us how grateful the people of Ireland were for this agreement and the American help to reach it.

We did not send guns or bombs. The coins and currency in glass jars on bars throughout the United States, that went for such things, did not help at all. What helped? Two people who helped them see what was dividing them and what could be done about it.

There is much there to discover. One thing I recall is that once people once divided began to see each other as people rather than adversaries, their eyes began to change. One man, once a partisan, said, if I had been born 300 yards away I would have grown up supporting the other side. It was just that. A human moment. It helped him imagine and acknowledge the humanity of a stranger, indeed an adversary.

In Jerusalem today the same Gary Mason sometimes visits and compares notes, shares what he and his compatriots have learned, as the peoples of that holy land seek to reconcile with one another and find a way to peace. This is the real Jerusalem. And you know what? It is not that far from that imaginary - or prophetic - holy new Jerusalem in the sky.

Because the distance from one to the other is the distance across a human heart. The distance, also, from one heart to another. The distance that closes when we begin to see each other in aspiration, that is, as the holy spirit conceives us to be in our best selves. And that best self, in each of us, is shaped by that spirit as we are brought closer to the perfection that is only ours as it is a gift of that savior and a work of that spirit that came to the Mount of Olives years ago, and called across the valley, “O Jerusalem Jerusalem, how often have I longed…”

* * *

Toward the Second Sunday in Lent 

• Genesis 15:1-12,17-18

• Philippians 3:17-4:1

• Luke 13:31-35

• Psalm 27 Dominus illuminatio mea

https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Lent/CLent2_RCL.html

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0030127/

http://edgeofenclosure.org/lent2c.html

https://www.rethinkingconflict.com/meet-gary/

JRL+

Keeping the Faith: Patrick of Ireland

 

The St. Patrick statue pictured above was a gift to St. Matthew's Church in Tucson from Lenci Loring 

Patrick, a runaway slave, left civilization behind and returned to the land of his captors as a missionary bishop. There his crude Latin - an embarrassment in the civilized world - fit those to whom he wrote, notably Coroticus, a British slaver who called himself a Christian. No Christian are you, said Patrick, for you are a tyrant, kidnapping, enslaving, and slaughtering the innocent.. 

Patrick didn’t write much besides his letter to Coroticus but he did write an ‘apologia’ of sorts - an account of his own fitness for ministry and his credibility as a witness to the saints. It was rough and ready, more like something from the letters of Paul of Tarsus than the literary Confessions of Augustine of Hippo.

His feast we celebrate just a few days before the equinox in March. Saint Patrick’s Day has become a drinking holiday, like so many American days, but in an earlier century it was an occasion for Irish immigrants that had newly become American to proclaim their love for and loyalty to their new country. But now it is often an occasion for the wearin’ o’ the green simply to avoid being pinched, or buying the house a round.

And so we are more likely to associate the equinox with another feast of the Christian year, the Annunciation. If we celebrate the Nativity of our Savior on December 25th it is only sensible that we count nine months back to celebrate his expectation. “Here am I” says Mary, the angels let out a long held breath, and the redemption of creation begins anew. 

We nowadays seek to celebrate more than our own survival, our rescue from the pit of sin or despond: we want to mark a day in spring as a reminder of God’s creation of all things, and our place among them. 

Hence, a month after the equinox, Earth Day. This year that day falls just after Easter. And so we have some time between now and then so we can prepare with proper Lenten expectation, repentance, and humility to recall our place in creation.

Let us remind ourselves that among God’s creatures are the least of people, the forgotten, the invaded, the captive: those assaulted in their own homes and drawn away to a foreign land, as the people of Patrick were, and all those who have ached for release from captivity or relief from the oppression of violence, for the healing of wounds, and the balm of the Spirit Mary’s son bears.

From the Iona Community:

A Universal Prayer for Peace 

Lead us from death to life, from falsehood to truth.

Lead us from despair to hope, from fear to trust.

Lead us from hate to love, from war to peace.

Let peace fill our lives, our world, our universe.

Peace, peace, peace.

Amen

https://iona.org.uk/prayers-for-the-people-of-ukraine/

The Rev. Dr. John Leech is ordained in the Episcopal branch of the Jesus movement and has served as pastor in northern California and western Washington and now in southern Arizona.

JRL+ Mar 4, 2022 

https://confessio.ie/etexts/epistola_english#

A Letter To The Soldiers Of Coroticus

http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/celtic/ctexts/p02.html

A version of this essay was published in the Arizona Daily Star on Sunday March 13th 2022 page E2 under the title "Patrick of Ireland. https://tucson.com/lifestyles/patrick-of-ireland/article_c74b8a6e-9e49-11ec-a843-a7153b926f82.html

visions

The passage from Acts (16:9-15) for the sixth Sunday in Easter, year C, begins:

During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, "Come over to Macedonia and help us." When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them.

The call echoes in the experience of a later messenger, as he tells of his life and the grace of God ...

After many years I finally returned home to my family in Britain. They took me in — their long-lost son — and begged me earnestly that after all I had been through that I would never leave them again. But one night while I was at home I saw a vision while sleeping — it was a man named Victoricus, among to me as if he were arriving from Ireland. With him he brought a huge number of letters. He gave me one of them, and I saw that the first words were “The Voice of the Irish.” When I began to read this letter, all of a sudden I heard the voices of those Irish who live near the woods of Foclut near the Western Sea They called out to me with a single voice: “We beg you, holy boy, come here and walk among us!” I felt my heart breaking and was not able to read any more — and so I woke up. But thanks be to God, because after many years the Lord made their prayer come true.

("Confession," Philip Freeman, Saint Patrick of Ireland, Simon & Schuster, 2004, 182-183.)

Yes, that was Patrick of Ireland, in the fourth century of our era. He like Paul followed the call - the leading of the Spirit - in a way we might, maybe, find strange: through the figure of a dream. When the saint awoke, like the apostle, he gathered the images of the dream and heard in them a direction.


2019 May 26
Sixth Sunday of Easter
Year C
Acts 16:9-15
Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
John 14:23-29
Psalm 67

Patrick

Ellen Sasahara sent me a copy of a book she had designed: St. Patrick of Ireland: A Biography by Philip Freeman (Simon and Schuster, 2005). Together with the sermon by Herbert O'Driscoll given at Saint Alban's Church, Edmonds, Washington, January 31, 2010, it was the primary resource for this day's preaching. I did not stick to my notes. These are the notes I walked away from:
 

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+

Jesus is lifted up for our salvation

In the name of God, source of all being, incarnate Word, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Our family car was a 1956 Chevrolet Bel Air station wagon, turquoise and cream. We boys rode in the back seat. My parents rode in the front. Looking over the driver’s shoulder I could see out through the windshield to the front hood of the car. There in the middle of it was a hood ornament, or as I called it, “the aimer”. I figured when you drove you steered the car using the aimer as kind of a front sight, like the one on the front of a rifle. With it you could steer your way down the road to where you were going.

It acted as a sign, pointing the way. I never mistook it for the road or for our destination. In fact, I knew where we were going: our cousins’ house, for a family visit and a vacation. “Are we there yet?”

The people of Israel, it seems, sometimes mistook the sign for the thing it was pointing to – or looked another way entirely. They had lost their way in the wilderness, at least morally. Moses and the Lord had led them out of the bondage of slavery in Egypt. They were ‘under the cloud’ – the pillar of cloud that guided them by day – and they were being led by Moses, and the Lord, through the desert. They complained a lot, though.

They murmured. In fact today’s lesson records Murmur Number Five. And this time they complained, not only about Moses, but also about the Lord – and that was not going to work.

“We have NO FOOD and NO WATER and we detest THIS MISERABLE FOOD!”

They had water from the rock – and manna, food from Heaven. But – no thanks. 

And so – something happened. They were afflicted – and they were convicted.

With snakes they were afflicted; of sin they were convicted.

Since everything comes from God, the good and the bad, they must have reasoned, God sent even the snakes – even the punishment that came to them. And that is how they took it, as an affliction that recalled them to their senses. They repented. “We have sinned against you and against God,” they said to Moses. Now save us already!

And then a strange thing happened. God told Moses to make an image of the very thing that had been killing them – the engine of their affliction – and put it up where everybody could see it, and everyone who was bitten who turned and looked at it would be saved.

Look to the snake on the pole and you will be saved. A strange sign, indeed: but what does it point to?

It points to – we discover – something stranger yet: the innocent person who took upon himself the sins of us all, who was lifted up on a cross – the most excruciating of devices for punitive humiliation and tortuous death, and thereby – by that very means – became the source of our salvation.

If we look to Christ – if we trust him, believe in him, put our faith in him – we find our way to life.

The wanderers in the desert had received their freedom. They had water from the rock. They had bread from heaven. And they had healing of this strange affliction.

We, who were wandering in the wilderness of sin, have been given our freedom – we have been released from our own captivity to the follies and destructive behaviors that kept us from God. God has sustained us; everything we have, all we need to live, is a gift of God. And we have received salvation – healing from more than sickness of the body, we have received healing and wholeness of our souls, our inward life.

God has given us eternal life. It is life in its fullness. It is life in right relationship to God, to nature, to each other, and to our selves. It is life that comes to completion in Christ; that finds its fulfillment in the presence of the Lord.

Jesus, whom everyone knew was innocent, nevertheless gave himself up – gave his life over – as a testimony and a witness to the truth – the truth of God’s love for humankind.

And so he was lifted up – raised up, onto the cross at Calvary, and raised up, into the new life in the resurrection – and in this dying and in this rising was the saving of the world.

If we look to Christ – if we trust him, believe in him, put our faith in him – we find our way to life.

This good news came to the people of Ireland in a strange way – a godly way.

A young patrician, a teenager from a prosperous family of Roman Britons, was spending his time by the seaside, at a waterfront property of his family, convenient to the coast – and convenient for pirates. Irish rovers came across the sea and stole him away, kidnapped him, and made him a slave. They sold him on, to a farmer in Ireland.

Young Patrick, as he came to be called, found himself tending cattle on the backside of beyond, way over on the west coast of this distant and foreign island.

And that is how he spent his teenage years. They were teenage years – formative years – but not his only formation for adulthood, for he found his way to freedom, and to a spiritual re-formation.

Patrick first found his way to physical freedom. He walked out, somehow, away from his master, and escaped across Ireland and the sea. He journeyed far, into France, and there he found a spiritual freedom. He encountered a spiritual master, Martin of Tours, founder of a monastery and a movement. Martin took him in and taught him the Christian way – the way of the Cross.

Patrick learned from Martin – and gained a blessing that he was meant to share. For Patrick had a dream – not a daydream, but a vision: he was being called back, across the sea, to bring the good news of the freedom of the spirit, the gospel of God, to the very people who had enslaved his body. And he answered the call.

Rough-hewn and mystical, Patrick was the perfect apostle to bring the good news to the Celtic peoples. He returned to Ireland. And he did something there that was much more significant than any legendary miracle.

Legends like driving all the snakes from Ireland. (There were not snakes in Ireland to begin with.) The point is not what he drove out; the point is what he brought in.

He brought into Ireland and to its people the good news that in Christ was to be found their completion, their wholeness, and their salvation. He brought the gospel to a people that had been enslaved by greed, ignorance and sin, a people lost in darkness. He brought to them the light of Christ.

And they in turn became a light to the world. From the Celtic lands, from the people he taught the gospel, came in time a series of monastic missionaries, adventurers on the seas of the world, who sought holiness and brought salvation to the people they encountered, all across the continent of Europe.

The learned monks of Ireland, in the centuries following Patrick’s mission, studied and shared the great gifts of civilization – and beyond civilization they brought the saving news of Jesus Christ.

Patrick never drove the snakes out of Ireland. What he drove out, under the Master’s guidance, was the fear and the ignorance that kept the Irish people in bondage to sin.

What the Lord did in Ireland through Patrick and all the Irish saints to follow was to establish an outpost of courage, hope, generosity, and freedom; a beacon that shone across Europe with the light of Christ.

What God brings to us to day is the good news of salvation: we look to the Cross – for salvation, for Jesus was lifted up so that we, and all people, may receive the gift of life.

And what calls us today is the mission of the kingdom. We carry with us into our world, our place and time, to those around us, those we know already and those we must seek out, the message of hope and the means of salvation, the abundant grace that is found in the Cross of Christ.

O God, who made the world and made it good, and who redeemed the world you made when we had fallen into sin and wandered far from your purpose for our lives, you who redeemed Patrick from bondage, sending him on a mission as your apostle of freedom, compassion, and grace, so bless your servants here with courage and hospitality, generosity and faith, that your spirit may abide in the hearts of this congregation and that this church may be to your world a beacon of hope and a light of your salvation. Amen.

BLent4, Fourth Sunday in Lent, Numbers 21:4-9, Ephesians 2:1-10,
John 3:14-21, Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22.

JRL+

Look to Jesus for salvation

In the name of God, source of all being, incarnate Word, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Our family car was a 1956 Chevrolet Bel Air station wagon, turquoise and cream. We boys rode in the back seat. My parents rode in the front. Looking over the driver’s shoulder I could see out through the windshield to the front hood of the car. There in the middle of it was a hood ornament, or as I called it, “the aimer”. 

I figured when you drove you steered the car using the aimer as kind of a front sight, like the one on the front of a rifle. With it you could steer your way down the road to where you were going.

It acted as a sign, pointing the way. I never mistook it for the road or for our destination. In fact, I knew where we were going: our cousins’ house, for a family visit and a vacation. “Are we there yet?”

The people of Israel, it seems, sometimes mistook the sign for the thing it was pointing to – or looked another way entirely. They had lost their way in the wilderness, at least morally. Moses and the Lord had led them out of the bondage of slavery in Egypt. They were ‘under the cloud’ – the pillar of cloud that guided them by day – and they were being led by Moses, and the Lord, through the desert. They complained a lot, though.

They murmured. In fact today’s lesson records Murmur Number Five. And this time they complained, not only about Moses, but also about the Lord – and that was not going to work.

“We have NO FOOD and NO WATER and we detest THIS MISERABLE FOOD!”

They had water from the rock – and manna, food from Heaven. But – no thanks. 

And so – something happened. They were afflicted – and they were convicted.

With snakes they were afflicted; of sin they were convicted.

Since everything comes from God, the good and the bad, they must have reasoned, God sent even the snakes – even the punishment that came to them. And that is how they took it, as an affliction that recalled them to their senses. They repented. “We have sinned against you and against God,” they said to Moses. Now save us already!

And then a strange thing happened. God told Moses to make an image of the very thing that had been killing them – the engine of their affliction – and put it up where everybody could see it, and everyone who was bitten who turned and looked at it would be saved.

Look to the snake on the pole and you will be saved. A strange sign, indeed: but what does it point to?

It points to – we discover – something stranger yet: the innocent person who took upon himself the sins of us all, who was lifted up on a cross – the most excruciating of devices for punitive humiliation and tortuous death, and thereby – by that very means – became the source of our salvation.

If we look to Christ – if we trust him, believe in him, put our faith in him – we find our way to life.

The wanderers in the desert had received their freedom. They had water from the rock. They had bread from heaven. And they had healing of this strange affliction.

We, who were wandering in the wilderness of sin, have been given our freedom – we have been released from our own captivity to the follies and destructive behaviors that kept us from God. God has sustained us; everything we have, all we need to live, is a gift of God. And we have received salvation – healing from more than sickness of the body, we have received healing and wholeness of our souls, our inward life.

God has given us eternal life. It is life in its fullness. It is life in right relationship to God, to nature, to each other, and to our selves. It is life that comes to completion in Christ; that finds its fulfillment in the presence of the Lord.

Jesus, whom everyone knew was innocent, nevertheless gave himself up – gave his life over – as a testimony and a witness to the truth – the truth of God’s love for humankind.

And so he was lifted up – raised up, onto the cross at Calvary, and raised up, into the new life in the resurrection – and in this dying and in this rising was the saving of the world.

If we look to Christ – if we trust him, believe in him, put our faith in him – we find our way to life.

What God brings to us to day is the good news of salvation: we look to the Cross – for salvation, for Jesus was lifted up so that we, and all people, may receive the gift of life.

And what calls us today is the mission of the kingdom, the message of hope. 

May we carry with us into our world, our place and time, 
to those far away and to those around us, 
those we know already and those we must seek out, 
the message of hope and the means of salvation, 
the abundant grace that is found in the Cross of Christ.

   
JRL+

Patrick

The good news came to the people of Ireland in a strange way – a godly way.

A young patrician, a teenager from a prosperous family of Roman Britons, was spending his time by the seaside, at a waterfront property of his family, convenient to the coast – and convenient for pirates. Irish rovers came across the sea and stole him away, kidnapped him, and made him a slave. They sold him on, to a farmer in Ireland.

Young Patrick, as he came to be called, found himself tending cattle on the backside of beyond, way over on the west coast of this distant and foreign island.

And that is how he spent his teenage years. They were teenage years – formative years – but not his only formation for adulthood, for he found his way to freedom, and to a spiritual re-formation.

Patrick first found his way to physical freedom. He walked out, somehow, away from his master, and escaped across Ireland and the sea. He journeyed far, into France, and there he found a spiritual freedom. He encountered a spiritual master, Martin of Tours, founder of a monastery and a movement. Martin took him in and taught him the Christian way – the way of the Cross.

Patrick learned from Martin – and gained a blessing that he was meant to share. For Patrick had a dream – not a daydream, but a vision: he was being called back, across the sea, to bring the good news of the freedom of the spirit, the gospel of God, to the very people who had enslaved his body. And he answered the call.

Rough-hewn and mystical, Patrick was the perfect apostle to bring the good news to the Celtic peoples. He returned to Ireland. And he did something there that was much more significant than any legendary miracle.

Legends like driving all the snakes from Ireland. (There were not snakes in Ireland to begin with.) The point is not what he drove out; the point is what he brought in.

He brought into Ireland and to its people the good news that in Christ was to be found their completion, their wholeness, and their salvation. He brought the gospel to a people that had been enslaved by greed, ignorance and sin, a people lost in darkness. He brought to them the light of Christ.

And they in turn became a light to the world. From the Celtic lands, from the people he taught the gospel, came in time a series of monastic missionaries, adventurers on the seas of the world, who sought holiness and brought salvation to the people they encountered, all across the continent of Europe.

The learned monks of Ireland, in the centuries following Patrick’s mission, studied and shared the great gifts of civilization – and beyond civilization they brought the saving news of Jesus Christ.

Patrick never drove the snakes out of Ireland. What he drove out, under the Master’s guidance, was the fear and the ignorance that kept the Irish people in bondage to sin.

What the Lord did in Ireland through Patrick and all the Irish saints to follow was to establish an outpost of courage, hope, generosity, and freedom; a beacon that shone across Europe with the light of Christ.

What God brings to us today is the good news of salvation: we look to the Cross – for salvation, for Jesus was lifted up so that we, and all people, may receive the gift of life.

And what calls us today is the mission of the kingdom. We carry with us into our world, our place and time, to those around us, those we know already and those we must seek out, the message of hope and the means of salvation, the abundant grace that is found in the Cross of Christ.

O God, who made the world and made it good, and who redeemed the world you made when we had fallen into sin and wandered far from your purpose for our lives, you who redeemed Patrick from bondage, sending him on a mission as your apostle of freedom, compassion, and grace, so bless your servants here with courage and hospitality, generosity and faith, that your spirit may abide in the hearts of this congregation and that this church may be to your world a beacon of hope and a light of your salvation. Amen.

JRL+