Sermon for Celtic Worship

I bind unto myself

November 2006

    Imagine being a privileged young Briton in the early fifth century. Your father is a Roman civil servant and your grandfather is a priest. All is well in your life - and then, in your middle teenaged years, you are kidnapped by plundering invaders and taken to an alien land, where the people were pagan and you are suddenly a slave, put to work on a hillside herding and tending someone else's sheep.

    These are the events of the early life of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland.

It was Ireland to which he was taken after his home village in Scotland was overrun by an Irish raiding party. It was Ireland in which he lived for the next six years; during which he became so fluent in the native language that later, when he returned as a missionary, that he was able to communicate faultlessly with both high and low born, and become incredibly successful as an evangelist, teacher, and establisher of churches.

   Amazingly, Patrick's formative years produced neither a resentful, embittered antagonist nor a despondent, despairing pessimist, but rather a humble, pious, gentle, mature individual who loved and trusted God absolutely and devoted the rest of his life - until his death on March 17 in or about the year 461 - to serving God in the place where he had been a slave.    During those half-dozen years in the land of pagans and Druids, he learned to communicate with the Almighty in a way he had not at home, even in a Christian household headed by a priest. He wrote, "The love of God. . .grew in me more and more. . .my soul was roused. . .I prayed in the woods and on the mountain, even before dawn. . .felt no hurt from the snow or ice or rain." He prayed almost without ceasing - probably remembering prayers he'd been taught and adding to them the rejoicings and petitions of a captive who was free in spirit.

    When he was about twenty, he had a dream in which he was instructed to be ready for a brave effort: he was to travel alone some 200 miles, to a place on the seacoast where he would find a ship that would take him home.

Accordingly, he ran away from his master; and found the ship. At first, the sailors scoffed at his request for free passage. But then, the stories say, he prayed silently; and the sailors called out to him to come aboard. After a three-day voyage, they reached landfall and trekked for another month through uninhabited land before young Patrick was reunited with his delighted family.

    Of course, they begged him to be careful never to leave again; but they could not know that Patrick was to have another dream. This dream was of the people of Ireland, and they were calling out to him: "We beg you, holy youth, to come and walk amongst us once more."

   He prepared to do just that: was educated, ordained, made priest and then bishop, and commissioned to preach the gospel to the Celtic people. He was probably in his early thirties when he arrived again in Ireland; the traditional date is 432 AD, the traditional place is Slane (which, by the way, is the name of the hauntingly beautiful tune to which is set the hymn, "Be Thou My Vision"). What he was returning to was a well-established pagan Celtic society, but one which readily accepted Christianity.

   This, of course, is where so many legends that are told and retold every St. Patrick's Day were born. Or fabricated. All the stories, both real and fanciful, illustrate something of the sort of consecrated servant Patrick was. Even the narrative of how he drove all the snakes out of Ireland by beating his drum and utilized trickery to get the biggest into a box, which he then hurled into the sea, symbolizes his putting an end to the venomous pagan practices for which serpents were the symbol.

Another story has him encountering a pagan chieftain just after he reached his mission territory. The chiefton attempted to murder Patrick  but then found his arm was paralyzed. In the end he was converted and became a friend of the Christian movement in Ireland.

     A lovely legend tells how Patrick lit the Easter bonfire: on a night when it was forbidden to kindle any fire anywhere in Ireland before the high king's own royal blaze was visible at Tara, Patrick caused a flame to be lit in honor of the Resurrection. The punishment for such an action was death - but when the king's men came to douse the  fire and kill those who had kindled it, the flames would not go out; and Patrick, with his companions, baffled and evaded the druids by assuming the shapes of deer, in which they reached Tara, where many were converted.

     Another has it that one day, while preaching a sermon on the patience and suffering of Christ to King Aengus, Patrick accidentally drove his staff right through the King's foot. The good King, thinking this was the moral of the sermon, made no sound of complaint. When Patrick realized what had happened, he prayed - and the king's foot was miraculously cured.

     A final legend surrounding this saint is that when he died, his shrouded body was placed on a cart drawn by two white oxen. Un-reined, they wandered to a place called Downpatrick, where he was buried under a simple cross on a granite boulder. For twelve days and nights, the sun shone in the sky, refusing to set and make a new day without him.

  But it is not the legends of Patrick that move me. Rather it is his deep and abiding trust in the protection of God. Patrick invoked the name of the Trinity each day.   Legend has it that before each battle Patrick sang the hymn, I bind unto myself today/The strong name of the Trinity.   The hymn became known as St Patrick’s Breastplate for the saint believed the Trinity was the ‘greatest and most enduring armour’ he or any soldier could put on.   Invoking the name of the Trinity was a weaving of the presence of God around his life like the intricate Celtic patterns carved into stones.     One of the translations of St Patrick’s hymn begins:

            I arise today

            Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,

            Through belief in the threeness,

            Through confession of the oneness

            Of the Creator of Creation. 

Remember, Patrick was sixteen when he was sold as a slave to a king in Armagh.   Overnight, Patrick lost the privileges of home, the security of a family and his community and his plans for his future were gone.   On reaching Ireland, he was forced to work long hours each day.   But he later wrote that he prayed a hundred prayers each day.   He wrote, ‘The Spirit seethed in me.’   His enthusiasm for God and life was not strangled by his life of slavery.   The word ‘enthusiasm’ comes from the Greek meaning ‘in God.’   There is no doubt that Patrick’s life was lived in God and God in him.   The invocation of the Trinity each day and, in particular, in times of hardship gave him confidence, courage and a sense of who he was and what he believed. Each of us, together with the whole church, needs to hear and take into our hearts the invocation of the strong name of the Trinity.   That name is armour and that name is unassailable.   When Patrick met the two daughters of an Irish king, one of them asked him, ‘Who is your God and where is He?’       Patrick replied: Our God is the God of all, God of Heaven and earth, sea

            and river.   He has His dwelling in heaven and earth and

            sea and all that are therein.   He inspires all things; He

            quickens all things.   He kindles the light of the sun and

            of the moon.   He has a Son, co-eternal with Himself and

            like unto Him.   And the Holy Spirit breathes in them.

            Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not divided.   I desire to

            unite you to the Son of the Heavenly King, for you are

            daughters of a king of earth. 

What confidence!   What courage!  And surely, his plucking of a shamrock and pointing out how it's possible for something to be three, and yet ever one, stands as a classic object lesson to help people understand the Holy Trinity.

Patrick shows us that the single word ‘God’ is not enough.   Our God is not an impersonal absolute; or a genial Spirit in the sky. We know God as the Creator of the universe:  the sea, the valleys, the stars; and we know God in and through Jesus Christ:  the man who walked around Galilee, the man crucified and the man who conquered death; and we know God in our hearts and in the eyes, words and actions of those whom we meet.   It is precisely because the Church has always wanted to point to God as the father and mother of creation, as the One who appeared as our brother in the flesh in Jesus and as the One who lives within each of us and all people the world over that the single word ‘God’ is not enough: tonight like Patrick we bind into our hearts the strong name of the Trinity. Let me end with some more of Patrick’s own words;

I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of the  
Trinity, through belief in the Threeness, through confession  
of the Oneness of the Creator of creation… Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, 
Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right,  
Christ on my left, Christ in breadth, Christ in length,  
Christ in height, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,  
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,  
Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me. 
 
I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of the  
Trinity, through belief in the Threeness, through confession of the  
Oneness of the Creator of creation.  
Salvation is of the Lord. Salvation is of the Lord.  
Salvation is of Christ. May Thy Salvation, O Lord, be ever with us.