Psalm 27
Second Sunday in Lent (C)
March 17, 2019
William G. Carter
The Lord is
my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?
The Lord is
the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?
In these parts, everybody is Irish, at least for a
weekend. So it’s tempting to reduce Saint Patrick to the patron saint of a
parade. But he is so much more than that. There are some good
stories about him. Some of them are true, some are Irish blarney.
For instance, a lot of people say Patrick
chased all the snakes off Ireland. Ever hear that?
About 150 years before Patrick’s birth, a Roman historian
stated there weren't any snakes on Ireland. That was quite a
miracle that Patrick accomplished before he was born.
Others will say Patrick took the Christian faith to
Ireland. But it’s far more complicated than that. There may have been Christians
in Ireland before he got there, because the faith spreads like dandelion seeds
in the wind. He was certainly influential in spreading the Gospel, and we’ll
hear about that. But it probably didn’t originate with him.
One more story: that Patrick held up a shamrock to
teach the truth about the Trinity. I considered making a shamrock from green
construction paper to show the children. But there was a nagging memory from a
theology class. One God in three different forms? That’s a heresy called “modalism.”
Suffice it to say, the Holy Trinity is more complex than a three-leaf clover.
Here’s what we do know: About 400 years after the birth of
Jesus, a teenage boy was kidnapped in England. His name was Patricius. He was
the son of a tax collector for the Roman army, which occupied the western coast
of England where he lived. Patricius was baptized a Christian as an infant, but the faith didn’t
mean much to him as a child. When he was about sixteen years
old, a band of Irish marauders invaded his
village. His parents and siblings were able to slip away to a hiding place, but
he was removed from his family and taken to
Ireland as a slave.
It's hard for us to even imagine what that must have
been like. He was bound and tied, thrown into a small skin boat, and taken
across the sea. His captors took him to the northwest corner of Ireland. There Patricius was forced to work as a shepherd for six years, among
people who spoke a different language and lived by brutal customs. The
marauders were a group of people called Celts. In every way
- geographically,
physically, culturally - Ireland was
the end of the world.
From the sparse records available to us, we learn this captivity was a test of the young boy's faith.
Like I said, Patricius had been baptize, but he
really hadn't taken the faith as his own. There he was, tending sheep among
unruly strangers, living simply in a crude hut, isolated
and unable to understand the language. About all he could
do was pray. As he later told the story, "I prayed frequently each day.
And more and more, the love of God and the fear of God grew in me, and my faith
increased and my spirit was quickened."[1]
There is nothing like hardship to sharpen what we
believe. That’s how the psalm for today begins:
The
Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?
The
Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?
When
evildoers assail me to devour my flesh, they shall stumble and fall.
Psalm 27 is a psalm of protection. It’s a prayer to
offer when you are far from home, there are adversaries to threaten you, and
you’re looking for a safe place.
One night a miracle happened. Patricius, now twenty-two
years old, heard a Voice say, "Very soon you are to travel to your
homeland." It woke him from a sound sleep. And
then the Holy Voice said, "Look! Your ship is
prepared." Well, he looked, but he didn't see a ship. So he got up and
simply walked away. He kept walking. Patricius walked
two hundred miles, clear across Ireland, where he found a ship ready to depart
for England. He persuaded the captain to take him aboard.
It was another three days across the sea. When they landed, presumably in Britain, he walked for another
twenty-eight days. His family was astonished when he reappeared at their door, but
they were even more surprised when he announced
he would give
the rest of his life to God.
Patricius entered a monastery in France. He spent
twelve years studying theology, reading the Bible, and worshiping with the
community. Although his time as a slave had hampered his education (something
that he was always self-conscious about), he grew ever more passionate in his
love for God. At the end of his long training, the
church ordained him as a priest. He took the name
Patrick.
Then for a second time, he had a vision. This time it
wasn't a Voice; it was a man he knew from Ireland who appeared in a dream. The
man was holding a stack of handwritten letters, and he handed one
to Patrick. The letter was entitled, "The Voice of the Irish." As he
read the title, he heard voices crying out to him, "Holy boy, we beg you
to come and walk among us once more." It startled him and he woke.
Patrick tried to shrug off the experience, saying,
"It's just a dream." But he kept having the same dream over and over.
And he knew what he had to do. Through the scriptures, the
Lord taught him, “I shall make you fish for people." "Go
therefore and teach all the nations." "Go into all the world and
preach the gospel." Patrick could not escape what he knew. Those commands came to him as a personal word from
Jesus Christ.
So he traveled back to Ireland to
live among the people who had once captured him. And to them, he preached the love of Jesus
Christ.
Sometimes we think faith should give us comfort and
security. Certainly it can
do that, just as Patrick found comfort through his prayers when he was a captive. Yet as we grow closer to God, it is more
often the case that faith challenges us to grow, to stretch, and to move in
directions we never thought possible. True faith never moves us backwards. It always compels us forward.
“Whom shall we fear?” asks the psalm. “For God will hide me in his
shelter in the day of trouble;
he will conceal me under the cover of his
tent; he will set me high on a rock.
Now my head is lifted up above my enemies all
around me, and I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy.”
There is another legend about Saint Patrick: that he
wrote the hymn, “Be Thou My Vision.” That one is not true either. The text
wouldn’t be composed for another 200, 400, or 700 years later. The author was somebody
named “Anonymous.” But the hymn is rooted in a true story about Patrick.
The melody of that favorite
hymn is a tune called "Slane." Slane is a
hill in Ireland. It's across the valley from another hill
called "Tara," which was the political and spiritual center of the
Celtic people.
On March 26 in the year 433, Patrick had a showdown
with the high king of Ireland, who was the king over all the Irish tribes. It
was Easter Sunday, which coincided with a day when the high king was going to
light a sacred bonfire in honor of the Druid religion. The high king had
decreed no other fires would be lit that day.
But across the valley, on Slane Hill, Patrick
started a bonfire -- an Easter bonfire. He was going to show that the God who
raised Jesus from the dead was mightier than any of the Druid spirits.
The high king was furious, and ordered Patrick to
stop. He refused. The king ordered his priests to pray their spells and put out
Patrick's fire. They couldn't do it. So the king roared up the hill with
twenty-two chariots and two powerful wizards; Patrick countered by quoting a
psalm, "Some take pride in chariots, and some in horses, but our pride is
in the name of the Lord our God (Psalm 20:7).”
That was enough to stop knock
them off their feet. Even the high king of Tara conceded, while Patrick's
Easter fire burned brighter. After all, he was honoring the God above all others, to whom all the rulers of earth must answer. That’s
the significance of the stanza of that hymn, which Patrick did not write:
High King of heaven, my victory won! May I reach
heaven’s joys, O bright heaven’s Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall. Still be my
vision, O Ruler of all.
It’s a great hymn, rooted in a real-life contest
between Patrick the priest, now a bishop, and the High King of the Irish tribes.
It’s a wonderful hymn and we are not going to sing it today. No, we’re going to
sing something that Patrick most surely wrote himself.
In all of his adventures, there were two spiritual truths
that recurred again and again. The first is that our life is a journey. It’s a
pilgrimage, a search. Whether we understand it all or not, what we are seeking
is God. It’s just as the Psalm declares:
One
thing I asked of the Lord,
that will I seek after:
to
live in the house of the Lord all
the days of my life,
to
behold the beauty of the Lord,
and to inquire in his temple.
There is a word that the Irish use for this journey: “peregrinatio.”
It means to leave your homeland and to wander in search of God. Maybe you’ve
seen the bumper sticker: “Not all who wander are lost.” It’s true, although in
Lackawanna County, I wish a few of them would use their turn signals. The
larger point is the faithful life, the life of faith, is a life that keeps
moving all for the sake of Christ.
As someone notes, “The purpose of this journey is to
find the place of (our) resurrection, the resurrected self…the true self in
Christ.” That is the first truth that Patrick came to know in his soul.[2]
The second truth is this: that we have nothing to fear.
God protects our travels, especially if our search is an intentional search for
what is true, what is beautiful, and what is holy. So Patrick imagined in his faithful
heart that God was in front of him, leading him; that God was behind him, guarding
him; that God was below him, a solid path to tread; that God was above him,
higher and loftier than he could imagine.
In every way, he envisioned that the God who comes to
us in Jesus Christ can be called upon as a 360-shield. “The Lord is the
stronghold of our life; of whom shall I be afraid?” This was Patrick’s
spiritual “breast plate,” his shield of prayer. We have heard the choir sing
some of it, we are going to sing another setting of it as our next hymn, and
then we will recite it as our confession of faith, just so it sinks in.
When we need strength, there is no other source but
God alone. When we are hungry for hope, our hope
proceeds from God. And that is the witness of Patrick the saint.
"So here it is!" says Patrick in the closing
words of his autobiography. "I have again and again, briefly set before
you the words of my declaration. 'I bear witness' in truth and joyfulness of heart
'before God and his holy angels' that the one and only purpose I had in going
back to that people from whom I had earlier escaped was the gospel and the
promises of God."[3]
By the end of his life in 460 AD, most of Ireland had
turned from the Druid religion to the God of the Gospel. And it happened
through the witness of one very ordinary and humble man by the name of
Patrick.
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved,
[1] "Patrick on
the Great Works of God (Confessio)," Celtic Spirituality, trans. Oliver Davies
(New York: Paulist Press, 1999) 71.
[2]Esther de
Waal, The Celtic Way of Prayer: The Recovery
of the Religious Imagination (New York: Doubleday, 1997) p. ix.
[3] Confessio, 83.
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