SUNDAY SERMON: Saint Patrick’s Day
By Stephen Baldwin
NT: Matthew 28.16-20
Things aren’t always what they appear. Take St. Patrick’s Day for example.
We think of Ireland, the color green, and the good fortune of four leaved clovers, but did you know St. Patrick…wasn’t even Irish? He was born in Scotland! Probably in the late 4th or early 5th century. And his name wasn’t Patrick; it was Maewyn. His parents were Christian, his father a deacon, and his grandfather a priest. His color wasn’t green; it was blue. Only in the 18th century when Irish independence swept the country did they switch from blue to green. The first St. Patrick’s Day Parades were not in Ireland; they were in America. Because we love a good excuse to eat and drink. And last but certainly not least, St. Patrick’s Day was first a religious holiday. Up until the 1970s, all Irish pubs were required to be closed in observance of the religious holiday. That changed in the 1980s when the government decided to use the day to drive tourism.
Things aren’t always what they appear. In songs. In holidays. In religion.
When Jesus tells his disciples to go and make disciples of all nations in today’s reading from Matthew, that would sound absurd if taken literally in ancient Israel. He was a small town prophet with a rag-tag group of disciples laying claim as the son of God. His own hometown rejected him. Why would the next town over pay any attention, let alone the rest of the world?
And yet, two thousand years later, that great commission continues. Christianity has spread all across the globe to every nation. Things aren’t always what they seem.
Patrick’s first trip to Ireland was when he was taken there as a slave. At age 16. For six years, he was held as a prisoner who cared for his master’s sheep. He prayed one hundred times every morning and one hundred times every evening for God’s protection.
By that time he was 22 years old. He was able to escape by ship, which he rode for three days before getting off and walking for the next month. Before he was taken as a slave, again.
He was able to escape once more and then finally make his way home. His father was a deacon in the Christian church, his grandfather a priest, and Patrick decided he wanted to follow in their footsteps as a servant of God. So he did something remarkable. He went back to Ireland. He took what could have been the worst things to ever happen to him and turned it into inspiration for his life’s work.
This time he went, not as a slave, but as a servant of God. In that day, the Irish were seen as the lowest of the low–uncivilized, barbaric, and faithless. But Patrick knew better than that. He learned to speak their language while there as a shepherd, and he fell in love with the people, the land, and the animals. When he came back of his own accord to spread the good news, he didn’t do it like the other missionaries. Instead of expecting people to adopt his ways, he adopted theirs. And Ireland was changed forever more.
Celtic Christians, led by Saint Patrick, were keenly aware of God’s closeness to us in this world. One of the most unique aspects of Celtic Christianity is that they refused to believe in a compartmentalized world where God was only present in certain places. They believed in a Creation that is filled with God’s power and energy. Patrick delights in the world around him: the starlit sky; the sun’s brightness, the moon’s whiteness; the power of lightning and storms; the reassurance of the solid earth, the massive sea and the unchanging rocks. For Patrick, God is as close to us as our tires are to the country roads outside.
And that’s good news for all people, yes, but it’s also good news we in particular need right now. We need God to be close as we mourn the loss of friends and family. We need God to be close as we find a path for our future. We need God to be close as we keep hope alive.
We’re going to affirm together portions of Saint Patrick’s most famous writing in a few minutes. It speaks not only of God’s closeness but also of the hopefulness that proximity to God provides. In other words, because God is close we are connected to God, and that is cause for celebration!
Things aren’t always what they appear. Sometimes what chains us can become what saves us. We can turn our most challenging moments into revelations. Patrick was once a slave, and he became a servant for Christ. Taking the good news to an entire nation of people who were not his own originally, but who came to accept him as if he was.
Sometimes what chains us can become what saves us. Sometimes what could be the death of us turns out to be what gives us life. We just have to remain open to the closeness of God, all around us. Amen.
