Karen Hollis | March 17, 2024
Lent 5 – St. Patrick’s Day
Psalm 27: 1, 4-9 by Robert Alter
The Lord is my light and my rescue.
Whom should I fear?
The Lord is my life’s stronghold.
Of whom should I be afraid?
One thing do I ask of the Lord,
it is this that I seek –
that I dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to behold the Lord’s sweetness
and to gaze on [their] palace.
For [She] hides me in [Her] shelter
on the day of evil.
He conceals me in the recess of His tent,
on a rock He raises me up.
And now my head rises
over my enemies around me:
Let me offer in [Their] tent
sacrifices with joyous shouts.
Let me sing the hymn to the Lord.
Hear, O Lord, my voice when I call,
and grant me grace and answer me.
Of You, my heart said:
“Seek My face.”
Your face, Lord, I do seek.
Do not hide your face from me,
do not turn Your servant away in wrath.
You are my help.
Abandon me not, nor forsake me,
O God of my rescue.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be reflections of your word to us today, in Christ’s name we pray. Amen
I picked up a “biography” of St. Patrick the last time I preached on him, and read stories about driving out snakes, some miracle to do with someone standing on their head, and this lovely one: upon entering a community, Patrick stuck his ash wood walking stick into the ground, and it took so long for his message to sink in there that by the time he was ready to leave, the stick was taking root and had become a living tree. While hardly factual, the legends convey something deeper about what St. Patrick meant to the people of Ireland, about his impact on people’s lives, and generations going forward. These are stories of faith, stories of hope, stories that indicate to us that Patrick was someone who can still teach us about living a life of faith. The more factual stories about him indicate that he was an extraordinary human, though in Patrick’s own words, he was a simple country person . . . with, I would add, an astounding faith and his very own remarkable story.
Patrick was born about 400 years after Jesus in the east midlands of England in the Roman British town of Bannaventa. He came from a privileged and educated Christian family: his father a deacon and his grandfather a priest. Even though they raised him in the faith, in Patrick’s own words, he didn’t know God.
(pause) Did you ever make plans for your future, only to have life throw you a curve ball? Patrick was thrown a huge one . . . when he was 16 he was kidnapped by pirates, taken to Ireland, and lived in terrible conditions. There are any number of reasonable responses to being forced into slavery . . . Patrick’s response, even though he didn’t know God, was to pray. He describes it this way: “after I arrived in Ireland, I tended sheep every day, and I prayed frequently during the day. More and more the love of God increased, and my sense of awe before God. Faith grew, and my spirit was moved, so that in one day I would pray up to one hundred times, and at night perhaps the same. I even remained in the woods and on the mountain, and I would rise to pray before dawn in snow and ice and rain. I never felt the worse for it, and I never felt lazy – as I realise now, the spirit was burning in me at that time.”1
It was in this season that the God Patrick’s family taught him to worship, made a personal introduction, and he claimed for himself the faith he was taught as a child. This is the essence of confirmation in the church – claiming the faith for ourselves – Patrick did so fervently and he relied on his relationship with God the rest of his life. He writes: “I turned with all my heart to the Lord my God and he looked down on my lowliness and had mercy on my youthful ignorance. He guarded me before I knew him, and before I came to wisdom and could distinguish between good and evil. He protected me and consoled me as a father does for his son.”2
After 6 years a slave, God spoke to Patrick in a dream that soon he would return home. Shortly after he learned of a ship that was some 200 miles away . . . he escaped and ran for it. Returning home after going through such a formative experience was challenging – his family begged him to return to his life of privilege and never leave them again. They were sure they had the right plan for his life, but Patrick knew he was called to serve God.
He heard his calling in a dream to go back to Ireland and serve among the people . . . back to the land where he was a slave. That’s quite a calling – can you imagine? And he boldly and courageously said yes. He engaged theological studies, and left for Ireland shortly after becoming a priest.
As we all know, even when we’re in alignment with our path, the way still brings challenges – sometimes from all directions. Patrick writes that because of the schooling he missed while he was enslaved, he only had schoolboy Latin. It made him feel inferior to others and angry, especially when people commented. On his journeys through Ireland, he constantly faced opposition, threats of violence, kidnapping, and even criticism from church officials.3 He struggled throughout his life with depression, self-pity, and violent anger.
I look at this picture of him – it’s so different from the confidence and polish of the marble statue looking down from on high. This picture captures for me Patrick’s own self-image (as he describes it) – a simple person, feeling humble and unworthy, yet continues to put one foot in front of the other and engage the people he meets.
The prayers that are attributed to him give us glimpse into how he may have prayed through his challenges . . . in such a way as to remind himself or even invoke the presence of Christ in and around him, in everything and everyone he met. He prayed because he needed it, because the brokenness in him was telling him a particular story about how he was alone, not good enough, in danger – stuff that any one of us might struggle with – and his response was asking the Holy, Almighty, and Tender presence of our Loving God to be with him in a particular way.
Perhaps he prayed: I arise today, through God’s strength to pilot me: God’s might to uphold me, God’s wisdom to guide me . . .
Or perhaps the text of the psalm: The Lord is my light and my rescue. Whom should I fear? One thing do I ask of the Lord, it is this that I seek – that I dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life (Psalm 27).
Patrick was not the first Christian to try and evangelize Ireland. As one scholar writes: “what made Patrick successful was his dogged determination and the courage to face whatever dangers lay ahead, as well as the compassion and forgiveness to work among a people who had brought nothing but pain to his life.4
Just like us, his life was a tapestry of his vocation, his call, implications of turns in the road, belief systems, challenges, longings, gifts, learning, all the different parts that made him who he was. Today he is our teacher. This guy who went through the horrific, the lonely, the gritty and crunchy bits of life. He brings this teaching that God is available. I don’t mean God is with us, because of course God is with us – I say that every Sunday. I mean God is available to help us. I even think God already knows what we need . . . but there is something about asking. I don’t know why (God doesn’t have to make sense to us), but identifying what we need and expressing that to God is a powerful tool for prayer.
Even in the midst of his gritty human experience of threats of violence and depression, he prayed: Christ before me, clear a pathway before me; Christ in me, increase your light in me so that the darkness is out of reach; Christ above me, bring me insight and possibilities when I see no way out; Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks on me and Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks to me . . . that we may challenge the lie that we are separate and alone, and live into the truth that we are all here for one another. Prayer helped this simple and troubled and Christ-loving man do things that transformed communities. One community even felt as if St. Patrick had transformed their town from a lifeless stick in the ground into a rooted and living tree . . . and they made him a saint. Thanks be to God.