Sermon preached at Evensong at Christ Church
Greenwich, Connecticut
March 17, 2019 / St Patrick’s Day
Isaiah 8:19-9:2
Luke 6:20-31
Most of what most of we know about St Patrick has a lot to do with drinking pints of green Guinness, or the dying green of the Chicago River, and – if you’re like me – St Patrick’s Day has a lot to do with trying desperately not to ride Metro-North home in the evening on St Patrick’s Day itself.
The first St Patrick’s Day Parade in New York – and its associated revelry, we may assume – was held in 1766 by Irishmen in a military unit recruited to serve in the American colonies. After the War of 1812, local Irish fraternal and beneficial societies took over from the military unit as parade sponsor, and the parade has endured to this day.
But who was St Patrick? What do we know about him? Well, we know that he was the patron saint of Ireland, thus the annual celebration.
But Patrick was born in Roman Britain around the year 370, somewhere in northern England or southern Scotland. Calpurnius, his father, was a deacon, his grandfather Potitus was a priest, indicating that clerical celibacy is of rather more recent vintage in the Roman Church.
Patrick, however, was not an active believer. According to his autobiography, in his youth, he was captured by a group of Irish pirates and taken across the Irish Sea. Here is what he wrote:
“I was at that time about sixteen years of age. I did not, indeed, know the true God; and I was taken into captivity in Ireland with many thousands of people, according to our deserts, for quite drawn away from God, we did not keep his precepts, nor were we obedient to our priests who used to remind us of our salvation. And the Lord brought down on us the fury of his being and scattered us among many nations, even to the ends of the earth, where I, in my smallness, am now to be found among foreigners. And there the Lord opened my mind to an awareness of my unbelief, in order that, even so late, I might remember my transgressions and turn with all my heart to the Lord my God, who had regard for my insignificance and pitied my youth and ignorance. And he watched over me before I knew him and before I learned sense or even distinguished between good and evil, and he protected me, and consoled me as a father would his son.”[1]
The fact that Patrick would go on to become the Apostle to the Irish was a secondary effect of his biography. He could not go back to Ireland and be a missionary and minister to the people of Ireland until he had come to an active faith in Christ himself.
This autobiography of Patrick’s he called his Confession. That might make your ears perk up and think of a more famous “confession,” which is St Augustine’s Confession, which is a tale of his rowdy youth. And much like Patrick, Augustine turns to the Lord, and his life is changed.
Now, Patrick doesn’t have a rowdy youth story. His Confession doesn’t have tales of the kind of things that happen on St Patrick’s Day. He has a more ordinary story, actually; he has a story of a kind of dull nonbelief. He was just living his life.
Those of you were here at the 8 o’clock or 11 o’clock services this morning will have heard me quote William Temple, who was archbishop of Canterbury from 1942 until 1944. Temple famously said that, “The great aim of all true religion is to transfer the centre of interest and concern from self to God.”[2] The Greek term for this is called metanoia, and it means a 180 degree turn, literally to turn right around and transfer the center of attention from ourselves to God.
It is ironic that St Patrick’s Day, which is often a day of celebration and revelry, comes often during Lent, a period we associate with asceticism, with self-denial. There’s nothing at all wrong with celebrating St Patrick’s ministry to the Irish. This is why we heard from Isaiah in our first lesson this evening that “the people that walked in darkness have seen a great light”[3]: Patrick brought to Ireland the light of the Gospel, which he himself had come to know.
But we remember St Patrick not only for his mission, but also for the model of his life. The Lord opened his mind, as Patrick said, “awareness of [his] unbelief, in order that, even so late, [he] might remember [his] transgressions and turn with all [his] heart” – metanoia – “to the Lord [his] God, who had regard for [his] insignificance and pitied [his] youth and ignorance.”
That was Patrick’s moment of metanoia, of transference of the center of his concern from himself to God, and I wonder what yours might be. We are about to sing a hymn whose spirit sums up St Patrick’s love of God, and how his life was turned around by opening his heart to the Gospel message. As we sing it tonight, may our lives be turned as well to the Lord’s service, this day and every day.
Praise to the Lord of [our] salvation,
salvation is of Christ the Lord.[4]
AMEN.