Driving away our own Snakes: A Sermon on the Feast of S. Patrick of Ireland

1 Thessalonians 2:2b-12
Psalm 97:1-2,7-12
Matthew 28:16-20

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

There is a lot of evil in the world.  We see it all around us: greed, corruption, environmental destruction, racism, sexism, homophobia, prejudice, anger, hatred, and pride.  It can sometimes be overwhelming.  What is especially be disheartening is that we hear so many sermons these days that call out these evils, that denounces them, and offer the hope of change and reconciliation.  With so many prophetic voices that exist, surely the evil around us should be brought down by the power of our words, and with the power of our sentiment.  Sadly, it seems this is not the case.  In many we preach ways to the choir, to people who know or accept that the evil is there, that is beyond them, and that deny they contribute to it in any way.  It never seems though to truly transform the world around us.

We are in the bright sadness of this Season of Lent.  Through our prayer and fasting we are called to examine ourselves and our surroundings and work to strive to become closer to God so that we may be prepared for the Paschal Feast.  We like the idea of Lent, we like the sound of Lent, but if our way of proclaiming the Gospel is any indication of how we actually behave and act as Christians, it reveals the truth of how we relate to Lent—namely, we do not like it.  We like to shy away from the personal or individual aspects of the faith for the corporate.  In our own little ways we make it possible to deny our culpability with evil, we are uncomfortable with singular professions of faith, we avoid “I believe” and replace it with “we believe” for the Creed, we like confessions that speak of “the evil done on our behalf” because perhaps in some ways it dulls the bitterness of acknowledging the “the evil we have done” or even more so “the evil I have done.”  This is not to say that we should not have a common faith, for indeed as Anglicans we have a Book of Common Prayer.  Nor that corporate and communal sin do not exist—they do.  But too often it seems that those of us who would identify as progressive Christians tend to overlook the little picture in favor of the big picture, to speak out against the great corporate sins without examining or acknowledging how we participate in those very sins we denounce.

The devil, my friends, however is in the details, and we may not like to acknowledge how we make it easier for the Devil to work in this world. Lent stares us back in the face and says to us and to our prideful boasting—so what?  Yes, we call out evil, but we ourselves are still sinners.  We still have that evil serpent that whispered lies into the ears of Adam and Eve coiling around us, and telling us lies that keep ourselves from acknowledging that fact.

We like to follow Jesus command, to spread the Gospel to all nations, but do we even believe in that very Gospel ourselves?  And if we do not believe in that Gospel, then what is the point of it?

I am a sinner, there are times believing the Gospel is near impossible, there are times that I have said racist, sexist, and homophobic things, I hide behind my white and male privilege to escape my own faults, there are times that I accidentally leave my AC on too long, I occasionally toss plastic bottles and cans in the trash can because I am too lazy to recycle, some of the stocks I own are in companies that are less than ideal.  I need Christ for myself as much as the world needs Christ to turn away from sin.

Today is the Feast of S. Patrick of Ireland.  There is far too much that can be said about this much beloved Saint—the Patron of Ireland, the Apostle to the Irish, the cultural icon of children of the Irish Diaspora in the United States and beyond, and the person whose Feast is celebrated by many as an excuse to over drink.  And yet in and amidst the biography of the old curmudgeony saint from the 400s, I am still drawn to the old stories of Patrick.  Namely, because of S. Patrick, the snakes of Ireland were driven away.  

To be sure, this is a myth of S. Patrick, there are many myths associated with him.  Ireland is an island at a high northern latitude that is far too cold, dark, and wet for most reptiles to survive.  This was a story to help explain why Ireland lacks snakes.  Though as with any myth, there are deeper truths to be had if we look beyond the historical reality.  Myths, parables, fables, and legends are all part of how we learn about ourselves, the world around us, and God.  They are powerful because they strike that part of the brain that comes to life to imagine new possibilities and realities—simply put, we all love a good story.

Patrick came to Ireland, and in the midst of his mission, drove the snakes away.  In his ministry, he preached, he called people to accept the baptism of repentance he built churches and monasteries that still dot the landscape of Ire, he rejected payment from people to be baptized or ordained, he refused to seek the protection of local chiefs and kings in his work in exchange for compromising on the Gospel, he faced imprisonment and violence, but in the end, the Gospel was heard and received in all Ireland.  The old gods of Ireland, the old devils and snakes of Ireland, were driven away.

The message that Patrick preached was not his own, nor was it a version of the Gospel that was reworked to become appealing to the people of Ireland.  It was the Gospel that Jesus Christ gave his one, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic church to proclaim, a Gospel of faith, a Gospel of God’s love for us, a Gospel of repentance of our sins, a Gospel of Resurrection into new life.  It is not always an easy message, sometimes it is downright bitter because it forces us to confront our fallen state and to turn away from those actions and ways of being and thinking that cause us to sin.  It calls us to make ourselves as individuals humble before God Almighty.  We must recognize that we cannot seek to please others with the Gospel, but as S. Paul the Apostle said, strive to please only God with our proclamation.  According to S. Gregory of Nyssa in his biography on the Life of Moses, much like the bitter water at Marah was made sweet by the wood Moses placed in it, so too does the Gospel become sweet because of Christ and the wood of the Cross, the wood that defeated the power of sin and death, and restores us to new life.  The serpent of old in the Garden is put to shame as through the power of the cross, we are restored both in image and in likeness of God.

Patrick called the people of Ireland to join Jesus Christ’s one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church through Baptism.  Though there have been twists and turns throughout history, invasions, reformations, dispersion, oppression, and unification, the Church that Patrick called the people of Ireland to is the same Church that we are a part of NOW.  We are a part of something greater than ourselves, than this chapel, than this diocese, than this Episcopal Church, and this Anglican Communion.  The liturgy we celebrate is the image of the liturgy before the throne of God, and Patrick calls us just as he called Ireland to turn and orient ourselves to Christ—the Christ within us, the Christ behind us, the Christ before us, the Christ beside us, the Christ beneath us, the Christ above us;

But ultimately the Christ who is not us.

We are not Christ, we are not God, but through the Gospel we are capable of being restored to that original image and likeness of the Divine.

Light in the Dark--Gallarus Oratory

Therefore, it is fitting that the Feast of S. Patrick falls in this season of Lent.  We are reminded to orient ourselves and bow down before God.  It is only through the power of God that we can fully embrace the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Through prayer, fasting, and genuine confession of sin, we turn away from the power of the Devil, from the serpent that calls us through sin to commune with him, and we come before the awesome might of God.  By shedding our own evil and our own sin, and by becoming beacons of God’s light within the world, we can dispel the night that eats away at the souls of humanity.  We too can follow the example of S. Patrick and shine God’s light in defiance of the powers of the world and the old gods the world worships.  The snakes of this world will flee before the radiance that comes from our prayers, our fasting, and our confessions.

If we strip away our own sins, we bear witness to the True and Living God.  Others will follow that light that shines through us and come to God.



My friends, I am a sinner, I ask your prayers of forgiveness as we all walk along in the bright sadness of Lent towards the light of Christ and the Paschal Feast.

Amen

We do not shape liturgy, liturgy shapes us.

One of the many tasks that I have at my seminary is to take part in planning the weekly community night liturgies that are celebrated in our chapel.  Week after week, a group of seminarians come together with members of the staff and faculty to plan a liturgy including its prayers, music, and movement.  It is a practice to help seminarians to learn how to plan and celebrate liturgies in their future parishes.  It also is a chance to expose seminarians to more liturgical and musical resources that hopefully can be of service to them in their future ministries.  On the whole, I think this is a positive experience, but there are certain dangers that come from such a thing.

Protestantism, and broadly speaking many Western and some Eastern Christian traditions in the twentieth century began processes of reevaluating and reexamining how they worship.  Certain things like accessibility, lay participation, and overall praxis were discussed and debated.  Older and ancient liturgical forms and documents were reexamined as a means to shed light on modern practice.  Some reforms that came into play were minor and tepid, and others quite extreme.  Some sought to return to a glorious past of liturgy that may or may not have actually existed, some sought to modernize and reform the liturgy so as to have it be contextualized into a post-modern society, some wanted to reflect on the documents and writings of the past and make certain reforms that can coincide with other developments over the centuries, and others merely wanted minor reforms that would not alter too much of their practices.

One of the oft-stated things is that the liturgy is the work of the people.  Though this is partially true, it is actually linguistically and theologically incorrect.  Liturgy, or leitourgia (λειτουργία), is more properly understood as work done for the people, or done on behalf of the people.  In a Christian context, the liturgy is the offering or sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving offered by the Church to God on behalf of the faithful of the Church.  Nevertheless, despite the nuancing, the popular understanding of liturgy continues to be that of “the work of the people,” and this continues to influence our relationship with liturgy as Christians.

One of the troubling things that I think is a by-product of this misunderstanding of liturgy is the formation of many liturgies by people and communities that seemingly reflect their own image rather than the image of the divine worship in Heaven.  What I mean by that is that the priorities of these liturgies seem to be off.  Instead of them placing God at the center of the liturgy, and instead of worshipping God through the Sacraments, prayers, and hymns, we instead see the centrality of certain ideas and concepts within liturgy, and the worshipping of those ideas and concepts as the central act of the liturgy.

Of course, the immediate things that come to mind with this are the clown masses, U2charists, and Macklemore mass, but there are also things that are more subtle.  Sometimes we like to have liturgies that highlight diversity, unity, hospitality and welcome, family, youth, children, and other such things.  These are good things to embody within our community, but these are things that our communities ought to strive to embody, not things we hang upon the liturgy as if the liturgy were a tree that we hang ornaments on.

One of the things that appears to be lost in our liturgical renewal over the past few years is that in our rush to try new and interesting things, we have forgotten that we do not shape liturgy, liturgy shapes us.  Within the liturgy, we engage with the all of history as time and space collapse down into the life, death, resurrection, ascension, and second coming of Jesus Christ.  We join with angels and saints before the throne of God where we offer a sacrifice of praise, and share in Christ’s Body and Blood.  In this we see our humanity, our frailty, and our salvation.  It shapes us by joining us into the Divine History, and by deifying us so that we may be restored completely into the image and likeness of God.  This happens each and every liturgy, and yet each and every liturgy is different in its own way.  This is because in the liturgy, God causes the Earth and Heaven, the temporal and eternal to coincide in the same place in time.  It is everyplace, it is no place, and it is the only utopia we will ever encounter within our lives.

This is not to say there cannot be variation within liturgies.  Beyond different hymns, prayers, and Anaphoras, there are also Feast Days and Votive liturgies that help expand our understanding of that Divine History as it has interacted with holy men and women, the Saints of God, and events where God’s hand has moved in our history.  What happens though when we place human things as the centerpiece of the liturgy, we not only fashion a liturgy that exists solely in our own image, but we run the risk of worshipping ourselves rather than God.  We can try to frame it as the God who “welcomes all” or “laughs with all” but we forget that God does not just meet people where they are at, but desires to take them somewhere else, beyond the bounds and scope of human imagination of what is possible.  Human shaped liturgies do not do this because they do not demand anything from us, whereas liturgy that focuses on God demands something from us.

In the end, the liturgy, we should not hang our own agenda onto it, but let it wash over us and transform us into being that can embody the love of Christ in the world.