Readings for the Second Sunday in Lent
This sermon was preached at Christ Episcopal Church in Eureka CA on March 17, 2019.
This Lenten season has been extra special for me because Ash Wednesday fell on my birthday and because the feast of St. Patrick falls on a Sunday, which only happens every seven years or so. It’s appropriate for us to celebrate Patrick because one of the themes we are exploring this Lent is Celtic Christianity and Patrick is considered by everyone to be the Father of Celtic Christianity. In fact, Patrick’s original name was Maewyn Sucat but he changed his name to Patrick which means “Father” because he saw himself as the Father of all Irish Christians. This last week, we celebrated two Eucharists using the readings for the feast day of St. Patrick, one in Lewis Hall (with the ECW) and one yesterday in Sequoia park, where we saw symbols of our Triune God in the redwood sorrel and the trillium flowers just as St Patrick saw a symbol for the Trinity in the Irish shamrock. Because we are in Lent, the lessons for the Second Sunday in Lent must upstage and outshine any saint’s feast day readings. So the readings we just heard are not the readings for the feast of St. Patrick; however, they invite me to reflect on a particular aspect of St. Patrick that does not often get much attention: his bold and politically active faith.
Patrick grew up in Britain (as Maewyn Sucat) until he was kidnapped as a teenager by Irish pirates who sold him into slavery in Ireland. He was a slave for six years on Mount Slemish, where he said he prayed one hundred times a day and about the same amount during the night, in frost, in snow, in rain, and in the dark before the dawn. Inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit, he escaped slavery and returned home to Britain, where he became a priest and then a bishop. But not just any bishop: a missionary bishop, who felt called to return to Ireland to evangelize and teach the Irish people about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We don’t know all that many details about how he evangelized, but we know his ministry was solidly successful. This is when he became Patrick the Father of Celtic Christianity. We know about Patrick’s life because he wrote a spiritual autobiography called the Confessio or Confession.
We have only one other text attributed to St. Patrick and that is a letter that he wrote to a British King named Coroticus. According to this letter, Coroticus and his soldiers had brutally murdered several young men and women whom Patrick had recently baptized and confirmed. The chrism oil was still gleaming on their foreheads, he said, when they were cruelly cut down and killed. Those who were not killed were sold into slavery in northern Britain (Pictland). As someone who experienced slavery first-hand, Patrick had particularly harsh and impassioned words for Coroticus and his soldiers, whom he shamed and condemned and nearly excommunicated. Several times he called them ravenous wolves who devoured God’s precious children like a loaf of bread. Because of this letter, Coroticus (who may have been hailed as great and powerful in his day) is permanently known throughout history as a despicable monster and a pathetic pawn of Satan. And because of this letter, St. Patrick is the first Christian in history that we know of to speak out against slavery, perhaps the first person. St. Patrick, who was once a slave himself, is the first Christian to speak out against the sin of slavery.
In our Gospel reading this morning, Jesus speaks out against one of the tyrants of his day: King Herod. Like St. Patrick, Jesus compares this bully to a predator. Some Pharisees (many of whom were Jesus’s friends) told Jesus to be careful and to not stay too long in his present location because Herod was eager to have him killed. Jesus says, “Go tell that fox that I’m a prophet and I’m not going to die until it’s God’s time and God’s place: Jerusalem. And in the meantime, I am going to stand up and protect all those who are vulnerable. I’m going to wrap my arms around the children of Israel like a mother hen wraps baby chicks under her wings.”
Jesus and St. Patrick both spoke truth to power. They both responded to violence and tyranny with healing and love and effective communication. Notice they did not respond to violence with more violence. St. Patrick chose not to assemble a band of Irish warriors, who were known for their terrifying power and fierce bravery and who could have retaliated and pummeled Coroticus and his soldiers. Instead he made sure that his letter was read aloud all over Britain and Ireland so that all would know that Coroticus was a greedy and abusive monster.
And Jesus chose not to call upon his angelic armies, who were certainly at his beck and call. Instead Jesus called Herod a predator: a fox. And then Jesus referred to himself as a healer and a prophet and a mother hen protecting her brood. Listen to what Jesus is doing here. He’s calling a Herod a fox and calling himself a hen. We all know what happens when a fox gets in the henhouse: the hen is eaten alive. This is Jesus’s way of talking about and explaining his eventual death in Jerusalem. Herod and Pilate and Rome will eventually kill Jesus. But Jesus’s death will be on his terms, as an act of self-giving love and ultimate sacrifice like a mother hen giving her life to protect her brood. And Jesus makes it abundantly clear that the monster in this scenario is Herod, not God. God is not the bloodthirsty tyrant demanding Jesus’s death as some medieval theologians suggest. Herod and Coroticus are the bloodthirsty tyrants and St. Patrick and Jesus are calling them out. Herod and Coroticus and all those who follow in their footsteps are those whom the Apostle Paul calls the “enemies of the cross of Christ” in our reading from Philippians. “Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame.”
What broke St. Patrick’s heart the most was that Coroticus claimed to be a Christian. Patrick did not excommunicate Coroticus although he came close. He ultimately saw Coroticus as a slave himself: a slave to his own greed and sin. And he called for Coroticus to repent because forgiveness and liberation can be found in repentance. The bold and fearless words of Jesus and St. Patrick urge us, this Lent, to repent of the ways in which we are like Herod and Coroticus, the ways in which we are bullies. Their words also urge us to speak truth to power and to call for the repentance of all who abuse their authority and who prey on the vulnerable. Their words urge us to heal and protect others even at the risk of our own safety and reputation. They urge us to be the mother hen for all children. And my brothers and sisters, the 50 or so victims of the shooting in ChristChurch New Zealand on Friday were children of Abraham, who is also our spiritual father, who we just read about in Genesis.
Jesus and St. Patrick urge us to start seriously asking the question here at Christ Church Eureka: how does our faith influence our politics? My job is not to preach on candidates or policies or legislation, but on principles, the principles of our baptismal covenant: to respect the dignity of every human being and to strive for justice and peace among all people. Also, the principle of protecting the weak and standing up to bullies by calling them out on their sin and violence and greed. What I love about us Episcopalians and about us at Christ Church is that we are not monolithic in our politics. We’re not all the same. We have a lot to learn from each other.
Although it might be easier to avoid politics altogether, my study of Scripture and church history and theology have shown me that that is really not an option for us as followers of Jesus Christ. St. Patrick and our Gospel reading today are case studies. Professor of philosophy at Calvin College James K. A. Smith says, “The illusion of being nonpolitical is a luxury of privilege that only leaves the vulnerable exposed.”[1] Jesus and St. Patrick did not have this luxury of privilege and I hope it is a luxury that we avoid. Lent is a season for us to repent of the ways we have been silent in the face of oppression and complicit to violence. May we repent as individuals, as a nation, and as Christians and; may we learn to walk the way of the cross, finding strength in the shadow of the wings of our mother hen and, like St. Patrick, discovering the presence of Christ before us, behind us, beneath us, above us, and within us. Amen.
[1] James K. A. Smith, “Do Politics Belong in Church?” in The Christian Century (October 10, 2018), 21.
DANIEL DeFOREST LONDON 