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Exodus 17:1-7, Philippians 2:1-13, Matthew 21:23-32
St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, West Valley City, UT
The Rev'd W. Lee Shaw
First let me say, it is so good to be home and to be with you. I loved my time away on vacation, but it always so good to come home. You were much in my thoughts while I was away and always in my prayers.
During my vacation and continuing education I gained a much deeper appreciation for our collective past, especially as Christians. So, the words of the psalmist were particularly striking for me today:
I will open my mouth in a parable; I will declare the mysteries of ancient times. That which we have heard and known, and what our forefathers have told us, we will not hide from their children.
The latter portion of my time away was spent on two islands on a pilgrimage of ancient Celtic sites: Holy Island at Lindisfarne in England, and Iona, off the coast of Scotland. This was an incredibly rich time for me and one which I will share with you more in the future.
These two islands represent the presence and witness of Christianity in the British Isles during a very dark and troubling time. These two islands became beacons of hope, of faith, of learning, and of Christ to people from Scotland to England, to Switzerland, Italy, and as far east as parts of Russia. The Celtic missionary monks spread far and wide proclaiming the good news of the Christ in a world enveloped in darkness, ignorance, superstition, and barbarism during the years roughly between the 6th and 8th centuries. I have traveled quite a bit around the world, but never have I been in such places as Holy Isle and Iona that are such thin places, places where the physical world and the spiritual world almost touch in a thin place.
Our mentor was Fr. Herbert O’Driscoll, originally from Ireland and now a Canadian. He noted that for the Celtic monk/missionaries to go to a place like ancient Gaul would not be unlike Christian missionaries walking the streets of a village in Afghanistan or Iraq: lawless, dangerous, and not open to new things. These Celtic monk/missionaries went as a group: a leader and twelve followers.
He emphasized continually we have much to learn from the Celtic missionaries and monasteries. These men lived on the edge of the known world. Civilization, such as it was, was limited to specific areas, such as Rome, even though it had been conquered in 410. Constantinople, now Istanbul, which was flourishing in the East and would not be conquered by the Ottoman Empire for another 1,000 years. The Celtic missionaries were on the edge of Europe, a vast expanse of forests, rivers, and tribes in continual unrest with one another. From small Iona and other northern places they set out in small boats to proclaim the Christ: died, risen, and who will come again.
When a local chieftain or king wanted men of learning to come to help his people, he sent them to Iona, which was a center for learning, scriptures and teaching. In a world that was still adjusting to the lack of the Roman Empire to maintain order, these monk/missionaries did not talk about dead kings, but about the living King. They came with a message of hope and of love for one another. They were glints of civilization in a darkened world of violence, minimal existence, superstition and conflicting powers.
In this time of living on the edge, the Celtic monks turned to the world outside themselves in proclaiming the good news of Christ. They also turned inward to preserve and expand learning by copying and highly decorating books of Scripture. The famous Book of Kells, a highly decorated copy of the Bible, was started on Iona and later taken to Ireland to protect it from Viking raids.
In our generation we are rediscovering the richness of Celtic thought and spirituality. It is a spirituality focused on God and very clearly grounded in a deep appreciation for the earth and nature. We have much to learn from them regarding the relationship between spirituality and our physical world. We have much to learn from them about the power of the spoken word, about the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ.
As I walked the islands of Lindisfarne and Iona I felt a kinship to these people long gone, as I feel a kinship to you here in front of me. We are all more on the margins than in the center of power. We live in a world that is changing dramatically and in ways we had never imagined possible. They were living in the world of the post-Roman Empire, a world turned upside down by the loss of a strong empire. We are living in a post 9-11 world, a world turned upside down by our sense of vulnerability and danger.
I feel we have much to learn from how they responded to their world. They did not talk of kings long gone, but of a King risen from the dead. They did not worry about what they feared and did not have. They made their own copies of the Scriptures and held them up for all the world to see.
We have much to learn from them also of courage and of community, of prayer and of spirituality. They offer us a perspective in a world in turmoil and change and show us hints of how we can cope in our own time and place.
As Herbert O’Driscoll noted several times: Sometimes the present can
free us from the shackles of the past and help us to form the future.
But also, sometimes the past can free us from the shackles of the
present and help us to form the future.