Words for Worship

Ministry Today

Columba Calling!

 

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For most people air travel is a bit unnatural. As a result then of people’s fear courses are run to desensitise them to the various sounds and sensations of fight. Yet before flying was the mode, travels must have been equally frightened of sea travel. Yet in ancient Britain, going by sea was as ubiquitous as airliners are today. For land travel was exhausting dangerous and often impossible. Therefore for centuries, to Europeans the words of today’s first lesson had a much greater basis in experience than we may feel today.

 

Here to read to us is………

Psalms: 107.23-30

 

Anthem

 

Of course, it wasn’t just travellers that needed to use the water, fishermen had to as well. And even inland waters can become dangerous with the wrong weather conditions. Yet whilst a traveller can delay a journey a fisherman cannot – not if he wants to eat. For his harvest always needs him to brave the risks.

 

And of fishermen, here to read to us is………………

Mark 1.14-20

 

Now there are plenty occasions in history when the writing of a book has caused violence. But just the copying of one rarely leads to a war. Yet that was the exact consequence of the copying of a manuscript by the monk whose name meant the dove of the church. And although he was known in his native county Donegal as by a Gaelic name, we know him by his more famous moniker of Columba. For, one of the greatest saints of Scotland copied a Psalter owned by another Finnian and when he refused to hand it back a battle broke out between the neills and the derminds in which legend says 3000 were killed. A real enforcement of copyright law!

 

As a result, Columba was sent into exile for being the cause of significant carnage. And so he chose to come across the sea to this land to convert as many souls as those unprepared ones who died due to his action. He set sail with 12 fellow monks in coracles and eventually settled on Iona. And it was there at the age of 44 he set up a base camp for the evangelising of pagan Scotland, he established a place of learning for the greatest faith ever and led a listening post for the word of God for a world of 1500 years ago. Indeed, it was from that small beginning, he like Peter went forward to become a fisher of men and we are his catch today.

 

Well, over these few weeks after Easter, I want to spend time looking at the founders of our Church in northern Britain, Celtic saints who took on the pagan world and won; Scholars and missionaries too who can teach us much about our fishing for men and women in this neo-pagan world and darkening land.

For Columba could easily have chosen to go into exile in Christian Europe seeking the settled monastic life there. However, he chose otherwise. He chose to follow in the footsteps of the earliest reformers of the secluded life such as Basil who turned the holy back to the work for the unholy in the unholy places.  Put another way, Columba started by turning around a set-back and making it Christ’s own opportunity. And so like Peter he stepped out of the known and safe and into the blue yonder and the distinctly risky. However, like Peter he would return with his nets full of souls saved. In fact, his mission to Scotland is credited by modern historians as reviving Christianity in the whole of North Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire.

Today too we live in a pagan world. True people’s gods now are different than the nature spirits of the picts. Nowadays, they are less Wotan than Nissan. For, they take the names of car manufacturers, holiday destinations and, dare I say in the current financial turmoil, mortgage vendors. And so there is a need as much now for Columbas as there were in 563 AD.  Missionaries who go out from holy places like this and say, of course, you need cars and holidays and houses. But they are not the be all and end all of life; they are no the controlling spirits of your existence; indeed owning them alone does not give you true happiness.  Instead let us offer a wider view, a higher view and a holier view. A picture that indeed leaves room, even if it is only a little corner, for Christ. Because, if we achieve this for someone else, be in no doubt, our Lord will soon dominate their whole picture. After all was that not what happened to Peter? Come to think about it, was that not what happened to us?

 

Did you know that Columba is the source of the legend of the loch Ness monster? For adomnan is his life of the saint relates that Columba came across a group of picts burying a poor little man who had been killed by the monster. Columba then saved another swimmer by making the sign of the cross at the creature and commanding – you will go no further. And actually it is the fear of monsters that stops us going out and fishing for our fellow humans. We are frightened that if we leave this safe place we will come across other people’s monsters that we can neither tame nor have an answer to. Monsters like the - church if full of superstitions. Ok we say then what about wearing the right type of trainers or playing with the right golf clubs makes you the right person to know. Also when we hear the monster that the church is full of hypocrites why not slay that one with – well there is always room for one more inside. And as for the monstrous fear that the church judges and excludes and is no home for the different– why not say – come on in for your family’s welcome.

Yet this ability to dragon slay comes at a price. Columba knew that he had to prepare himself constantly to have an answer to the illusions of the people he met across Scotland. And that is why it was said of him that he never spent an hour without study, without prayer or without a similar occupation. That is why Iona became one of the esteemed seats of study plugged into the network of Christian communities throughout the then known world. That is why we too must be devout in our study, prayer and thinking. Because only then can really know what we believe and then say out what we believe.  Only then will we slay the monster of today’s misbeliefs with the sharpest sword ever. And that is - and always will be - the truth.

 

Needless to say, Peter was aware of all this. Because in order to become a fisher of humans he needed, at first, to learn - and he was fortunate to have the best teacher ever - then he had to go out and speak out. He had to go and use his mind as well as his heart to cast a net. He had to go out and prove that he too believed in the good news. In fact he had to go out and preach the gospel as the only way to life’s richer harvest.

 

There are many stories of miracles performed by Columba. All though it could be said that his conversion of Pictish kings and settling up seed churches as far afield as eastern Aberdeenshire were glorious miracles enough. But one story illustrated how Columba performed so well as a fisher of women and men. For when he decided to beard the Pictish King Brude in his royal fortress near Inverness, he found the gates closed and bolted against him. Not deterred for an instant, he made the sign of the cross and the doors flew open. No wonder then that he was reputed to have been received with reverence and his royal host sought immediate baptism.

 

Legend maybe, yet it demonstrates that Columba did all for the lord with utter confidence. He knew he had been called to turn every adverse situation to an opportunity to fish for souls. He knew too that he had prepared himself scrupulously to convince those enslaved by unreal monsters.  Above even these convictions, he was certain that wherever he trawled for the lost the spirit would be with him. And that was enough to dispel the deepest misconceptions, the meanest motives and the worst kind of life constraining, captivating and corrupting monsters. That was enough to calm everything that deep waters can throw at a body. That was and is enough to bring them and us to safe haven.

And for all these reasons, Columba walked Scotland’s paths with a cocky song in his heart. For like many early church scholars he not only read manuscripts and copied them, he wrote a few lines himself. So this morning let us leave the final world on the Saint to himself. Because it is said, he always tramped along with his own hymn in his head; a fisher’s ballad of a courageous, learned and confident faith whose last verses goes like this.

 

Our fortune does not depend on depend on sneezing

Nor on a bird on a point of a twig

Nor on the truck of a crooked tree

Nor on a sordan hand in hand

Better is he on whom we depend

The father – the one and the son…

 

I reverence not the voices of birds

Nor sneezing, nor any charm of the wide world

Nor a child of chance, nor a woman

My druid is Christ, the son of God.

 

Christ, the son of Mary, the great abbot

The father, son and Holy Ghost

My possession is the king of kings

My order is in kells and moone

Alone am I

 

Amen

 

Offering

 

HYMN……………..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Columba Calling