On Thursday 31 August 2006, Elaine organised a service here in the church, to commission me and send me on my way. The next morning we said Morning Prayer, and I set off to walk to Santiago. Just over a month later I was worshipping in the cathedral of St James, and thinking of you all. This was the start of my Sabbatical, and I spend the second part reading and researching Celtic spirituality. I had always viewed this with some suspicion, as being linked to New Age thought, but as I went deeper I was impressed at how much we could learn for our lives today.
We are all saints, in the sense that we are the sanctified ones of God, made holy by the death of Jesus for us and our faith in him. Today we remember a particular individual who can teach us by his experience and example.
Canon Kate Tristram writes: “Aidan was an Irish monk from the monastery St.Columba had founded on the island of Iona. The Britons had been Christian before the Irish, since Britain, though not Ireland, was part of the Roman Empire. Some of the missionaries who first took the faith to Ireland were British: St.Patrick (the patron saint of Ireland) was the most famous but not the only one. But when the power of Rome declined the English (from North Germany) began to infiltrate into Britain and gradually turned it into England. These incoming English were pagans. In the north the kingdom of Northumbria was largely created by the English warrior-leader Aethelfrith but when he was killed in battle (616AD) his children fled into exile and some of these children found their way to what is now South-West Scotland. Here they met the Irish monks of Iona and accepted the Christian faith. Oswald, the second son of Aethelfrith, grew up determined to re-gain the throne of Northumbria and to let the pagans among his people hear about Christianity. In 633 he fought a successful battle and established himself as king, choosing Bamburgh, a natural outcrop of rock on the North-East coast, as his main fortress. He then invited the monks of Iona to send a mission and eventually Aidan arrived with 12 other monks and chose to settle on the island the English had renamed Lindisfarne.”
What do we know of Aidan? He was the second choice for the mission. The first man to come was harsh and overbearing; he did not go down well with the locals. When he returned to Iona complaining about this, Aidan suggested that perhaps a gentler touch was needed. So they sent him instead.
He was a man of balance. A group of us from St Michael’s are planning a pilgrimage to Holy Island, Lindisfarne, where Aidan founded his monastery after the fashion of Iona. It is a place or quiet and rest, away from the business of the world (except when the tourist coaches arrive). It was for Aidan also a place to recharge batteries, not to retreat and block the world out, but to prepare to engage again with it.
He was a missionary. In the spirit of our reading from Isaiah, he went out proclaiming the Lordship of God and the grace of Jesus Christ. But his method was to be completely human. He walked everywhere. If he found a pagan, he would talk to him about Jesus. If he found a believer, he would give words of encouragement to be more truly a disciple. He was a gentle man, and was known to be less austere than some of his contemporaries. He was equally at home in the company of a king or of a pauper; he loved each one with the love of Christ. When the king was concerned that his favourite was walking and gave him a horse, he gave the horse away to a beggar. He preferred to look people in the eye. His method of evangelism was to spend time with folk, to love them, to share the character of Christ with them. He sought to make real in the lives of people our Lord’s call to come to him and receive rest.
What would it have been like to follow Christ in the time of Aidan?
First, you would have lived in community. The monks would have lived in the monastery. The lay folk, single and married, would have had their own homes but would have been aware of a shared faith. They worked, played and worshipped together. We are exploring aspects of this by gathering on Sundays for worship, by meeting during the week for prayer. On Thursdays we try to inhabit the church – Morning Prayer, Butterflies, Lunch time fellowship, SMYL, Choir Practice. It is part of our renewal to explore how we can be a true community, caring for each other throughout the week; we are not a club that we pop into for a single hour and then forget for seven days.
Second, there was a concern that all should know Christ, that every knee should bow. To follow Christ is not an optional extra. God is the Creator of all, and therefore each and every one of us owes him our allegiance. By our prayers, by our words, by our acts of love and kindness, we make him known and encourage others to trust him and submit to him as Lord. This is not the job of the vicar and the curates. It is the high calling of each of us who has been baptised into Christ’s church. Aidan would have reminded us of that.
Third, because God is the great Creator, there is no part of life where he is absent. The Celtic Christians had prayers and blessings for mealtimes and bed time, for milking the cow and churning the milk, for planting and reaping. Aidan today would have prayers for the keyboard and the steering wheel, for the washing machine and the fan oven. God is too important and all-encompassing to be left behind in church.
Fourth, Aidan would have encouraged you to learn, to grow in your faith. He established the first school to teach the English. If you had no faith he would encourage you to believe and be baptised. If you were baptised as an infant, he would have encouraged you to be confirmed and to seek your ministry in Christ. The whole of the Christian life is pilgrimage; we are always on the move. To stop going forward is to begin to slip back. Because of the rigours of the missionary life, the monastery on Holy Island was for men and boys only; elsewhere he founded nunneries that became great centres of learning such as that at Whitby, headed by Hilda.
There are some who would promote Aidan as the best candidate to be patron saint of England. Although from overseas, he at least is well attested to have lived and to have played a major part in building the church in this land. We also live in this land; let us commit ourselves to following closely as disciples and to build his church in our land today.
Questions
1. Who can we name that have been examples and encouragements to us to live more closely for Christ?
2. God is the great Creator. How have we observed this to be true in the last week, or so?
3. What ways could we be involved in building Community here today?
4. What progress am I making to grow in learning about and knowledge of Christ? Who could help me with this?
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