Jesus of Nazareth & St. Patrick of Ireland

When Irish eyes are smiling, sure it's like a morning spring. In the little top Irish laughter, you can hear the angel sing. Ha ha, top of the morning to you. It's St. Patrick's Day friends, March 17, 2022. I've never done that before. I've always wanted to do that, what a fun way to start this podcast, to make sense of it all. And because it's story time, I'm going to share two stories with you this morning. And the first one you might expect, I want to tell you about the person they call St. Patrick of Ireland. Patrick was born in Britain. He's not an Irish guy. He was born in Britain. The Romans were in that territory at the time. This is middle of the fifth century. So you're talking 430 to 450 in there, maybe a little earlier. And when he was 16 years old, he was captured by Irish raiders from the villa of his father, Calpernia, who was a deacon and a minor local official. And he was carried into slavery in Ireland. He spent six years there as a herdsman. So he went from some privilege to being a herdsman. During which time, he turned to his faith. There's no indication of what his faith was, or at least little indication of what his faith was prior to that time. And he had a dream about a ship that was going to be available when his escape was ready. And finally, he fled from his master and found passage to Britain. There, he actually was captured a second time for a brief time, but then he was returned to his family, apparently. Along the way, he had a dream in which a person called Victoricus delivered him a letter headed the voice of the Irish. As he read it in his dream, he seemed to hear a certain company of Irish calling to him to walk once more among them. And Patrick said, deeply moved, I could read no more. Well, because he didn't feel educated enough, he was reluctant for a long time to respond to the call. And he still had doubts about his fitness for the task, even before embarking on the boat to go back to Ireland. But once in the field, once he was there, he had no hesitations. And in his confidence in his trust in God, he journeyed far and wide, baptizing, confirming with untiring zeal, the writing say. And in diplomatic fashion, he brought gifts to a kinglet here and another person, a law giver there, but accepted no gifts from anybody. On at least one occasion, he was put in chains. And numbers of folks were kidnapped or slain because of their faith that they came to. So he was careful to deal fairly with the Irish who were non-Christian, if you will. But the fact is that his task was always a challenging one. The writing say the phenomenal success of Patrick's mission is not the full measure of his personality. Since his writings have come to be better understood, it says it's increasingly recognized that despite their occasional incoherence, they mirror a truth and a simplicity of the rarest quality. He was, how shall I say it, he was vulnerable in his writing. A author is quoted as saying, the moral and spiritual greatness of the man shines through every stumbling sentence of his quote, rustic Latin. So we don't know exactly when he was born, but it was in that time frame that I've already mentioned. And he spent his days in Ireland and toward the end of his life, he felt like an angel visited him to convey when he was about to die and he did. One of the legends about Patrick is that he used the shamrock to describe the Trinity, showing the three-leave plant with one stock. And so traditionally Irishman of worn shamrock, the national flower of Ireland in their lapels on St. Patrick's Day, March 17th today. So across the country, maybe around the world, but for sure across this country, St. Patrick's Day is often celebrated with large parades. You go to New York, Boston, Chicago, Savannah, Georgia. And I have a friend who grew up in Savannah and she said that St. Patrick's Day was a holiday in Savannah. And I had never, till that point, connected Savannah, Georgia with Ireland. You don't have to be a Irish descent to appreciate the fact that it gave people who came to this country their identity. The first Irish immigrants to this country were not Irish Catholics. They were Irish Protestants. And then with potato famine, about a million I think of Irish Catholics came. And even though there was probably not a lot of love lost between these two directions, if I can use that, or flavors of the Christian faith, when it came to St. Patrick's Day, I think pretty much many of them joined hands in that. I have another connection with St. Patrick's Day and I was hesitant to say this, but why not? It was 80 years ago tonight that in Alameda, California, young mother was in labor. Her name was Gwendolyn. And it was my mom, Gwendolyn, Vance, both. And sometime in that evening, I was born in a maternity ward or what they called a maternity home back in 1942 in Alameda, California right next to Oakland across the Bay from San Francisco. So as I speak to you this day, this is the first day of my 81st journey around the sun. I just finished my last one last last evening. And the truth be told, I feel it a little bit. I got to tell you that. If you do the math on how many miles around the sun, I've gone in 80, it's billions, but let's not get into that. I used to look better than I do now. I've slim had hair. It was amazing. And now it's a good thing this is audio. That's all I'm saying to you. But I heard something the other day that, and I'm Scotts Irish. My mother was a boy, Ruth's family, the Blakelies are Scotts Irish. So it's a little mixture there. Irish have both a yen and a capacity for storytelling. And in Frank Delaney's wonderful book, Ireland the novel, he says that Irish have been mixing truth and fancy and mysticism and fairy tales for years. He puts it since God was a boy. I really like stories. I like hearing stories. I like telling stories. And I heard this thing the other day that if an Irishman dies while telling a story, he'll be back. So I want to share a story with you that is not myth. It is not fancy. It is in fact my favorite story. Some would say it's the greatest story ever told. And it's written actually by a fellow who is supposed to be when he wrote it, 80 something thereabouts. So identify with it toward the end of the first century. There was this fisherman who has probably as a teenager met Jesus of Nazareth. His name was John. He had a brother named James. They were in a family commercial fishing business on an inland sea not far from the Mediterranean called the Sea of Galilee. And this is how he tells the story. In just a few lines, relatively speaking, of this Jesus of Nazareth. And since this is my favorite story, I want to start my 81st trip around the Sun by reading it to you. And then I just want to come back and sort of unpack it a little bit. I don't use unpack as a verb very often, but I'm going on there. Here we go. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God. And the word was God. He was with God in the beginning and through him all things were made without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life. And that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. This is John the Baptist. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light so that through him all might believe he himself was not the light. He came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. Children born not of natural descent or of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God, the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only son who came from the Father full of grace and truth. So here's the deal. Here's how I see this. I'm not sure who the audience was exactly that that the old fisherman John was writing to. But listen to his language. This is not a simple statement in the beginning was the word. If you're a philosopher, you're loving that world of ideas. If you're a writer, if you're into literature, you're loving the fact that words are framed that he is in fact the ultimate word. If you're concerned about intimacy in a disconnected world, here is the person who is with God. He is God through whom we're all things made. If you're going to, if you're an architect or a builder, you're an artist, you have to love this. He's a producer. He is a maker. If you're an entrepreneur or a leader in industry or a kid with Lego or a chef or a quilter or a seamstress or any kind of product, you get this part. How about life in him was life. If you're a biologist, a neonatal nurse, an archaeologist, an astronaut, a zoologist, a personal trainer, a nutritionist, a police officer, a doctor, a nurse or a PA or an EMT or a fireman or a fisherman or a forester. If you're a two-year-old or a ten-year-old or a hundred-year-old, if you're a two-year-old, you're just getting started with life. If you're a ten-year-old, it's like the most free you'll ever be. You can ride a bike. You can go lots of places. You've got energy coming out of your ears and you don't have the teenage stuff to sweat yet. If you're a hundred years old, you're toward the end, but you still like life, I believe that. This life was the light of all mankind. If you're in science, if you're in the communications industry, if you're an art or a gardener or a rancher or a farmer or an ophthalmologist or you're in TV or radio or media or cell technology, if you're big about satellite, any of those things, they all use light. If you Google the light spectrum and call it up, you'll see on one end TV and radio and shortwave and all that stuff. Then you have visible light in the middle. You've got infrared, UVA, X-ray, all those invisible kinds of light. You get to the far end and you have gamma knife technology. On the one end, you've got Dr. Phil. On the other end, you've got brain surgery. Do you think God knew when He said, let there be light? That's what it was about. If you're a rancher or a farmer, you know the whole food chain depends on light. Nothing grows. There is no life on this planet without light. Then you get this guy John the Baptist who says he's not the light but he's coming to tell you about it. If you're a PR guy or into content marketing or event planning or public speaking or you're a speech writer, he's your guy. If you're a critiker of culture, if you're going to write an op-ed for the LA Times or the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal or your favorite magazine, if you're going to reflect on the Times, John the Baptist your guy. And then you get to this part where it said he came to his own. He created all this, came to his own and he got rejected. And at that point in the story, we say, aha, I identify with that whatever my role, that's a human thing. I think most of us listening to this podcast including the guy talking on it, we know about rejection at some level where somebody says, well, you're not qualified or you're not good enough or you're not tall enough to be a great basketball player or you're too tall to be a fighter pilot, okay? Or your background or your ethnicity or your location or your track record is a disqualifier. He came to his own creation and his own people did not receive him. So if you're a therapist or a psychologist or you're walking people through stuff, this part touches where you live. But then it goes on to say yet to all who did receive him, how did they receive him? To all who believed in his name, they get this, they get authority, become children of God. Believing big verb here, this writer uses that action verb 98 times in just a few chapters. Because for him, it's not about systems, it's not about belief, it's about believing, it's about trusting, okay? And what you or I believe about anything touches everything in our life. I love what the old preacher of yesterday said, A.W. Tozer, what comes to mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you? And some of us when we think about God, we think about us. I've been there, I tried to do that, found out I wasn't why I heard to be my own God, I don't have enough range, I don't have enough insight or foresight, or my hindsight is messed up, whatever it is. Anyway, when I believe I get authority, it's a really interesting combination. And I get authority to become a child. What mean? Who talks about putting authority rights or capacity, power, and kids in the same sentence? Oh, you might have a cartoon about power rangers, but the fact is that this juxtaposition of trust and authority and being a child is a powerful thing. How many times in my 80 years I thought, oh, to be a kid again, not in terms of having to go through all this stuff, but just in terms of energy, or when you're a little kid, everything is a first. And I mean, it's all discovery, and we can go on and on. And then it comes to the last part. And that word, Almighty God, becomes flesh. Incarnation is the word that's used. And he camps out with us. There he is. We've seen his glory full of grace and truth. The two things we need in our lives are we need, we need somebody to tell us the truth about life, about us, about what to expect. It's been the big question the last two or three years, hasn't it? What's true? I get asked that question more than any of the questions. What's true? We need someone to tell us the truth. And we need somebody to give us grace. The person to give both of those to me, and perhaps to you, hopefully, is this Jesus of Nazareth person who is the light of all mankind. And this was a song that was sung back in those first hundred or two hundred years. People would gather together and sing that song with all of these pieces. The word and light and life and trusting and all of that. I think probably Patrick sang that song in some dimension in some way. As he went through Ireland, speaking truth, bringing grace to the people of that place. Well, that's my best story. I can tell you a hundred other stories going forward. They won't be better than that. They won't be more current than that. They won't be more energizing than that. They won't bring you more hope than that. Do I sound like I'm preaching on my birthday? That's absolutely what I'm doing. So you're stuck with it. And God bless. Great to be with you. We'll catch you next time when I'm already on my 81st journey around the sun. Several days in. Catch you later. Bye-bye. You