Good morning, Friends! Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day, which is a big holiday in many communities. More than 30 million people here in the United States claim to have Irish ancestors. That makes us one of the largest ethnic groups, almost 10% of the entire country!
Most of the Irish came here because of the Great Famine, which started in 1845. It was not a happy time. Before the Famine, Ireland had a population of about 8 million. During the Famine, more than a million people starved to death, even while the landlords kept on collecting rents and exporting food to other countries. More than a quarter of the entire country left Ireland – 2 million people. Most of them came to America, including my mother’s family. Almost none of the Irish had any papers.
They brought with them a great love of family, both the ones they’d lost, and the ones who were born here. They didn’t care about leprechauns and shamrocks – all those things you see on cards and decorations are just a lot of nonsense and commercialism.
The Irish had a great love of nature. We love the color green, because Ireland gets a lot of rain all year long, so it’s a beautiful, green country.
The Irish have a natural love of quiet – the quiet of the open air and open sky, the quiet of fields and forests and seashores. That quiet makes many Irish people great poets, who feel the songs of life in their blood, and turn those songs into words.
The Irish tend to be people of deep faith. We know that God is always close to us. Both prayer and action come easily to the Irish.
People always think that St. Patrick was the most famous Irishman of all time. Actually, Patrick was born and raised in England. He was kidnapped by Irish raiders when he was 16 years old. They took him to Ireland, and made him into a slave. They made him watch after the sheep, out in the wild, where he was lonely and almost starved to death.
A few years later, Patrick escaped from slavery. He walked all the way across the country, and found a boat to take him home.
But somewhere in that journey, Patrick became a Christian. He studied and learned to read. And he felt that God was calling him back to Ireland, to talk about Jesus to the very same people who had enslaved him.
He became a priest, and then a bishop, and a missionary. He made converts. He started churches and schools. He negotiated peace treaties with the warrior chiefs of the different clans.
All of this was very early, only about 400 years after the time of Jesus.
Patrick himself left us very little in writing. He wrote a very short autobiography. He describes himself as a country fellow, with very little education. He actually says very little about himself. He said that all the credit belongs to Christ. It’s not about me, Patrick said. It’s all about Jesus.
He also left a famous prayer. It’s called St. Patrick’s Breastplate – like the armor worn for protection by a warrior. And it’s been translated and adapted many times over the years.
In one part of the prayer, Patrick says:
I arise today through a mighty strength,
Calling on the Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
Confessing of the Oneness of the Creator of creation.
I arise today, with the strength and obedience of the angels,
In the hope of resurrection,
With the prayers of faithful people of old,
With the sayings of the prophets,
With the teaching of the apostles,
With the faith of the martyrs,
With the deeds of righteous people.
I arise today, with the strength of heaven,
With the light of the sun,
With the radiance of the moon,
With the splendor of fire,
With the speed of lightning and wind,
With the depth of the sea,
With the firmness of the earth,
With the strength of mountains.
I arise today,
With God’s strength to pilot me,
With God’s might to uphold me,
With God’s wisdom to guide me,
With God’s eye to look before me,
With God’s ear to hear me,
With God’s word to speak for me,
With God’s hand to guard me,
With God’s shield to protect me,
With God’s host to save me.
Christ with me,
Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,
Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every one who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks about me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
We sang a part of that prayer in the first hymn we sang here at Springfield this morning. It’s a prayer worth learning, and remembering, and saying again.
When we get up in the morning, Patrick says, we don’t just roll out of bed, rub our eyes and scratch ourselves. We arise, with all those things that Patrick talks about. When we fall down in life, or make a mistake, Patrick says, we arise, with fresh strength from God, with guidance and hope.
Even when we die, Patrick says, we don’t die forever. We arise!
Wherever we go, Patrick says, Jesus is with us. Whoever sees us, Patrick says, they should see Christ, shining in us, speaking through us, living in us. Is it any wonder, that people still remember him?
Today our scripture is a very good one. It’s part of the series we’ve been doing, from the gospel of Luke. The series is leading us up to Easter, in just a few weeks.
But it’s also appropriate, as I’ll explain in a few minutes, to go with St. Patrick’s Day, and with the kind of prayer and spiritual life that Patrick talked about.
Jesus took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray. As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning.
Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus. They spoke about Jesus’ departure, which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem.
Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him.
As the men were leaving Jesus, Peter said to him, “Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” (He did not know what he was saying.)
While he was speaking, a cloud appeared and covered them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. A voice came from the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.”
When the voice had spoken, they found that Jesus was alone. The disciples kept this to themselves and did not tell anyone at that time what they had seen.
Luke 9:28-36
Last week, if you were here, we read about a time when Jesus made supper for a huge crowd, more than 5,000 people, starting with just a handful of bread, and a couple of dried fish.
Today, we’ve got another miracle, one that’s even harder to believe in. About a week after Jesus fed the crowd, he took three of his closest friends with him, and they climbed a mountain together.
They went up the mountain to pray, which is something we all need to do more often. When they got to the top of the mountain, Jesus’ friends were exhausted, and they fell asleep. When they woke up, Jesus was praying. And he didn’t look like the Jesus they knew. His face was shining. He looked transformed.
They thought they saw Moses and Elijah, the greatest law-giver of Israel and Israel’s greatest prophet, standing there with on either side of Jesus.
They were talking with Jesus, and they were saying that Jesus was going to leave them, after Jesus went to Jerusalem. Jesus’ friends didn’t know it, but Moses and Elijah were talking about Easter, and the Resurrection.
And then, a cloud rolled in on top of the mountain. And they felt a voice speaking. It wasn’t just a whisper, as so many prayers are. It filled their minds and their hearts.
The voice seemed to say, “This is my Son, my chosen one; listen to him!”
And then the clouds rolled away, and bright daylight shone around Jesus. And they didn’t know what to say.
Maybe not such a difficult miracle to understand, at all.
There’s a beautiful phrase that Irish people have. They talk about thin places.
Thin places are places where God seems much closer than usual. A thin place might be a spring, or a mountaintop. It might be a country chapel, or it might be the place where a saint was buried.
The Irish had a saying that “. . .heaven and earth are only three feet apart, but in the thin places that distance is even smaller.”
The Bible is full of thin places – think about Moses and the burning bush, Jacob’s dream of the ladder up to heaven, Elijah and the still, small voice. or Jesus in the garden on Easter morning.
Thin places are special times and special places where God seems closer and more real to us than usual.
It’s as though the hard, solid wall which we imagine between our everyday lives and Heaven suddenly has holes and becomes porous. The light leaks through, and suddenly we see the whole world – earth and Heaven – much differently.
Children are very good at finding thin places. I think that when Jesus told his friends that “unless you become like a little child, you will never enter the kingdom of Heaven,” Jesus was thinking about that special ability children have to recognize places where God is shining through.
Adults are much too busy to notice places like that. We’ve got lots of other things to do – important things. Grown-up things. We can’t be bothered to stop and notice the places where God is present. Something enormous has to happen, before grown-ups will stop and see that God is really here.
Thin places are much more common than we realize. God is always breaking in to our safe and well-ordered world. God is much closer to us than we think. Not miles way. Not three feet away. Just maybe that far away.
I don’t think you have to believe in miracles for today’s story to be important. The point is that where Jesus and his friends were on the mountain that day was a thin place, a gateway to Heaven, a window where God’s light and God’s voice could come shining into them.
You can call it a dream, or a vision, or simply a deeper reality. But when we’re open, with the faith of a child, or when God breaks us open, with a moment in a thin place like this, we see what’s been surrounding us, all the time.
Which – is kind of like what St. Patrick said.