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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Fellow Brothers in the Office of the Holy Ministry and Brother and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Leprechauns and pots of gold, green beer and other blarney—these things may be what come to our minds when we think of St. Patrick’s Day, but St. Patrick was a real, historical figure—who was born to a British family of clergy in the fourth or fifth century; who as a teenager was taken captive with others by slave-raiders to Ireland, where he was a literal shepherd; who as a young man escaped back to England, where he was educated and ordained; and who later spent the rest of his life as a missionary to Ireland, if not also as the country’s bishop and figurative shepherd. Our current hymnal, Lutheran Service Book lists Patrick among the saints who may be commemorated over the course of the Church Year, and today’s special Divine Service in connection with our Circuit 14 Pastor’s Meeting seemed a natural opportunity to do just that. Since L-S-B and its accompanying resources do not appoint any propers for the day, I nevertheless chose some from those I gathered by consulting others and their resources, both inside and outside of our own Lutheran tradition. For example, the Gospel Reading from St. Matthew’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account seemed especially appropriate, both for its commission given to the eleven disciples to make more disciples and for its explicit naming of the Triune God in connection with specifying the means by which those disciples were to be made. This morning we reflect on that Gospel Reading under the theme “St. Patrick’s Glory”.
The icon image of St. Patrick reproduced on the front of the service outline notably shows St. Patrick treading on serpents, as the Lord Jesus at least gave the seventy-two authority to do (Luke 10:19; confer Mark 16:18; Acts 28:3-5). Although some evidence may suggest Ireland never had snakes to begin with, a legend suggests St. Patrick chased all the snakes in Ireland into the sea, after at least some snakes attacked him, while he fasted for forty days on top of a hill (Wikipedia). We might think of the serpent in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3), of Moses’s lifting up a snake in the wilderness (Numbers 21:4-9), and of Jesus’s likewise being lifted up that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life (John 3:14-15). Those who do not believe in Jesus are condemned already, because they have not believed in the Name of the Only Son of God; they are judged to have loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil (John 3:18-19). By nature, you and I resemble that remark!
In today’s Gospel Reading, the second of two post-resurrection appearances by Jesus that St. Matthew narrates, the eleven disciples worship Jesus when they see Him, but some of them doubt. Their hearts are hesitant about something (BAGD, 200), and Holy Scripture reports that truth, even if doing so “mars the occasion and offends our ideas of what should have taken place” (Lenski, ad loc Matthew 28:17, 1169). Perhaps some of the eleven were confused about such things as what Jesus’s resurrection meant for them and why Jesus commanded them, as He had when He appeared to the women earlier (Matthew 28:8-10), to go to Galilee to meet Him (so Scaer, CTQ 55:248, favorably cited by Winger, Logia VII:2, 43-44). According to his usual biographical details, St. Patrick was not particularly pious before going to Ireland the first time and only really turned earnestly to God once there; later he received a divine message that he was to escape, which he did, until a vision “called” him back. We can imagine Patrick’s having his own doubts, both about what Jesus’s resurrection meant for him and about his own ministry, just as we might have our own doubts, both about what Jesus’s resurrection means for us and about our own ministry.
Bucolic Ireland’s lush vegetation and its one-time thick woodlands may come to mind when today’s psalm (96) describes creation as rejoicing before the Lord, but we should note well what the psalm says next about the reason for that rejoicing: namely, that the Lord comes to judge the earth, that He will judge the world in righteousness and the people in His faithfulness. Since we by nature are sinners, and since we apart from faith in Jesus Christ deserve nothing but death in this life and punishment for eternity, we can only rejoice in the coming judgment of the Lord as we turn in sorrow from our sin, trust God to forgive our sin, and want to do better than to keep on sinning. Then, God forgives our sinful natures and our actual sins, any sinful doubting—both about what the resurrection means for us and about our own ministry—or whatever else our sin might be. God the Father forgives all our sin, for the sake of His Son Jesus Christ, as we are led to so repent by the Holy Spirit.
According to another legend depicted on the icon, a legend that only first appears in writing in the 18th‑century, St. Patrick taught the Irish people about the nature of the Holy Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—by using a shamrock, which is essentially a three-leaf sprig of young clover, the name derived from the Irish word for “clover” (Wikipedia). A much-more-recent animated Lutheran satirical video has Irish peasants criticize St. Patrick for the apparently at least fictitiously‑named heresy of “partialism” (see Stack Exchange), that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not three distinct persons of one God but three different parts of one God, and so in the video St. Patrick is forced to confess that the Trinity is a mystery that cannot be understood by human reason but only accepted by faith and confessed as it is in creeds, such as the Apostolic, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds (YouTube). Those Creeds faithfully confess not only one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity, but they also faithfully confess the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who suffered for our salvation, descended into hell, rose again the third day from the dead, ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father—as the Athanasian Creed describes it. We are forgiven as we so faithfully believe, teach, and confess.
Faithfully believing, teaching, and confessing such saving faith in both the Trinity and the Incarnation, St. Patrick, legend says, refused to honor a heathen festival headed by an Irish high king; the king then plotted to kill Patrick, who with his men is said to have sung a song now popularly attributed to St. Patrick and so escaped unharmed from the king’s wrath, appearing as wild deer running away from the king (Precht, LW:HC, #172). This morning as our Closing Hymn (LSB 604), we will sing that song, which more-likely dates to the eighth century but nevertheless expresses Patrick’s faith and zeal, and you may note the hymn’s creedal content, which undoubtedly contributed to its being used with its 20th-century tune in connection with Holy Baptism. Just as at the beginning of St. Matthew’s Gospel account all Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan went out to John the Baptizer and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins (Matthew 3:5-6), so in today’s Gospel Reading at the end of St. Matthew’s Gospel account the eleven apostles and their successors, St. Patrick and pastors today, are commissioned to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to observe all things that Jesus commanded them. Children, even infants, are certainly included in all nations, and included in “all things” certainly are both individual Holy Absolution after private confession, regarding which St. Matthew provides unique details (Matthew 16:19; 18:18-20), and the Sacrament of the Altar, which St. Matthew and others make clear is Jesus’s body and blood for the forgiveness of sins (Matthew 26:26-28). All power and authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus, so He can be present when, where, and how He declares Himself so to be. In all these ways—Baptism, Absolution, and the Lord’s Supper—through the Office of the Holy Ministry’s purely preaching the Gospel and rightly administering the Sacraments, God the Father gives the Holy Spirit, Who works faith in Jesus Christ, when and where He pleases, in those who hear the Gospel. Jesus’s commission to the apostles is intended to address their doubts (so Scaer and Winger cited above), and so it should also address our doubts, our doubts both about what Jesus’s resurrection means for us and about our ministry.
According to one of two works that are generally attributed to St. Patrick, his character and career were seriously attacked by his contemporaries, for example, they apparently accused Patrick of a lack of learning, although few if any doubt his role in the conversion of pagan Irish people to the Christian faith. (The icon, Collect of the Day, and even the banners on the wall relate to Patrick’s role in “enlightening” the Irish.) Faithful missionaries before Patrick, such as St. Paul in today’s Epistle Reading (1 Thessalonians 2:2-12) and faithful pastors after Patrick such as those present today, should expect to suffer and otherwise to be treated shamefully, but we nevertheless declare the Gospel, not to please people but to please God Who tests our hearts. Of course, we remain open to correction from our people and from our brothers in the ministry, and, with daily repentance and faith, we live together with them in the forgiveness of sins.
Admittedly, St. Patrick’s Day as most know it is more a celebration of Irish heritage and culture than it is a celebration of Ireland’s patron saint, who is said to have begun his eternal life on this day centuries ago. Yet, even if the celebration of the Day were more about St. Patrick, surely such a faithful saint would have eschewed any glorifying of him and preferred all glorifying of the Lord. Today as we commemorate St. Patrick, we do so by thanking God for giving such faithful ministers to His Church; we commemorate St. Patrick by strengthening our faith by such an example of God’s mercy; and we commemorate St. Patrick by imitating his faith and other virtues according to our callings (Apology to the Augsburg Confession XXI:4-7). The Lord Jesus was and is “St. Patrick’s Glory”; all authority was given to Him, and He still today gives authority to those He sends, and in such ways He is with us always, to the end of the age.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +