Their memory, and our remembrance
Sermon on the Feast of the Saints of Wales, Sunday 15 November 2020
at the Church of the Holy Trinity, in the Ministry Area of Bro Tudno
The Ministry Area is following a teaching lectionary, with passages drawn from the Gospel according to St Matthew, during the Sundays of September, October and November. The readings, and the order of service as used at Holy Trinity, can be found here.
Listen to the Gospel of Christ according to Saint Matthew.
Glory be to you, O Lord.
At that time: Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. Again he sent other slaves, saying, “Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.” But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his slaves, maltreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. Then he said to his slaves, “The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.” Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.
‘But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?” And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, “Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”’
This is the Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, O Christ.
Tell those who have been invited: everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.
Our former Churchwarden, Geoffrey, is celebrating a landmark birthday today. He told me that he couldn’t believe how old he was. But, fortunately for us, as well as wishing him well before the service began, I was also able to take advantage of his great age and to check the beginning of this sermon with him for historical accuracy.
I want you to come back in time with me. To the year 550, in fact; almost a millennium and a half ago; we’re closer to the days of Jesus Christ’s earthly ministry than we are to today. Stand with me on the West Shore. Behind you, there is no Imperial or Empire Hotel — indeed, the empire for which they’re named hasn’t yet existed; the empire on your mind would have been the Roman Empire, whose centurions had finally withdrawn from around here about a century earlier — their fort down the Conwy valley, in Canovium (what is now the churchyard at Caerhun), the fort that had once housed a regiment of 500 foot-soldiers, by now slowly becoming overgrown, the locals stealing the stones for their barns and shepherds’ huts.
Stand there with me on the West Shore in the year 550, and what is there to see? What is there of note in this cold, wet, faraway place, at the edge of what was civilization. What is there here, at the end of the world?
And the answer is saints.
As well as foot-soldiers and straight roads, the Roman Empire had brought with it Christianity to this part of the world — not a wholehearted conversion effort — for much of the time the worship of Jesus the Christ was one religious impulse amid an assembly of household gods and secretive cults. But come Christianity did, and — sustained by merchants who travelled by sea trade routes, even this far, from the Mediterranean and Brittany and Ireland, and unchecked by pagan Anglo-Saxon invaders who never made it here — tiny, tiny pockets of Christianity stayed.
So stand with me on the West Shore, in the year of Our Lord 550, and look around you at the age of the Welsh saints. To your right, to the north, on the Orme, Tudno lives, penitentially studying and surviving in his cave. Ahead of you, to the west, across on Anglesey, Seiriol prays in his glade, the waters of his holy well promising healing and wholeness. To your left, to the south, in her cell at the base of the cliffs, Gwynin worships Mary’s Son, her light and her hope. And on the horizon, down the river valley, Celynnin and his brother Rhychwyn, in their separate hill-top hideaways, whisper to travellers along the drovers’ roads of Jesus of Nazareth and the wisdom of his Way. Around you, in caves and cells, by the well, on the hillside, bread is broken and wine outpoured, “Our Father” on their lips as on ours.
Tell those who have been invited: everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.
Since September, we’ve been working our way through the Gospel according to St Matthew.
It’s a gospel of homely images — the familiar, the everyday given the power to speak about the things of heaven. The shepherd returning with the lost sheep on his shoulders, the mustard seed tiny in your hand, the woman kneading her dough. Familiar, everyday things full of hope, full of promise about what will be — the flock gathered together again, the afternoons spent in the tree’s shade, the warm bread on the table.
But there’s a chill wind that blows through the gospel of Matthew, too. Our familiar failures and fears are there. As in today’s readings, there are slaves and bullies, and lies and excuses, and damage and disappointment and hurt.
Alongside the promise of what makes us whole, we get to see the consequences of our brokenness. The wedding banquet where we know we belong, and the fear and the guilt and the denial that keeps us away.
Tell those who have been invited: everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.
November is a time of remembering, of remembrance, of memorializing, of memory.
Perhaps it’s the long, dark evenings in front of flickering flames in fireplaces that makes us reminisce.
Perhaps it’s the leaf’s fall — the dying of things — the stripping back to skeletal branches — that makes us think about things passing.
Perhaps it’s the cold churn of the sea. “Time, like an ever-rolling stream, / bears all its sons away.”
There’s a sort of remembering, of remembrance, that makes us bitter. Things are not what they were. Who has taken the good old days away from us. Make America great again. And there’s a sort of memorializing, of memory, that makes us mawkish, that traps us regretting the passing of things we can’t have again yet once seemed ours for ever.
The best remembrance, things properly done in memory, build us up, feed us, and sustain us on our way.
Tell those who have been invited: everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.
Stand with me on the West Shore today. Why do we remember those saints, why do we hold their memory to be precious, these strange men and women from an age ago?
This year, their example has meant more to me than ever — because in our strange days, I’ve found myself remembering the ways in which they, in their strange days, kept things together.
They lived lives of faith that combined isolation and withdrawal with a connectedness and an outward zeal. Their cells and caves, their glades and hilltops, were where they withdrew, where they gathered into themselves, where they encountered God in isolation and silence. Yet their history also tells us that they were connected and missionary, dispersing, on the move, telling the story, taking the faith to new places. From their memory, I learn that I need time to gather and be still; and I need to be ready to share joy and kindness and testimony.
They lived lives of hope that combined a knowledge of their need for forgiveness with an abundant flowing of blessing. The first lists of sins, the most established early practice of confession, belong to the Celtic saints. They were strict with themselves, and harsh about their personal failings. Yet their prayers — even the very places where they gathered — speak also of blessing: of earth and creation commended to God, of abundance and thankfulness. From their memory, I learn that I need to look inward with penitence; and I need to leap outward with pleasure and delight.
And they lived lives of love that meant that, though things felt dark and even deathly, they nurtured the most precious light and life. They knew the peril of their existence, these Celtic saints — they even wrote of their ministry (exposed to the elements, lived on the edge) as a sort of martyrdom; and they must have felt the fragility of the faith they clung to — how easily it could have been wiped out and might yet be. And yet we know that from their lives and their witness, there shone out such a light that we still bathe in it today. Their memory, and our remembrance of it, sustaining the faith, passing it on, that light, that bread, that wine, those prayers, from generation to generation, even unto the present age.
Tell those who have been invited: everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.
