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There are movements beginning all over the world. Movements that are using media, sound bytes, colors, drama, dancing, rock music, rap music, opera, polka, punk, ska, reggae, choir, and even Hymns. They are using food, movies, flashing lights, smoke machines, candles, incense, meditation. There are ministries for smokers, drinkers, hookers, homeless, gamblers, and your average Joes. Sometimes the church will launch a new ministry, and when our attendance increases, we’ll pat ourselves on the back. May we remember, this didn’t start with us…this didn’t even start with St. Patrick, though he did a great job of utilizing it.

Jesus Christ walked the earth until his 30’s. He lived among the people. He got to know them, and understood their language and their culture. He laughed with their joys, and he cried with their pains. So maybe this started with Jesus Christ? That’s where I thought I’d go with this.

But the truth is…this all started with God the creator.

He created something out of dust, and breathed life into it. He loved it, because it came from him. God wanted to show love, and minister to this creation. And so He created a partner for it…woman. They had been given a garden. Full of beauty meant to affect the senses. Sounds of life, living creatures. Visual affects of flowers, amazing animals with colors so gorgeous. Fruits so delicious, sounds so harmonious, sights so beautiful, soft grasses, communion with a living God. Everything about this was designed for mankind to worship God through.

I close with the end of a prayer known as St. Patrick’s “Breastplate” Prayer:

The people of Ireland were what England considered “barbarians”. Up to this date, every missionary effort was not only to Christianize a region, but to civilize as well. To spread not only a Christian mind set, but a culture that was similar to those who were witnessing. But this land…the language was not known. The cultures were not understood. They could not risk sending someone here. But Patrick had lived here among them. He knew their language, he knew their cultures, he knew the people, and he loved them. With these things, he and a small entourage set out to love the people of Ireland.

Through writings that we have from Patrick during his time of ministry in Ireland, we learn things about him. A quote from Thomas Cahill observes that:
“His love for his adopted people shines through his writings, and it is not just a generalized “Christian” benevolence, but a love for individuals as they are….He worries constantly for his people, not just for their spiritual but for their physical welfare…Patrick has become an Irishman.”

It is said that when Patrick spoke to these “pre-Christians”, he spoke with sufficient dynamism to engage the Celtic people who were used to eloquent speakers and splendid storytellers. Patrick’s results suggest that he competed effectively with their indigenous communicators.

The church today has the same call that Patrick felt, when he left “his comfort zone”, and went to a people who needed God’s love. He went among them. Learned their culture, learned their needs, and learned how God loves them.

Reading through this story of Patrick, and even the details of the rest of his life, there are many things for us to learn. But I want to focus on the 3 changes that occurred in Patrick that led to his ministry in Ireland.

First – Patrick got to know God. He didn’t spend hours reading theological journals, he didn’t even have a Bible, and he wasn’t reading Holiness Today. These are all good ways to know about God, and to know God some…but Patrick spent time in the natural revelation of God. He was able to look at the world, the way everything was designed, and see God revealing himself through colors, movement, and life. He spent time listening and watching, and knowing this God.

Second – Patrick came to know the people of Ireland. Through his time in Ireland, Patrick learned their language, their culture. He learned what needs they had as a people, and how they went about fulfilling them. He knew names. He was looked on as an honorable servant, and became trusted among the people he lived with.

Third – Patrick grew to love his captors. These people he lived with. This is something that didn’t begin with his desire to “sell God” to these people, to reap whatever rewards he would receive in Heaven. This came from the desire of Love. As Patrick knew God closer and closer, and as he grew to know the people of Ireland, He developed a God-love for these people. He began to hope and pray for the day they would be saved.

Come back tomorrow for a few final thoughts…

In the late 4th Century A.D., Patrick was growing up in what is now NorthEast England. His people were “Britons”, one of the “Celtic” peoples then populating the British Isles, though Patrick’s aristocratic family had gone “Roman” during Roman occupation of England. So Patrick was more culturally Roman than Celtic. His family was Christian, and his grandfather was a priest. Patrick heard some of the teachings through his family, but became only somewhat of a Christian. He ridiculed the clergy, and lived toward the “wild side”.

When Patrick was 16, a band of Celtic pirates from Ireland invaded his region. He and several other young men were captured and forced onto a ship. They sailed to Ireland, and Patrick was sold into slavery to a prosperous tribal chief and druid named Miliuc, who put Patrick to work herding cattle.

During his years as a slave, Patrick experienced 3 major changes.

First, periods when Patrick was isolated in the wilderness herding cattle connected him with what theologians call the “natural revelation” of God. He sensed with the winds, the seasons, the creatures, and the nights under the stars the presence of God; he identified this presence as the Triune God he had learned about from his family. Here’s a quote from Patrick…

“After I had arrived in Ireland, I found myself pasturing flocks daily, and I prayed a number of times each day. More and more the love and fear of God came to me, and faith grew and my spirit was exercised, until I was praying up to a hundred times every day and in the night nearly as often.”

Patrick became a devout Christian, and the change was obvious to his captors.

Second, Patrick changed in another way…he came to understand the Irish Celtic people, and their language and culture, with the kind of intuitive profundity that is usually possible only, as in Patrick’s case, from the “underside”.

Third, Patrick came to love his captors, to identify with them, and to hope for their reconciliation to God. One day, he would feel they were his people.

One night, after 6 years in captivity, a voice spoke to Patrick in a dream, saying, “You are going home, Look! Your ship is ready!” The voice directed him to flee for his freedom the next morning. He awakened before daybreak, walked to a seacoast, saw the ship, and negotiated his way on board.

Patrick returned to England, trained as a Priest, and served as a Priest in a parish in England.

One night, at the age for 48 – Patrick experienced another dream that was to change his life again. An angel named Victor approached him with letters from his former captors in Ireland. As he read one of the letters, he imagined that he heard the voice of those people, and they cried out as one voice, “We appeal to you, holy servant boy, to come and walk among us.”

When Patrick woke up the next morning, he interpreted the dream as a call to take the Gospel to the Celtic peoples of Ireland. He asked the bishops to be sent on this mission. With the encouragement of the Pope, and the leaders, he was ordained as a bishop, and appointed to Ireland, as history’s first missionary bishop.

Why is this all significant? Come back tomorrow for more of the story!!!