St Aidan: Flame of the North and Light for Today

Here's my sermon for today's Group Service at Redbourne, celebrating Aidan.

Picture by Tom Richardson from geograph.org.uk and wikicommons.org

1 Corinthians 9:16–19

For when I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, since I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! If I preach voluntarily, I have a reward; if not voluntarily, I am simply discharging the trust committed to me. What then is my reward? Just this: that in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of charge, and so not make full use of my rights as a preacher of the gospel.

Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible.

John 13:16-20

Jesus said “Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.

“I am not referring to all of you; I know those I have chosen. But this is to fulfil this passage of Scripture: 'He who shared my bread has turned against me.'

“I am telling you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe that I am who I am. Very truly I tell you, whoever accepts anyone I send accepts me; and whoever accepts me accepts the one who sent me.”

Today's service is focused on Aidan of Lindisfarne, who is commemorated in the church calendar on 31st August.

We don't know much about Aidan, but we do know that he came from the monastery on Iona.  That monastery was founded by Columba and became an important centre of religious practice and literacy.  Aidan was sent by the fifth Abbot of Iona, Ségéne, to help King Oswald bring Christianity to Northumbria. Oswald was also raised on Iona, and may have been friends with Aidan there.

This morning I want to draw out three aspects of Aidan's life and think about what they might mean for us today.

Creation

The first is Aidan's connection with creation.  Aidan belonged to the Celtic stream of Christianity, which again we know little of for sure, but there does seem to be a particular connection with the natural world.  Like the early monastic communities which were formed in the desert by people like Anthony of Egypt, Columba wanted a place away from the populated areas, away from the hustle and bustle of life which might distract him and his fellow monks from their connection with God.  When Oswald invited Aidan to set up a monastery in Northumbria, he didn't choose a place on the mainland next to Bamburgh, where Oswald's power base was, instead Aidan chose Lindisfarne, now known as Holy Island.  Aidan valued its peace and solitude when the tide was in, cutting it off from the mainland; and also the ease with which he could travel across when the tide was out.

However, unlike the desert, Lindisfarne was not just chosen for its peace and solitude, the environment itself was also aid to contemplation and worship.  Aidan has been said to be “the St Francis before St Francis”, which is why we started the service with a hymn based on Francis' words.  Aidan, along with others in the Celtic stream of Christianity, saw nature as participating in the worship of God as well as helping us to see truths about our Creator through his creation.  The Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 1:20 “God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”

The prayer attributed to Aidan that's on the back of the service sheets [and at the bottom of this page] also illustrates how the rhythms of nature guided his schedule: when the tide was in and he was cut off from the world it reminded him that he was to be holy and set apart from God, and to make time to be with him; when the tide was out and he was connected to the world again it reminded him that he was to take that presence of God into the world, so that others might come to know God too.

For us, Aidan's spirituality reminds us of the importance of the natural world.  However, it also provides a reason for our care for the environment.  Too often the environmental movement bases it campaigning on one of two reasons.  It sometimes appeals to the selfish desire to live in a nice world, or for our children or grandchildren to live in a nice world.  Or it sometimes, either implicitly or explicitly, has a neo-pagan motivation saying that by damaging the environment we incur the wrath of nature deities like Mother Earth, and so we need to appease them by caring for the environment.

In contrast, Aidan's care for and appreciation of the natural world sprung from his belief that the world was created by a loving Creator, for us to enjoy and for our benefit; not just in providing us a place to live and with food to eat, but also to teach us about the Creator and so join in with the creation's praise of God.

Care for the poor

The second aspect of Aidan's life I want to highlight was his identification with and concern for the poor.  Many of the stories about Aidan speak about his humility and his rejection of personal wealth.  As Bede recorded, often when Aidan was given money he went to the slave market to purchase a slave’s freedom – and then also offered to educate them.

Two of the most famous stories about Aidan are about his humility and his concern for the poor.

At one Easter feast with Oswald there was a crowd of hungry, destitute people outside the castle, asking for food.  Under Aidan's influence, Oswald ordered that the feast should be taken out to the people, and that the silver dishes that it was served on should be broken up and distributed among them so that they could eat another day too.

Many years later, when Oswald's son Oswin was king, Oswin presented Aidan with a fine horse with royal trappings as a gift to help him on his journeys around Northumbria.  Almost immediately Aidan gave it away to a beggar he met on the road.  When Oswin found out, he was furious, but Aidan responded that the beggar was a son of God and therefore worth more than the son of a mare.  Oswin realised his pride and asked for forgiveness.

Aidan preferred walking on his missionary journeys rather than riding a horse, partly so that he could identify the exact needs of the people he encountered and minister to them in specific ways.  Paul's words in our first reading speak of him being a slave to all so that he might win as many as possible – Aidan had the same attitude.  Both of them could have demanded a certain status and respect because of their positions; Paul as an apostle and Aidan as a bishop; but both of them waived those rights in order to be better able to serve those they came across.  They were both following Jesus' example and his instructions to his disciples as we see in Mark 10:42-45

“You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them.  Not so with you.  Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.  For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Now we are not apostles or bishops, but many of us have positions of authority or leadership, even if that's in a small matter or for a short time.  Aidan's example challenges us about how we use that authority or leadership or decision-making.  But that servant-leadership is not to be done because it is the most effective way to be productive, or even because it's what Jesus did.  Instead it needs to be done from a heart that sees everyone as someone who is made in the image and likeness of God, otherwise our leadership becomes manipulative and our charity becomes condescending and patronising.

Oswin realised that his pride stopped him seeing the image of God in everyone around him, perhaps our pride too stops us seeing people as Aidan did – what are our horses that we need to give up?

Evangelism

The final aspect of Aidan's life should be the most obvious, but it often gets overlooked in favour of his connection with creation, or his humility and care for the poor.

And that is of course, that Aidan's primary concern was to tell people about the gospel - the good news about salvation and life through repentance and faith in Jesus.  That was the reason Oswald asked Ségéne to send someone from Iona to Northumbria – so that his people could know for themselves the God who Oswald had come to faith in on Iona.

Aidan had that same compulsion to preach the gospel that Paul wrote about in our first reading: “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!”  That was the reason Aidan avoided the distractions of the busy-ness of life, or of possessions.  That was the reason he liked to walk; so that he could meet more people and spend more time getting to know them and talking to them about Jesus.  It was the reason that he was fearless in standing up to kings, because he was on a mission from the King of kings.  It was the reason he spent time training up priests, so that they too could go out and tell more people the gospel.  And it was probably because he trained and sent Hybald that Christianity first came to this area – and that we are here now.

However, Aidan wasn't successful everywhere he went.  As Jesus says in our reading from John's gospel – he himself would be rejected and so we shouldn't be surprised if we who follow him are rejected too.  But he also promised that those who accept us accept him too.  And those who accepted Aidan's message did so partly because they saw Jesus reflected in Aidan's life.

Aidan was not the first monk that Ségéne sent from Iona.  A monk called Corman had been sent, but after a few months he returned home complaining about the stubborn, uncivilised people he was supposed to serve.  Apparently, Aidan quietly enquired if he perhaps should have spoken more gently to them, giving them the milk of the gospel as to small babies. And Aidan was sent to replace him.

We're not all called to be missionaries, we're not all called to what Columba called 'white martyrdom' that is leaving everything to go where God calls us to go.  But all who call themselves Christian are called to the Great Commission of telling others about the gospel – the good news of about salvation and life through repentance and faith in Jesus.  Aidan gives us an example of not being distracted from this calling by other things, but also of making sure that its not just our words that point people towards Jesus but our actions as well.

Conclusion

The name Aidan means 'flame' in Gaelic, and so he is sometimes called “The Flame of the North.”  He is credited with bringing light to Northumbria in what used to be called the Dark Ages.  Because of him literacy became more widespread; kings gradually became less like warlords and more like just rulers; and care for the poor became part of what a king should do.  Of course, there are many examples of the opposite of those both then and right up to now.  But this change is only possible because of the light which Aidan brought, which is the light of the gospel of Jesus.

Ultimately, creation is only worth caring for because it is the creation of God.  Ultimately, people are only worth caring for because they are made in the image and likeness of God.  Ultimately, we are only equal because our value is not due to our status, our education, our wealth or our physical attributes, but because we are equally loved by God.  Aidan lived by this light, and he dedicated his life to passing this light on.

If he were here today, he might ask, humbly, gently and lovingly: is this the light you live by and do you know Jesus, the Light of the World?

Prayer attributed to Aidan