Jesus: Lord of Our Hearts

scenes from Glendalough, Ireland

June 7 Sermon by John Turner

Wow Texts from Paul’s Letters

In Colossians 1:11-23, the Apostle Paul asserts that Jesus Christ, the very image of God, is at the center of all creation—before, behind, beneath, above, and right in the middle of everything—the shining glory and ultimate fulfillment of life, the universe, and everything. Wow!

In Ephesians 1:15-23, another Wow text, Paul prays for us that:
1. We might have the eyes of our hearts enlightened, that our desires and decisions might be consistent with who God is and what he has planned for us.
2. We might know the hope to which he has called us, being renewed in his image through faith in Jesus Christ and being made fit to represent God’s glory both in this life and the next.
3. We might know the riches of God’s inheritance in the saints, the status that awaits us in the new creation when we will reign with Christ and share his unlimited power eternally.
4. We might know the immeasurable power that is ours even now, the same power by which Jesus was raised from the dead and exalted at the right hand of God, the same power by which Jesus rules over the evil powers and principalities, the same power by which he governs his true church and brings it toward fulfillment.
5. We might know that Christ is the source and measure of all fulfillment and so our lives will be pointed toward Christ and what he offers; we must let him be Lord of our hearts.

Celtic Roots and Spirituality

I know of no examples in history more fitting to illustrate Paul’s prayer being answered than examples drawn from Celtic Christianity. When I say Celtic Christianity, I am referring to the spirituality that first took root in Ireland between the 4th and 9th centuries A.D., and then spread back across Scotland, Wales, portions of England, and eventually the European continent.

America has strong Celtic roots, as is apparent in the traditional American folk music best preserved in Appalachia and the Ozarks. Those roots show right here in Berryville and in this congregation. How many of you have ancestors from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, or the Celtic portions of England? Furthermore, the Campbell-Stone Restoration Movement, of which First Christian Church of Berryville is a product, has very strong Celtic roots. When we talk about Celtic Christianity, we are talking about our own origins.

The Real St. Patrick

Let’s start with St. Patrick. As a wayward British adolescent, Patrick was captured by Irish raiders and enslaved as a shepherd in Ireland, held prisoner in the vicinity of his shepherd’s hut by his lack of means to flee back to Britain. Patrick, as a shepherd/slave, often cold and hungry, taught himself to pray without ceasing as a way of comforting himself and as a means of preserving his hope for freedom; as his prayer life matured, he became a powerful spiritual warrior.

Eventually, God revealed to him the providential means by which he could escape to return to Britain. God then called Patrick to go to France and to prepare himself to return to Ireland, his land of enslavement, as a Christian evangelist. Patrick’s mission to Ireland led to the founding of monasteries across Ireland where the Christian faith was preserved during a dark moment in human history when a vibrant and pure faith vanished from much of the rest of the British Isles and from the heart of Europe.

St Patrick’s Breastplate

According to traditional legend, there was a night when all fires in a certain section of Ireland were to be extinguished, and then re-lit from the king’s fire. One year the night that fires were to be extinguished coincided with the Easter vigil. Patrick stood on the hill of Slane about twenty miles from the king’s hill of Tara and at the proper moment lit a large forbidden but quite visible bonfire in honor of the risen Christ. The king sent troops to arrest Patrick and his supporters, but Patrick and his supporters found their way through the search party. According to the legend, the search party saw only a doe and her fawns when Patrick and his supporters passed through them. Patrick confronted the king to his face. The king was so moved by Patrick’s courage that he allowed Patrick’s Christian activity to proceed unhindered.

There are some historical problems with the tradition that have not yet been answered, but the tradition must preserve the real memory that Patrick daringly and successfully challenged the human and spiritual powers that were aligned against the progress of the gospel in Ireland.

Patrick’s success in such spiritual warfare is often credited to a prayer called, “St. Patrick’s Breastplate,” “The Deer’s Cry,” “The Lorica” or it may be known by its first line as, “I Bind unto Myself Today.” Here it is:

1. I bind unto myself today the strong Name of the Trinity,

By invocation of the same, the Three in One and One in Three.

2. I bind this day to me forever by power of faith, Christ’s incarnation;

His baptism in the Jordan River, His death on the cross for my salvation;

His bursting from the spicèd tomb, His riding up the heavenly way,

His coming at the day of doom, I bind unto myself today.

3. I bind unto myself the power of the great love of cherubim;

The sweet ‘Well done’ in judgment hour, the service of the seraphim,

Confessors’ faith, Apostles’ word, the Patriarchs’ prayers, the prophets’ scrolls,

All good deeds done unto the Lord and purity of virgin souls.

4. I bind unto myself today the virtues of the star lit heaven,

The glorious sun’s life giving ray, the whiteness of the moon at even,

The flashing of the lightning free, the whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,

The stable earth, the deep salt sea around the old eternal rocks.

5. I bind unto myself today the power of God to hold and lead,

His eye to watch, His might to stay, His ear to hearken to my need.

The wisdom of my God to teach, His hand to guide, His shield to ward;

The word of God to give me speech, His heavenly host to be my guard.

6. Against the demon snares of sin, the vice that gives temptation force,

The natural lusts that war within, the hostile men that mar my course;

Or few or many, far or nigh, in every place and in all hours,

Against their fierce hostility I bind to me these holy powers.

7. Against all Satan’s spells and wiles, against false words of heresy,

Against the knowledge that defiles, against the heart’s idolatry,

Against the wizard’s evil craft, against the death wound and the burning,

The choking wave, the poisoned shaft, protect me, Christ, till Thy returning.

8 Bridge: Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me,

Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me.

Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,

Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

9. I bind unto myself the Name, the strong Name of the Trinity,

By invocation of the same, the Three in One and One in Three.

Of Whom all nature hath creation, Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:

Praise to the Lord of my salvation, salvation is of Christ the Lord.

In the first stanza, Patrick binds to himself the armor of the strong name of the Trinitarian God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In the second stanza, the piece of armor consists of Christ’s life, his incarnation, baptism, death, resurrection, ascension, and future return.

Stanza 3's piece of armor comes from angelic beings, truthful witnesses, apostles, patriarchs, prophets, good deeds, pure hearts, and faithful servants.

Stanza 4's piece of armor comes from the creation’s stars, sun, moon, lightning, wind, earth, sea, and rocks.

Stanza 5’s piece of armor is God’s power to respond to our needs: holding, leading, watching, staying, hearing, teaching, guiding, shielding, speaking, guarding.

Stanzas 6 and 7 describe what the armor protects against: sin, vice, temptation, lust, hostility, enmity, Satan, demons, heresy, idolatry, sorcery, corruption, poisoning, burning, drowning, wounding.

Stanza 8, with a different meter and therefore set to a different tune, is an appeal for Christ to be with us, behind and before us, in and through us, beneath and above us, in every thought and action of ours and of those who behold us.

Stanza 9 repeats in greater detail the appeal to the armor of the Trinity. You may wish to use this song as your own prayer on a regular basis.

The Heart of Celtic Spirituality

What impresses me about this prayer is the relation that it sees between the material and the spiritual. No part of our faith or of our lives is excluded. The prayer is at once grounded in the Bible and in our daily, down-to-earth living. It is at once spiritual and physical. The unseen and the seen are not separated. Because God is Creator and Sovereign, and because Jesus was incarnate and resurrected, and because the Holy Spirit is present and active in the hearts and minds of believers, bodily realities are spiritually significant. But because the spiritual is in charge, the physical realities, even inanimate things such as the sun and the wind, are answerable to the spiritual, and may be used to communicate spiritual truths or to serve spiritual purposes. This is the heart of Celtic spirituality. I long for more of it in my own life.

St. Patrick’s prayer is quite realistic about the fact that we are caught in the middle of spiritual warfare. We live in spiritually-naive times when many are unaware of the dangers of twisted spirituality. Not so this prayer. It knows that eternal outcomes are at stake in our spiritual choices and that we need divine assistance to choose rightly.

But no matter how real the danger, the most powerful thrust of this prayer is in the blessing that Christ may be in all, through all, and surrounding all. The goal of our lives is to become embodiments of Christ’s presence, manifestations of his glory through which others may behold his story. We live in times in which many think that they can re-imagine Jesus as they choose to support whatever view of life they deem best; it is quite another thing to recognize that Christ can control every aspect of our lives and re-imagine us.

Celtic Monastics

In the Celtic monasteries of Ireland and later in Britain, life was divided into three segments: prayer, study, and work. Food and sleep were minimized for the sake of prayer. Prayer was offered in many forms. Sometimes they stretched out their arms as though on a cross. When they grew too weary to hold their arms out or too tired to stay awake, they might walk into the ocean or a lake to seek support and wakefulness from the cold water, standing with the water up to their necks. A legend says that St. Kevin of Glendalough in Ireland once remained so still that a bird nested in his outstretched hand, and he refused to leave his position until the eggs hatched and the babies flew. Even the existence of such a legend testifies to the extraordinary devotion that these saints demonstrated. And we thought the robin at our church door was something! But our concern for that robin and her babies is a bit of our Celtic spirituality.

Be Thou My Vision

The theme of Christ being in, through, and above all shows up in the most representative hymn of the Celtic Christianity: “Be Thou My Vision, O Lord of My Heart.” No hymn makes clearer the prayer that our vision in life may be centered upon Christ, the highest love of our hearts, indeed, as the more modern translation makes clear, both the Lord of our hearts and the Ruler of all.

Celtic Saints

I would love to talk to you about St. Columba, St. Aidan, St. Chad, St. Cuthbert, and St. Columbanus through which Celtic Christian spirituality moved out from Ireland across Britain, and back to Europe. But I have time to offer only a few general observations. What strikes me about these saints of our faith is that their lives and ministries were thoroughly rooted and grounded in scripture and prayer and deeply respectful of their created environments and their fellow creatures, and in extraordinary harmony with them. As they traveled, they chanted scripture and prayed. New missions and new locations were always purified through prayer and fasting. Decisions were often made with a clear sense of God’s leading and empowerment. And their obvious devotion had a converting power upon those who observed these great leaders.

What We Must Do

What is impressing itself very deeply on my mind is that we cannot expect to succeed in God’s mission unless all that we do is similarly rooted and grounded. I do not mean that we must pray with our arms outstretched or with water up to our necks, but we must find that combination of prayer, study, and work by which God’s leading and empowering become part of our daily experience as a church, and by which others may through us connect to God’s presence. I want to emphasize that it is especially in our prayer life that God is able to mold us ever more deeply into his image. As we pray for help in living out God’s will for our lives, in completing our part in God’s mission for us, we must submit ourselves to God’s reshaping of our lives, and to the miracles that he would work through us.

St. Francis

No one captured this vision better than St Francis. Francis came much later than Patrick and was not in a Celtic country, but he had a Celtic spirituality. He called upon Brother Sun and Sister Moon, Sister Water and Brother Fire, and even Sister Death, to praise the Lord. Everything reveals its Lord; everything can in its own way praise the Lord. We live in materialistic times in which material things are seen as having material causes. It is a radical reformation for us to begin to see material things as being spiritually governed and spiritually revelatory. Celtic spirituality from St. Patrick to St. Francis helps us make the connections between the spiritual and the material.

Drawing on Our Celtic Christian Roots

Modern sensibilities have not succeeded in putting things in quite the same way. We need to draw on ancient resources in order to be pointed toward these ways of seeing the Lord of our lives. We need these aids to help us see our hope, our inheritance, our power, our protection, our vision, our life, and our love in Christ.

We look to Christ in the beauties of the morning, the brightness of noon, the glories of the setting sun, in our highest achievements, and deepest pleasures, even in our dangers, our disappointments, our pains, our deaths, to find the meaning, the purpose, and the direction for each day. His suffering as well as his resurrection, his incarnation as well as his ascension, reveals his glory. St. Bernard of Clairvaux is able at once to speak of the sacred head wounded on the cross and of the joy and satisfaction that loving hearts find in Jesus; in his own hour of trial, he prays that even though “should I fainting be, Lord, let me never, never outlive my love to thee.” In every valley, on every mountain peak, Jesus outshines them all. Come to him. Let him be Lord of your heart. He will not disappoint.