Greatest Miracle

The greatest miracles in the New Testament, in my humble opinion, do not have to do with loaves and fishes, with healings and exorcisms, impressive though they may be. The greatest miracles are the changing of human hearts and firmly-held views. Nothing in this world is more difficult.

Today, we celebrate our parish patrons, Peter and Paul, and we remember that very miracle that is portrayed on the round medallion-style icon on our altar today: Peter and Paul embracing in love and respect. I am not sure if this ever literally happened. What I do know is that it is the most unlikely thing to have happened.

No two men from the ancient Middle East could have been more different. Peter, a working-class man from backwater Galilee, Jewish fisherman, most probably illiterate, portrayed as a waffling sort of man; Paul, an intellectual more like a university-type, intense and somewhat aristocratic and very learned, with strong opinions that he rarely changed, willing to do violence for his views before his life-transforming encounter with Jesus. Peter represented the Palestinian, inland Jewish community, who saw the message of Jesus as a Jewish message meant for observant Jews who would await his coming by keeping the Jewish Law more perfectly than the Pharisees; Paul represented the cosmopolitan view of the coastal cities of the Levant, who experienced the Good News as something more radical and more startling and the encompassing love of God as reaching out to a far larger, formerly alien and rejected Gentile world, Gentiles who would not be expected to become Jewish in order to embraced by the God of the Jews. Peter, quick to enthusiasm yet quick to waver; Paul, never changing his single-minded vision unless struck down and struck blind on the open road by nothing less than God.

They were once opponents. "I opposed Peter to his face" brags Paul in Galatians, when Peter tried to walk a cautious middle road between Gentiles and the older Jewish Christian believers.

But something changed, both in that meeting and in the vision they lived afterwards. Each gave a little, each opened their eyes to see the possibility that God was doing something important in the ministry and communities of the other. Each was willing to embrace, to put down something, in order to pick up something together. And in that messy, unresolved, humbling moment, something was born from the roots of a small, obscure messianic Jewish sect. The Church was born.

That's how the Church is always born: when we who have received a mission and a blessing see one another, and are willing to put something down that we may value, embrace, admit future possibilities that we may not fully understand, and walk together. That's how we grow. That's how this present parish of Saints Peter and Paul came to be. There were two churches--St. Peter's, St. Paul's. Each congregation put something aside, however unwillingly, and came to see in their embrace of one another and in their journey together the possibility of something new that they did not yet fully understand.

That is how the church is born.

And how are we called to give birth to the church today? How are we called to be most authentically that community of unlikely embrace, the church of Peter and of Paul? Who are we called upon to look upon, both within our midst and without, those whom we know and those whom we do not yet know? What are we called to put down that we may think precious? And how are we meant to walk with one another, and with others we do not yet imagine?

For that is how the church is born.

Columba

Columba, fiery Irish prince and Druid turned monk and priest, often ventured off his sacred island of Iona on restless missionary journeys. One of his most ambitious journeys was to the court of the Pictish King Brida, deep in what we now call the Scottish Highlands. It is told that on this journey, Columba was received as guest into King Brida's feasting-hall.

As Columba sat, honored as a guest according to ancient Celtic law, he saw seated on the King's right an immense man who was louder that anyone else in the feasting-hall. This immense man had an immense, booming voice, and he raised it in shouts and hoots of laughter and snatches of song as he raised on high a precious vessel, a crystal goblet from the distant and legendary land of Greece. Upon asking his neighbor, Columba learned that this man, large of body and large of presence, was Broisin, the King's personal and feared Druid--court poet, wizard, and the power behind the throne so potent that it was rumored that the king himself feared the hulking magician.

Behind that vast arrogant man, Columba saw a second silent figure hidden in the shadows. Columba peered and finally descried a teenaged girl, standing with head bowed behind Broisin. As she would dart forward with a look of terror to fill the huge man's goblet with mead when he gestured and swore, Columba knew that the girl was Broisin's slave. Columba noted the fear in her eyes, her ragged tunic, and a large bruise on her right cheek.

Columba found the courage and temerity to raise his voice and call out (for his voice was famously loud too), "Broisin, I have a guest-gift to ask of you."

The hall instantly hushed at the stranger-monk daring to ask the sacred guest-gift of the fearsome Druid. Broisin paused in his drinking long enough to glare beneath bushy brows at Columba. "And what is it you ask, little man?"

"Release your slave-girl."

Broisin stared while the gathering gasped at Columba's pure nerve, then hooted in contempt. Swinging the goblet to his lips, Brosin leered at the monk and asked, "Why? Do you wish to have her?"

"No, I just ask for her to be freed."

Broisin roared with mirth and contempt. Again swigging a great gulp of mead, he wiped his streaming lips and beard with the back of his free hand before shouting, "The guest-gift may be sacred, but you little man and your little strange God have no respect here. The curse of the crows to you and to your asking, and the girl stays mine."

Gasping now at this flagrant denial of the request made by a guest, the gathering stared now at Columba. Were he a warrior and a man of honor, the only answer to this insult would be to draw sword.

Columba stood slowly, locking eyes with Broisin. Turning to the king, he bowed his head respectfully, then with not another look at Broisin he spun on his heel and strode, robe and cloak flying, out of the hall, pursued by Broisin's scornful laughter. Columba's disciple Bathene hurrying along behind.

Bathene knew that Columba also had a temper, so he scurried after his abbot in silence until, almost two miles from the gates of King Brida's hall, Columba paused by the bank of a stream crossed by a narrow ford. Columba stooped and, to Bathene's puzzlement, began to dabble his hands in the water and pebbles at his feet.

Standing, Columba looked at his own palm and asked aloud, "Bathene, Broisin is a powerful man, is he not?"

Not knowing what his abbot was playing at, Bathene answered, "Yes, I suppose so, Father, very powerful."

"And powerful men only understand and respect power greater than their own, do they not?"

Still puzzled, Bathene answered, "Yes Father, I suppose that is true."

Columba then smiled a smile that was not altogether pleasant. He said, "Ah, but Bathene, do not forget that in the world of the Gospel it is the poor who are raised on high, and that it is through the weak of the world that God shames the strong."

Columba raised his hand and showed Bathene a small stone. "Do you see this stone, Bathene? Do you think it is large?"

"No Father, that is a rather small stone."

Columba tossed the stone in the air, and caught it with a flash and snap of his hand. "Small though it be, a big man will take great hurt from it. And now, Brother, it's your pardon I'm asking, for we have some walking to do." Columba turned and strode off, back towards Brida's hall, with Bathene again hurrying to keep pace.

Back at Brida's court, Broisin the Druid was louder than ever, bouyed by his humiliation of the stranger monk. At the moment that Columba tossed and caught the stone miles away, Broisin raised his precious goblet on high once more. Shouting, "It's to myself I drink!" he brought it to his lips.

Some say that as he did so, they saw a tiny glittering object drop from the rafters straight for the Druid's face. Other say not, but all agree that as Broisin tilted the goblet to drink his own health, the priceless cup shattered into a thousand glittering shards. They twinkled like stars as they fell to the rush-strewn dirt floor.

The crowd turned from the glass fragments in amazement to see a more amazing sight. For Broisin the Druid, that great fearsome man louder than loud, louder than a bull in heat, was silent, grasping his own throat with convulsive hands, face turning from his usual mead-soaked red to a deep purple. Gasping for very breath, the great man slowly collapsed to the floor where he curled like a tiny infant, heaving and wheezing to draw even one scant breath.

After their walk, Columba and Bathene found the gate of Brida's hall without guards as even they had gone to stand in the deep circle around the dying Druid. The crowd looked up as Columba and Bathene entered the hall and silently parted to allow Columba to stand beside the huge man curled upon the floor.

Columba stooped while Bathene drew near, to better hear what would be said. In a low but clear voice, Columba asked, "Broisin, do you long to breathe the clean free air again?"

Unable to answer, Broisin jerked his head back and forth to say yes.

"Then" said Columba, his voice the same volume but with a shake of rage, "let that poor child of God breathe the free air too, and be quick!"

Again, Broisin convulsively nodded his head in assent. As he did so, he coughed and retched and, with a wheeze and a whistle, drew the first shuddering free breath that he had enjoyed since his goblet had broken all to bits.

Servants helped the great man to his rubbery legs and half-helped, half-carried him from the mead-hall. One of the servant, stooping, saw among the glass fragments a strange object. Silently, he handed to King Brida what he had found. It was a small, white stone, smooth from lying along the bank of a river.

The former slave-girl went with Columba and Bathene back to Iona, where some say she became the superior of the community of women who had also formed on the island.

But what we do know is that this story has been told since the 7th century, and says some deep and timeless things to us today. For our age is an age of slavery, no less than that of Columba. It is an arrogant and forgetful people who call Columba's time the "dark ages", forgetting the deeper darkness of our own and often not knowing where to find the Light. Slavery is alive and well, whether on 82nd avenue outside our doors, among the silent hopeless poor and those on whose shoulders and backs the prosperity of a few are laid, and in the fearful dread of our own hearts. There are countless arrogant Broisins, who buy and sell the dignity and happiness and the very air of the poor and those without voice and the very voiceless, abused earth and its creatures. But remember today, remember Columba, remember the man and all those women and men who saw and see the many faces of slavery among us and the many disguises with which Broisin still strides and laughs among us today. To be a baptized servant of Christ is to not turn away. And to make no peace with slavery. Make no peace with slavery.