Boldly Go

Scripture: The Sixth Sunday of Easter, A.D. 2015 B

Sermon:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

All the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God. Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth … Let the sea roar, and all that fills it. Psalm 98.

St. Brendan was an Irish monk and contemporary of St. Patrick, so you know right off the bat that he’s going to be an interesting fellow. He is famous for embarking on a great sea voyage with 14 monks, and for the wonders they encountered both by sea and upon dry land.

The story goes that one day a monk washes up on the shores of Ireland, telling of an earthly paradise in the sea to the west. Here Creation maintains that original harmony, the perfect synthesis of the earthly and the heavenly, always intended by God. Here the sun never sets, age has no power, and men are clothed in light. They call it the Isle of the Blessed, the Land of the Saints—perhaps it is the very Garden of Eden, opened once more to those who trust in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

No sooner does Brendan hear this waterlogged monk’s tale than he resolves to set out with his own crew of monks to find this heavenly isle for himself. For indeed, what good Irish monk will hear of a miraculous and holy land but that he will immediately seek it out with all his heart and all his strength and all his soul? Keep in mind, however, that Brendan lives around the year 500, which makes any ocean voyage not just adventurous, but downright suicidal. It’s a thousand years before Columbus, 500 before the Norse make it to Greenland. Seafaring Viking ships, with their strong and supple hulls, do not as yet exist.

What then do the Irish use to sail? Why, skin boats—as in, boats with wooden ribs and leather hulls. Have you ever seen what happens to leather when you expose it to seawater? Rather turns to slime, doesn’t it? But Brendan and his monks have great faith and little fear, so off they go.

Their voyage is the stuff of legends. Epic poems have been written about it. For seven years they travel the high seas, bouncing along the murderous crests of the Atlantic on oak, ash, and leather. They discover islands populated entirely by birds. They encounter great sea monsters and predatory fish. They land on distant craggy rocks, only to be surprised by long-lost monasteries perched out there on the edge of the world.

They have no fear—not of shipwreck, not of cold, not of sharks or starvation or storm. They have complete faith that, whether they live or whether they die, they are the Lord’s. Three of the monks are latecomers to Brendan’s expedition, setting to sea in order to escape punishment for worldly crimes. Brendan predicts from the start that the three will perish, but that two, at least, will surely go to Heaven in the process. They come anyway. It’s not that they think they won’t die; it’s that none of them seem the least bit afraid of death. Remarkable.

Miracles abound, of course. At one point they find an abandoned monastery at which dinner is mysteriously laid out for the whole crew every night. Who is the culprit—hidden monks, or a heavenly hand? It’s all the same to St. Brendan. The voyagers are most concerned with properly celebrating the high holy days. No matter what their progress, they return every year to the same island monastery for the entire Christmas season, without exception. There must always be Christmas. And one Easter when there is no land to be found, Brendan and his crew astoundingly leave their vessel to attempt celebrating Easter Mass upon the back of a whale!

They pass palaces of crystal jutting out upon the waves. They skim the shores of hell itself, as demon blacksmiths throw molten slag at them, hissing into the waves. Legend has it that they even meet Judas, who is allowed respite from hell every Sunday, to sit upon a little island, basking in the sea breeze and the sunlight. There are even times when they are surrounded by sharks driven to feeding frenzy, and they respond calmly by praying from their little leather boat, like a scene taken straight from Unbroken. Little wonder that their captain becomes known as St. Brendan the Navigator, Brendan the Voyager, Brendan the Bold!

They are successful in the end, of course. They locate the earthly paradise, known ever after as St. Brendan’s Isle, which even Columbus marked on his maps. And obviously they returned to tell their tale, going down in the annals of history and hagiography. But Brendan’s story doesn’t end there. Later on, Vikings start to discover the same lost Irish monasteries recorded in Brendan’s voyage. When the Norse settle Greenland, they discover lost colonies of Celtic monks who take one look at the newcomers, spoiling their spiritual solitude, and take once more to their boats, disappearing upon the waves. Once the Vikings move in, there goes the neighborhood.

Other explorers begin to realize that the palaces of crystal pillars described in Brendan’s voyage sound a lot like the icebergs of the northern Atlantic. The fiery slag of Brendan’s hell eerily matches the geography of volcanic Iceland. And some of those blessed lands of the west—why, they start to sound an awful lot like Newfoundland. Good heavens. Did St. Brendan discover America? Surely no Sixth Century monk could cross the Atlantic in a skin boat, could he? Yet in the 1970s, intrepid adventurers attempted to recreate the Voyage of St. Brendan, following the poetic descriptions of his stops, all the way to the East Coast. And like the monks so very long before them, this “Brendan Voyage” also succeeds.

What we have here, then, is a true medieval model for Christian life. This, brothers and sisters, it what it looks like to live out a life of love for one another. This is what it looks like to go boldly and bear fruit, to be in the world but not of it. The last commandment of Jesus Christ is that we love one another as He has first loved us. That is truly a beautiful thing. But we deaden it, I think, we cheapen it, when we interpret this commandment to mean that we are simply to be nice, to be meek, to be milquetoast.

Time and again, in our readings this morning, Jesus commands us to love one another. It gets to be a bit much, actually. How many ways can a preacher repeat the same thing? “My love for you is like a loving river of loving love, so let’s all love and be loveable and isn’t love just lovely?” Ugh, I’ve got cavities.

But Christian love is not sentiment. Christian love is not feeling. Christian love is the willful act of putting the needs of others and the will of God before our own needs and wants and will. Christian love, in other words, is sacrifice. And that takes not emotion, not sentimentality, but brave, strong, ironclad will. Often in Church we lift up Jesus as the great Savior, the great King, Who conquered sin and death and hell for us so very long ago, so now we can just be happy and joyful and enjoy the secular fruits of His triumph.

But no. To say that Christ is our King means primarily that He comes to us as exemplar. We are not to show our love by tipping our hat to His great deeds, but by becoming more like Him, by conforming ourselves to Him, so that we might indeed become “little Christs” serving and healing and guarding our neighbor. The call to love Christ is the call to adventure, the call to exploration. It is the battle-cry of a life dedicated to the systematic conquest of our own oppressive wills, that we might willingly submit to the infinitely superior goodness of God. What is hell, after all, but having to do what you want all the time?

Be like Brendan, dear Christians, for Brendan is like Christ. He is fearless and bold. He is selfless and loving. He quests and strives and suffers, and praises God for this grand adventure every step of the way. Be like Brendan. Be like Jesus. See every glacier as a palace, every volcano as eternal, every island as a paradise, every whale as a church! Promise every sinner that death is not the end. Promise every crewman that the world is theirs to conquer. And promise yourself that you will lay down your life for your friends.

Be like Brendan. Be like Jesus. And with the love of Jesus, we shall conquer the world.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.