 |
THE PARISH CHURCH FOR LYTHAM |
|
Last Updated 01/05/2010 17:55:26
|
SERMON,
10 a.m., EUCHARIST In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Both the Gospel reading from Matthew and our first reading from the prophet, Ezekiel, portray God as the good shepherd caring for all his flock. The image of a god, king or other ruler as a shepherd was traditional throughout the ancient Near East and it is not surprising, therefore that the Old Testament portrays YHWH as shepherd of his people. The leaders of Israel in exile in Babylon had not looked after their people. They had allowed them to scatter and worship idols. Ezekiel was instructed to prophesy against them, portraying God as the good shepherd seeking the lost and scattered sheep and returning them to their own land. The rulers of Israel, faced with this example, will be held accountable for Israel’s destruction and removed from leadership. In the parable of the lost shepherd in the Gospel of Matthew, the context is different. Here Jesus’ message is one of evangelism and his purpose is clearly pastoral. He is speaking to his disciples about relationships within his church. He is encouraging them to care for the lonely, the lost, the sick and the discouraged. They are sheep without a shepherd and God cares more for the lost sheep who is brought back into the fold than for those already safely there. This attitude of God, our Father, should inform the attitude of our Church leadership today and hopefully undergird our diocesan Mission Action Plan. Of course, today being our Feast of St. Cuthbert, these readings focusing upon the good shepherd are no coincidence. They have been chosen because Cuthbert himself led the life of a shepherd boy amongst the Scottish Lowland hills. There, amidst the beautiful but often harsh scenery of the Scottish Borders, he spent many a solitary day and night – alone with God, he spent many hours in prayer. You may not know this but the young Cuthbert, who was born in 634 AD, was a multi-talented young man. Intellectually able, he was also a gifted sportsman, who led his peers in their games and pastimes. The rugby followers among you, and I hope there are many (!), will be aware that the Scottish Borders have been the breeding ground of many a great player. I played rugby league, following in my father’s footsteps, and one of our great heroes was the late Dave Valentine, from the Scottish Borders, loose forward for Huddersfield and Captain of Great Britain. Cuthbert certainly had some of that toughness and athleticism in him, for we know that he was prepared to visit and preach in remote and barbarous villages where others did not dare to go, but it was his spirituality that came to dominate his life. One night, while looking after his sheep by the River Leader, Cuthbert became aware of a great light, stretching between earth and sky, and he thought he heard choirs of angels descending from heaven to earth. He may have seen the Northern Lights streaming across the sky, but he later discovered that on that same night, 31st August 651 AD, Aidan, Bishop of Lindisfarne had died. To the young shepherd the vision seemed to be a challenge and a call to serve God. Almost immediately, however, he was called up for a short period of enforced military service, fighting for the King of Northumbria’s army against King Penda of Mercia. But, as soon as he was freed from battle, Cuthbert entered the monastery of Melrose where he settled down to thirteen years of monastic life. There he rose to the rank of Prior before transferring to a newly established monastery at Ripon, where he became guest-master, with the special duty of welcoming and tending to strangers and other visitors. Ripon was soon taken over by the Roman monks and Cuthbert returned to Melrose. After the great Synod of Whitby, held in 664 AD to settle the differences between Celtic and Roman practices, Cuthbert, though trained in the Celtic Church, followed the decision of the Synod and accepted the Roman system. In the same year he became Abbot of Lindisfarne, Aidan’s monastery, where he won the affection of the monks by his gentleness and patience. By all accounts he had an angelic face, the light of God shone out of him and he was a very skilful and persuasive speaker. Unsurprisingly therefore, Cuthbert was a missionary as well as a monk, and travelled the length and breadth of Northumbria, preaching and winning converts to Christianity. But he longed for the solitary life and left Lindisfarne Monastery (676 AD), to live the life of a hermit. He became known and widely respected for his spiritual and healing powers. Much against his will, but under heavy pressure from the King of Northumbria and the Archbishop of York, Cuthbert was persuaded to return to Lindisfarne as Bishop in 685 AD. For two years he threw himself heart and soul into his work there. Worn out by his travels through Northumbria and his efforts preaching and caring for the poor, Cuthbert sadly died two years later and was buried on Lindisfarne. People came to pray at his grave and miracles of healing were claimed, a sure sign to the monks of Lindisfarne that Cuthbert was now a saint in heaven. The monks decided to allow eleven years to pass for his body to become a skeleton, then elevate his remains and declare his Sainthood on the eleventh anniversary of his death. However, when they opened his coffin they were shocked to find that his body was complete and undecayed, a sure sign of sainthood. By now St. Cuthbert had a well established cult following. When the Vikings raided Northumbria in the ninth century, Cuthbert’s followers took his body onto the mainland and travelled around with it. Some believe that St. Cuthbert’s remains rested for a time close to the spot on which our Church was built, but his followers eventually settled, for over a century, at Chester-le-Street in County Durham, and his body eventually found its way to his final resting place behind the high altar of Durham Cathedral. It is said that the monks of Durham opened his coffin again at the beginning of the 12th century and again found his body completely intact, centuries after his death. How do we relate this remarkable story to the foundation of our own Church? Well, there does seem to have been a link between Lethum, as it was called, and the monks of Durham in the late Middle Ages. I don’t know that we can say for sure that St. Cuthbert’s body rested here, though there may be some truth in such a rumour. What we do know as a matter of historical record is that towards the end of the 12th century, the nobleman Richard Fitz Roger left all his lands in Lethum, including the land on which our Church is built, to the monks of Durham, in order that they might establish a Benedictine cell to the honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Cuthbert. We know that such a monastic company was established possibly on the site now occupied by Lytham Hall. We know also that Richard Fitz Roger’s grandfather pulled down a Church made of shingle on the site of our Church in the 12th century and replaced it with a stone church dedicated to St. Cuthbert. This Church lasted until the 1770’s, when it was replaced by a low building constructed of cobble stones, the walls being more than a yard thick, with only five windows. This church was pulled down because it couldn’t accommodate the increasing influx of visitors during the summer and rebuilt again in 1834 as the present Church at enormous cost - £1600! So, here we are today at Lethum St Cuthbert. What a history we share! What a tradition we have to uphold! And, hopefully, what an exciting future we have to look forward to, if we can capture even a little of the spirituality, dedication and service to God of our Patron St. Cuthbert! Let us end our tribute to the greatest of the Anglo-Saxon saints by recalling some of his last words to his companions shortly before his death. He instructed them to live in mutual harmony with all other servants of Christ, to be generous and kind to strangers and never to think themselves better than others who shared the same faith. The Christian Church worldwide would do well to heed such sound advice today! Amen. |