March 13, 2005
By Bob Rockford

If you want stories of Irish adventure and pilgrimage then you need to get in touch with the voyage of Saint Brendan the Navigator.  It began in the fifth century on the southwest coast of Ireland overlooking the Western Sea at the edge of the known world.  Brendan was born in 484, and baptized at a holy well in County Kerry.  His parents were a properly married Christian couple, which meant that their first-born belonged to the church.  Brendan was fostered out to a woman called Saint Ita, at a Convent school in Limerick, and stayed there until he was six.  When he came home he became an oblate and continued his education under the care of Eric, the local Bishop.  Later on he became one of the peregrines; travelers that wander the land in search of their spiritual vocation.  When he was 26 he returned to Eric, the Bishop, and eventually became a monk.

Legend tells us that Brendan heard a sermon once, based on one of the more baffling teachings of Jesus, Matthew 19:29.  “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will inherit eternal life.”  Something in Brendan reacted to the scripture; for him it was the call of God to adventure, a call to go out on the sea and into the unknown, and a call to pilgrimage.  Brendan went to Dingle Bay where he decided to build a coracle, a wood framed boat covered with animal skins.  It was during this time that he was visited by a kinsman, Barinthus, whose son lived on an island that was farther west than the known world.  These unknown islands were commonly referred to as a desert in the ocean.  On the western shore of that island, the son suggested that he and his father get a boat and sail northwest to an island called the “Promised Land of the Saints,” where night never falls and days have no ending.  After hearing this story, Brendan met with 14 monks from the community in a place of prayer, telling them, “My most beloved co-warriors in spiritual conflict, I beg you to help me with your advice, for I am consumed with a desire so ardent that it casts every other thought and desire out of my heart.  I have resolved, if it be God’s will, to seek out that Land of Promise.”  The 14 monks said they would go with Brendan, “We are prepared to go with you no matter what the consequences may be.  We seek to do one thing alone – the will of God.”   

The voyageurs set sail westward to many adventures.  They sailed to St. Ailbe where they spent Christmas with a community of monks that inhabited the island.  The next stop was the Isle of Sheep, where they saw endless flocks of white sheep.  They spent part of Holy Week there and were fed by a solitary islander.  This man told them that they would spend Easter on another nearby island before going to the Paradise of Birds.  They saw pillars of crystal rising high out of the sea, and even stopped for a meal on an island that moved.  They passed by another island where the inhabitants pelted them with flaming; foul smelling rocks that made the water boil. 

After seven years of adventures they sailed into a fog so thick they could not see the water in front of the boat.  Finally a great light shone through the mist and the boat was brought to a land of fruit trees.  The monks explored the island without ever reaching the end of it.  Eventually, they came across a young man by a river, who greeted each monk by name, and explained that God had delayed their arrival so that they could know the secrets of God’s ocean.  He also told them that this land would be revealed to Brendan’s successors if ever the Christians of Ireland were persecuted, and that after getting re-supplied with provisions and collecting precious stones, they should return home.  So Brendan’s great voyage came to an end, with a return passage through the fog until Ireland was off the bow.  There were other pilgrimages Brendan made before he died.  He sailed to the Northern Isles of Scotland, to Wales and Brittany, and even to the Canary Islands.  There is even a tale of Brendan standing at the Jordan River in Egypt.  Brendan became an abbot and some say there were over 3000 monks in the monasteries that he founded in Ireland.  The old monastic seadog finally died in the year 577.

It is a great story, but like all stories we ask “is it true?” There was a period of 200 to 400 years between the pilgrimage of Saint Brendan and the writing down of the story, and between the storytellers and the writers, the tale could have become a little larger than it originally was.  Here’s what is known to be true.  St. Ailbe is located in the Shetland Islands, due north of England.  North east of the Shetlands is a chain of islands called the Faroes.  One of these islands has a large population of sheep and a river Brandon.  Another island has a large population of birds.  Continuing northeast you come to Iceland, where they have volcanoes that spew hot lava and hot springs that produce foul odors.  The pillars of crystal could have been icebergs, and according to legend the moving island was most likely a whale.  Some say that the land of fruit trees where they met the young man could have been North America.  In the 1800’s there was a potato famine in Ireland and thousands of Irish men, women and children fled to the United States.  Could this have been what the young man meant when he told Brendan that the land would be revealed to his successors if ever the Christians of Ireland were persecuted?  The possibility that a sixth-century Irish monk did make a remarkable Atlantic voyage did not escape the attention of Arab geographers in twelfth-century Spain, and Christopher Columbus, who made a journey to Galway before he ever sailed westward.  Maybe he wanted to check out the story of Brendan. 

In 1977, a man named Tim Severin built a coracle and set out across the Atlantic to retrace Brendan’s route from Ireland to the Faroes to Iceland and to Greenland.  He made landfall in Newfoundland, not proving that Brendan actually made the voyage, only proving that it was a possibility.

We are born into the middle of what is going on around us, joining family and friends to walk with them.  From our first breath to our last we try to make sense of our lives, and sometimes we find the answers when we listen to the storytellers tell their faith journeys.  Then we decide either to move towards God or away from God.  God loves us and we respond by loving others and loving God.  We may move from being unbelievers to becoming true believers.  But the journey doesn’t stop there.  We join a Christian community and become disciples, learning to find peace with God.  Then we become apostles, sharing the story and passing it down from generation to generation.

I’ve started another pilgrimage to find a desert in the ocean.  I’m taking classes at Central Baptist Theological Seminary in their Masters Degree program.  I wrestled with the thought of going back to school for a long time, people encouraged me, I prayed about it, but inside of me all I heard was, “you’re too old, you’re not smart enough.”  I couldn’t take that first step.  “Me, go back to school?  That’s a laugh.”  Celtic Christians rose each morning saying, “Lord, your will be done.”  I’d get up thinking “what’s going to happen to me today?”  But one day I prayed, “Lord, your will be done.”  And now I’m a seminary student. 

It’s not enough to just enter the desert; we need to continue forward to the Promised Land.  Paul says in 1^st Peter, “we are strangers and aliens in the world.”  We are a pilgrim people and our citizenship is in heaven.  The first step is the hardest, choosing which direction God wants us to go.  That’s the hardest part of any journey, taking that first step.  Choice is about commitment and about determination; it is the act of using our will power to make the decision.  As Christians the decision for us is to say, “Your will be done.”

Crossroads church is also on another pilgrimage to find a desert in the ocean, a place of our own where we can finally unpack.  None of us knows what this place will be like.  We all have visions, dreams and desires, but we don’t know.  We didn’t know where we would go after leaving all the other places we camped at, Cynthia and Paul’s clubhouse, the Westport Ballet building, the Dream Center, Rockhurst College, Wornall Road Baptist Church, and now St. Mark’s.  Where will we go next?  I don’t know, do you?  No you don’t know either.  God knows.  He has the place. “Lord, your will be done.” 

We’ve wrestled with this idea, had more meetings than the Joint Chiefs of Staff, we voted and came back the next week and re-voted, we wrote lists, we stood in this sanctuary under signs that said, Yes, No, Maybe, we even held up our own sign that said ‘I Don’t Know.’  Then we listened to one another and voted again.  God knows.  He has the place. “Lord, your will be done.” 

We’ve prayed as a congregation, “God of heaven and earth.”  We prayed in house church, “Dear Lord.”  We prayed in small groups, “Abba, help us.”  We prayed as individuals, “Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.”  God knows.  He has the place. “Lord, your will be done.” 

This is what we went through.  This is what we had to go through.  The first step is the hardest, choosing which direction God wants us to go.  We made that first step last week.  It was hard and it may have hurt, but we made that first step.  And there will be other steps we will need to make, more work to do, more meetings to attend, more prayer, more listening to each other, and more decisions to make.  God knows.  He has the place. “Lord, your will be done.”     

We are starting our sixth year as a church.  Our first meeting was in a bar in Westport.  How many of you were there that day?  Do you remember that day?  And that bar no longer exists, but Crossroads Church does.  I cannot believe that God, Abba, the Great Creator is sitting in his office with his big book opened up to the “C” page going, “Oops, there’s Crossroads, they aren’t going to make it.” 

The boy was 10 years old boy, taking piano lessons, but he didn’t like it.  His mother thought it might help if she could take him to see a great pianist play.  Ignace Jan Paterewski was performing at Radio City Music Hall, so she got tickets.  The night of the performance she and son dressed up.  They went to the Music Hall early and took their seats, 10 rows back, and center stage.  The kid was ten years old.  It was 47 minutes before the concert started, and he was all over the place, going to the bathroom, up to get a drink, and down the aisle.  Finally the mother couldn’t control herself anymore and told him to sit down and be quiet.  She turned to the couple on her left and apologized explaining that it was her sons first time to see a concert.  While she was talking, the kid got up and went down the aisle towards the stage, just wanting to get a better look at the piano.  She saw him and with her 3-block, you better come home for supper voice, she yelled, “Tommy, stop.”  Everyone in the Music Hall heard her and they all looked at Tommy who was backing up the center stage stairs.  He backed up the stairs on to the stage and bumped into the piano.  He turned, sat down and started playing his version of “Chopsticks.”  People in the audience were furious.

“Get that kid off the stage.”

“This is an outrage.” 

“What’s that boy doing up there?”

Ushers started to move.  The mother sat down, closed her eyes and just shook her head.  Then, from stage right appeared the great pianist, Paderewski.  Everything in the Music Hall froze, except for Tommy who continued to play “Chopsticks.”  Paterewski walked up behind the boy went down on his knees and whispered into the boy’s ear “don’t stop. Keep on playing, you’re doing great.”  He put his massive arms around the boy and began to play a concerto based on the tune of “Chopsticks.”  While they were playing, Paterewski kept saying to the boy, “Don’t stop. Keep on playing, you’re doing great.”  Imagine God, standing behind us while we plunk out our childlike version of “Chopsticks,” saying, “Don’t stop. Keep on playing, you’re doing great.”

What are the characteristics of ancient Celtic Christianity that apply to us today at Crossroads Church? 

·        The Celtic way values solitude and silence.  We need to create times to be alone with God.

·        The Celtic way has an intimate closeness with the Trinity.  The Creator, the Christ, and the Spirit.

·        The Celtic way has a passion for creating new mission opportunities.  Look at the connections we have with Guatemala and Wayne Street.

·        The Celtic way is to seek a soul friend.  We need a spiritual guide or mentor in our life, to listen to us and help us in our relationship with God.

·        The Celtic way believes it is God’s world and it is good.  We need to protect the environment.

·        The Celtic way believes that time is fluid, not rigid.  There are thin places in our lives where we experience the boundary between our world and God’s world to be very thin.

·        The Celtic way believes in exploration.  We have a deep desire to go where there is need.  Look at what you have done for the people in San Lucas Toliman.

·        The Celtic way is a way of community.  This community has nurtured and sustained the faith of many of us here. 

·        The Celtic way believes that God is not only found at the end of life, but also where the kingdom is being lived by God’s people.  Godspell, Joseph, The Sermon on the Mound, Sunday school, House church, Tuesday Topics, book studies, cookies supplied for mission trips, travel prayers, worship, and small groups.  

·        The Celtic way believes in the sharing of stories, music, dance, and literature.  Our stories encourage others to live closer to God.

·        The Celtic way has a love of learning.  Monastic schools flourished with pilgrim scholars coming from all over Europe.   

·        The Celtic way is a way of pilgrimage.  When we combine our outward journey with our inward journey of the soul we connect with God.

We are on a pilgrimage together, searching for a desert in the ocean.  We travel together watching the horizon and knowing when we find that desert in the ocean there will be another horizon in front of us to explore.

Listen to what the builders of the Cathedral in Seville Spain said in 1401 before they started construction:

“Let us build here a church so great

that those who come after us

will think us mad ever to have dreamed of it.”