Three saints, Paulinus, Mellitus and Justus got into a boat…

If this were a joke, this would be one of the weirdest opening lines of a joke ever…but it isn’t.  According to the Venerable Bede, Pope Gregory I did send Paulinus, Mellitus and Justus to England on what we now call the Gregorian Mission.  He sent them to help Augustine of Canterbury who had arrived five years earlier with forty or so other monks to establish Roman Christianity in England.  Initially they were successful and so Pope Gregory sent a second mission five years later which included Paulinus, Mellitus and Justus.  Justus became the first bishop of Rochester in 604 and Mellitus the first bishop of London in the same year, founding a church in the city, which was probably on the site where St Paul’s Cathedral now stands.  Paulinus was consecrated as a bishop twenty or so years later and was made the first Bishop of York in 627, also founding a church in the city.

There is something profoundly satisfying about being invited here to preach on the day when we commemorate St Paulinus at the consecrations of three more bishops, Tricia, Barry and Flora, in the city where Paulinus was a made Bishop nearly 1400 years ago.  As I preach I bring best wishes and prayers from Mellitus’ Cathedral – St Paul’s, where I minister as Canon Chancellor.  All we need is someone from Rochester to rock up and we have a Gregorian Mission full house!

In the nearly 1400 years since Paulinus was made the first Bishop of York much has changed for the church in England, and yet, what inspires us, upholds us and draws us onwards remains the same.  Nearly 600 years before Paulinus, Mellitus and Justus set out from Rome to go to England, the risen Jesus met his disciples on a mountain top in Galilee.  What he said to them, then, echoes on down the centuries.  600 years later it inspired Paulinus, Mellitus and Justus to journey from Rome making disciples as they went, baptising and teaching everything that Jesus had passed on to his disciples.  1400 years on from them three more people are poised on the edge of a new venture with God.

So what was it about that encounter with the risen Jesus that has made such a great difference to so many people over so many years?  The answer has to begin with that they met Jesus, risen from the dead, and that meeting changed everything for them.  But there is more – of course there is more – and so many things that I will limit myself to my three favourites…

I love that the moment that the risen Jesus met his followers and sent them out was on a mountain in Matthew’s Gospel.  If you know Matthew’s Gospel at all you will know that he has a thing about mountains.  Each one of the Gospel writers has a thing – for Mark it’s boats, for Luke it’s journeys and for Matthew it’s mountains.  In Matthew’s Gospel as soon as Jesus goes up a mountain you know something important is about to happen.  Jesus is tempted, gave a Sermon, goes to pray, heals the sick, is transfigured, begins his final journey into Jerusalem to die and finally meets his disciples after his resurrection all on a mountain.  Not the same mountain but a mountain nevertheless.  Seven mountains, seven important moments in the life of Jesus and his disciples.  The last and final one being when he handed on the baton to his followers.

We all need our equivalent of Matthew’s mountains.  Places where we are alert that something important might happen, that we might hear God speaking, or know God’s presence in the sound of gossamer thin silence.  Places where our souls can rest and find healing.  Places where we can see afresh who God really is and hear afresh his command to go, gossiping good news to everyone we meet.

Tricia, Barry, Flora, you don’t need me to tell you that your lives are about to be turned upside down in a new way with the mad chaos that only ministry in the Church of God can bring.  In the midst of the storm may you, may we all, find our thing – a boat, a habit of journeying, a mountain top, anything or anywhere frankly – where we can practice the discipline of expectation of wondering whether this is moment, the time, the place when God will speak again and stir our souls.  As R.S. Thomas put it, ‘a moment of great calm, …waiting for the God to speak’. Sometimes God will speak, sometimes God won’t, sometimes God won’t speak  for months or years but, as it was for the first disciples, simply going to the mountain top and waiting is the start of it all.

This doesn’t mean, however, that this means we will glide along in haze of pure certainty every hour of every day.  One of the features of this passage, that utterly fascinates me, is that at that moment on the top of the mountain, when, after they had waited, they did eventually meet the risen Jesus and he sent them out on the biggest, most madcap mission imaginable.  Then, at that moment, Matthew talks to us of doubt.  We could, if we were so minded, talk for an exceedingly long time about what Matthew meant when he said ‘When the disciples saw him they worshipped but some doubted’.  There has been much debate not only about what they were doubting but about precisely who was doing the worshipping and who was doing the doubting.  I won’t bore you with the details but the consensus is that among the eleven on the top of that mountain there was more than one person who was both worshipping and doubting at the same time.  It might have been all of them; it might have been just a few of them but worshipping and doubting were going on together.

For some people this causes immense problems, you can’t, they claim do both at once.  To which my response is you may not but I can.  In my experience, it is precisely in the moment when I cannot comprehend who God is, when I’m wrestling to accept or to wrap my mind around the vastness of God and what that means in the world, when I’m railing against the impossibility of it all that then I fall into the fullest worship possible.  Yesterday my friend and fine scholar Judith Maltby sent me a poem ‘The Inescapable Day’ by the American poet Vassar Millar, whom she is currently studying, and a couple of lines from it have hooked into my heart:

here we fidget,
snuffling and straining
to work the Mystery over our heads and hearts like a child’s pyjamas.

The God we worship is a God far too great a mystery to comprehend in a single, simple moment.

Of course, the very heart of this passage, rests not in the thin places or in the wrestling with mystery, but in the journeying onwards.  Jesus sent the disciples down from mountain and out into the world bearing news that was deeply and profoundly good and remains as good today as it ever was 2000 years ago.  News that we are loved with a love beyond all measuring, that whether we understand that love or not it will never fail, or falter or change.

I mentioned earlier Matthew’s use of mountains as a motif, he has another that is equally striking.  Matthew bookends his Gospel with a theme.  Right at the start of the whole Gospel an angel appeared to Joseph and told him that Mary would bear a son and he would be Immanuel, God with us.  In the final phrases of the Gospel, Jesus sends the disciples onwards, down from the mountain, and reminds them of the very essence of who he is — God with us – saying I am with you to the end of the age.

Tricia, Barry, Flora you will be doing a lots of journeying over the next weeks, months and years, sometimes physically, sometimes deep in your souls, but as you go remember that you do not go alone.  Whatever happens, however it feels sometimes, we never journey alone.  We journey with the one who never has and never will leave us.

It is this that gave Paulinus, Mellitus and Justus the courage to leave Rome and travel to the cold wet lands of England.  It is this that calls you three – and us all – to journey to places beyond our wildest dreams.

Three saints, Paulinus, Mellitus and Justus got into a boat…1400 years later three more saints, Tricia, Flora and Barry, ready themselves to follow in their footsteps.

When you think about it…it is, after all, quite a good joke!

Amen.