Two Young Men who Ran Fast: St Cuthbert and St Francis

I think of St Francis as the Cuthbert of Italy. I put it that way round because here in Cuthbert’s shrine, we recognise that Cuthbert is the senior saint by 500 years. What do they have in common, these two saints who lit up the worlds they moved in and have been remembered and loved ever since? Famously, there is the ecstatic love both had for the natural world, not a sentimental affection for furry creatures but a reverence and courtesy towards all living things that sprang directly from how they saw creation transfigured by God’s presence.  You could imagine Cuthbert singing The Canticle of the Sun. There is the compassion they both had for human beings at the extremes of wretchedness and need: they embraced the poor and outcaste as God’s special possession.  There is the simplicity and humility they were both admired and loved for, their willingness to take up the cross and for its sake become nobodies. And finally their burning witness to the good news of Jesus. ‘Why not be turned into fire?’ asked Francis once. It was the fervour of their lives that made their testimony so life-changing for others. ‘Preach the gospel: use words if necessary.’

But I’d like to focus on what strikes me so strongly in both these beloved saints we honour.  They were both young men, privileged and powerful, like the character in today’s gospel reading, running up to Jesus and eagerly kneeling in front of him.  To me, he captures something of the spirit of Cuthbert and Francis, at least as the story begins. He wants to know what he has to do to inherit eternal life.  He does not walk or stroll but runs: he wants to know.  This is not the lazy insouciance of someone who is not greatly troubled by the answer, whose question is merely a courtesy or a way of alleviating the boredom of being rich.  He wants to know because he needs to know and he will not go away unless he gets an answer.  So Jesus tells him, not without first pressing him to examine his assumptions: ‘why do you call me good?  No-one is good but God alone’.  Be sure of the premise of your question.  Does this would-be denizen of the kingdom of God have any idea who this good Man is who has stopped to teach him what citizenship means? 

Yet we can admire this youth who though young and rich and powerful is not so arrogant as to forget the importance of curiosity.  His running up to Jesus tells us something about his motivation and desires. He wants to be a disciple, a learner in the school of Christ, and embrace the kingdom of God that is coming upon the world which Jesus’ teaching points to so urgently.   So he runs towards Jesus and all that life in him will offer: wisdom and purpose, truth and joy and peace. He will do anything it takes to inherit eternal life. 

Anything?  Jesus tests him on this next, for now it is not only the premise but the resolve that must be examined.  ‘You know the commandments: don’t murder, or kill, or commit adultery, or steal, or practise falsehood, or defraud; and honour your father and mother.’  It is a kind of spiritual triage: who can come out of it with clean hands and a pure heart as the psalm says?  Yet still he is there, undaunted, looking up into Jesus’ face, full of desire to do the right thing and not disappoint the man whose words are charged with promise.  ‘Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.’  Does Jesus smile at a young man’s naivete?  Or does he give him the benefit of the doubt: not that he has been perfect (‘no-one is good but God alone’), but that he has sincerely lived by torah all his life, the divine law that is the source of all that is wholesome and good in human life?  To follow torah is to learn virtue, train our moral compass, live wisely and grow in the image of God.  All this he has done from his mother's arms.

He will not turn away.  And here St Mark’s story makes the most telling point of all.  ‘Jesus, looking at him, loved him.’  That little detail, like the young man running, paints a picture a thousand words could not even sketch.  He loved him.  It is the only time Mark, Matthew or Luke ever say that Jesus loved someone.  Indeed, if you search the word ‘love’ and its cognates in the first three gospels, you will only find it used of God’s love for his Son, and our obedient love for God and neighbour, apart from here.  ‘Jesus, looking at him, loved him’, a verb Matthew and Luke can’t bring themselves to preserve when they tell this story.   Why not?  Is this love for a winsome youth too specific, too particular?  What was it that Jesus loved?  His dogged persistence in not letting go?  Jesus was drawn to people like that: the Canaanite woman who was not put off by his insulting riposte that it is not right to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs; the wayward Mary Magdalene so desperate to be loved.  A parable told of the widow who wouldn’t give up pestering the judge until he gave her what she wanted.  This young man is another unlikely companion: there aren’t many rich people in the gospels as dogged as this when it comes to the kingdom of God. 

And then the denouement.  We don’t want it to come, wish that it could have been otherwise, for we too have come to care about this young man and his destiny.  ‘You lack one thing’ (how his heart must leapt at that: just one thing!). ‘Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come follow me.’  And at once the light in his eyes starts to dim.  ‘When he heard this he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions’.  It’s as if there has been a kind of death.  For it is a real bereavement: the hope, the vision, the promise suddenly knocked away from him, and only the stern, unyielding demand of the good Teacher echoing in his ears as he slinks away, the cruel summons to give up his life for the sake of the kingdom he wants so badly. 

‘Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also’ says Jesus, and this is the point of the story.  He goes on to reflect with his disciples on where lasting value lies: not, he says, in material gain but in following where the good news leads.  Contemplating the renunciation of what we have and what we are for the sake of the kingdom of God: that is the only test of how much we really want it, how eager we are to embrace it.  I think of Cuthbert, the privileged young man who had a vision of St Aidan and abandoned his old life to run towards the monastery at Melrose.  I think of Francis the privileged young man whom his angry father disinherited and who gladly ran into the arms of Lady Poverty, giving away everything he had to the beggars of Assisi. It is stories like these that tell me that Christianity is true, and how far I have to travel before it becomes true in me.    

Most of us are not rich and not powerful, and many of us are not young any more.  Perhaps our running days are over, perhaps the gleam in the eye is duller than it used to be, perhaps our naïve but eager curiosity has been displaced by life’s abrasions into settling for the easy compromises of a cosy, untroubled existence.  So how do we keep the spiritual flame burning bright?  By practising singleness of heart, the kind of simplicity that by making us a nobody, cleanses our sight, focuses our intention and gives us back the longing with which we always wanted to run towards the kingdom of God.  We only have to run towards it, say yes to it, grasp hold of it.  This was Cuthbert, and it was Francis, two young men who obeyed the call, became poor and found where true wealth lay. Could it be you? Me? I feel for the rich young man who began so well, but could not do it, or could not do it yet. Yet I’m confident of this: that even when he turned away, the good Teacher did not stop loving him.

Durham Cathedral, 5 October 2013 (Mark 10.17-31)

The Simplicity of St Cuthbert: a sermon at St Cuthbert's Edinburgh

It is good to be here in this church whose spire I have often admired but which I had never seen inside until yesterday.  I am especially glad to be here for this annual service of the Friends of St Cuthbert’s.  I bring you greetings from Durham Cathedral, also dedicated to St Cuthbert, and from the Cathedral’s Friends (along with Christ and Blessed Mary the Virgin). 

It’s our privilege at Durham to be the home of Cuthbert’s shrine which is the spiritual heart of the Cathedral.  For many people it is one of this island’s ‘thin’ places where the Spirit of God seems to be present in a palpable way, like Iona, Lindisfarne and other Christian sites.  Once I was asked to take an elderly blind imam from Saudi Arabia round the Cathedral.  The shrine is not a place where we encourage much talking, so I did not say anything as we climbed the steps into what we call the feretory where the shrine is situated.  But as we got to the top, he said at once, ‘Ah!  I sense the presence of a holy man here, like our own shrines in Islam.  Who is this and why is he here?’  So I explained that the Cathedral, indeed the city of Durham itself, would not exist were it not for Cuthbert’s body and the long journey his Saxon community made in the 9^th and 10^th centuries to find a new home for their saint safe from the Viking raids that were terrorising the coast of Northumbria.  We lingered for a while there: he was not in a hurry to leave. Afterwards, he gave me a copy of the Holy Qur’an with all the passages that speak well of Christians underlined.  ‘What about those that are hostile to Christians?’ I asked.  He replied: with your saint, you are people of the Book.  We are all members of Abraham’s community.’  And I want to say, here at St Cuthbert’s, that all the places that have a connection either with Cuthbert in his life time, as this ancient site perhaps has, or with the journey his coffin made for over a century are linked by a common memory and sense of belonging.  Which is why I am so glad to be here today.

What do we love so much in our native northern saints: Aidan the gentle, Oswald the far-seeing, Hild the reconciler, Bede the wise, Margaret the generous? The treasured memory of Cuthbert can perhaps speak for them all.  Here is one of Bede’s stories about him.  Cuthbert had gone out on one of his long journeys to preach, taking with him a boy for company.  The day was long and the road steep, and they were tired and hungry.  The boy grew worried.  ‘Learn to have constant faith and hope in the Lord’ said Cuthbert.  ‘Whoever serves God shall never die of hunger.’  They saw an eagle in the sky and Cuthbert said: ‘God can send us food by that eagle.’  Soon, by the river bank, they saw it settling on a rock.  ‘There is the servant I was telling you about.  Run and see what God has sent and bring it quickly.’  The boy returned with a big fish that the bird had caught.  ‘What?’ said Cuthbert: ‘Didn’t you give the servant his own share?  Cut it in two, and give half to the bird.’  After a good meal of cooked fish with villagers nearby, Cuthbert praised God for his provision and said: ‘Happy the one whose hope is in the Lord’. 

That little tale shows something of what motivated Cuthbert.  His was an intensely devoted spirituality.  For him, to be human was to live in utter dependence on God, aware of his constant presence as something immediate and inescapable.  We could call it a true simplicity, being pure in heart and poor in spirit.  Perhaps only this can ever challenge what is broken and wrong in the world and in our communities and relationships.  And the beautiful detail of his care for the eagle and his dinner speaks of a man profoundly connected to the natural world, in tune with God’s creation.  His reverence for life and his intimacy with nature makes him peculiarly attractive, in an age of environmental awareness, to all who want to treat all things living with courteousness which, for Christians, should mean all of us.

Bede sums up his character: ‘like a good teacher he taught others to do only what he first practised himself.  Above all else he was afire with heavenly love, unassumingly patient, devoted to unceasing prayer, and kindly to all who came to him for comfort…. His self-discipline and fasting were exceptional, and through the grace of contrition he was always intent on the things of heaven.’  He also tells us that ‘Cuthbert was so skilful a speaker, and had such a light in his angelic face, and such a love for proclaiming his message… that all confessed their sins to him’.  Our readings today remind us what being a disciple means.  It is not the fine phrases and rituals of religion, but the devotion to God that begins in the heart and issues in a life of compassion and service to humanity.  For Cuthbert, perhaps the image more than any other that inspired his extraordinary ministry was that of the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.  This familiar but striking picture no doubt draws on the passages we heard today.  In Ezekiel, the context is the failure of human shepherds, the kings of Israel and Judah, to care and provide for the flock entrusted to them as they should have done.  So God himself will take up that mantle: ‘I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep;, and I will make them lie down, and seek the lost, and bring back the strayed, and bind up the injured, and strengthen the weak, and feed them with justice’.  And this great promise is echoed in the gospel where Jesus says that to search for the 100^th sheep that is lost is a mark of the shepherd who acts as God himself does, to whom every life is infinitely precious and valued.

For Cuthbert and his contemporaries, Christianity meant living in the spirit of those texts where dying to ourselves becomes the price we pay for embracing the gospel and surrendering our lives to God.  The Book of Revelation speaks of those ‘who loved not their lives even unto death’, the martyrs who bore faithful witness to Christ.  What the Benedictine vow calls conversio morum, the ‘conversion of life’ means a kind of martyrdom, a way of dying in order to live, losing our own selves in order to find them, laying down our lives like the Good Shepherd.  This was how Cuthbert always was in his utter dependence upon God.  I called it true simplicity just now, purity of heart: having only one thing as your goal and focus and aspiration in life. Buddhists call this being ‘single-pointed’.  Such people are blessed because they see God.  Bede puts it this way: he ‘was afire with heavenly love, unassumingly patient, devoted to unceasing prayer, and kindly to all who came to him for comfort…. always intent on the things of heaven.’  What is ministry, what is Christianity, what is true humanity if not that? 

St Paul sums up his own ministry and apostleship: ‘as having nothing, and yet possessing everything’ is how describes the life of those who have surrendered all to follow Jesus Christ and bear witness to him.  Let me come back to this church and the Friends of St Cuthbert’s.  That name, ‘the Friends of St Cuthbert’s’ reminded me of a sculpture by Fenwick Lawson that many of you will have seen in the parish church on Lindisfarne.  There is also a bronze bust of it in Durham’s Millennium Square.  It is called ‘The Journey’ and shows six monks carrying Cuthbert’s body on the 120 year pilgrimage from Viking-threatened Holy Island via southern Scotland, north Yorkshire and Chester-le-Street to Durham where the saint’s body was finally laid to rest.  Perhaps the Society of the Friends of St Cuthbert’s are like those first Saxon friends who bore his name and his memory, for whom their beloved saint’s spirit of simplicity, humility and holy love inspired them to carry his body so long and so far. And if the Friends ‘carry’ him in this way, then so of course do our Christian communities dedicated to him: this church in Edinburgh and ours in Durham.  To live in his spirit is to live in the spirit of Jesus himself, whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light. 

For me, the gaunt stark slab in Durham Cathedral with his name on it says it all.  The simplicity and lowliness of the shrine tells us in a place of power and majesty who and what is worth honouring.  ‘Whoever would be great among you, let them be your servant’.  We know in our hearts that it is not status or wealth or achievement that matter, but becoming among the least by turning away from sin and being faithful to Christ.  The call, which belongs to all of us through baptism, is to give our lives to the project of purity and steadfastness, in the spirit of the saints ‘willing one thing’, wanting more than anything else the coming of God’s reign of justice, peace, truth and love.  For when God’s kingdom comes it mends our brokenness, gives us back our dignity, and makes life wholesome and beautiful once more. Amen! Come Lord Jesus!

At St Cuthbert’s, Edinburgh, 7 October 2012

Ezekiel 34.11-16, Matthew 18.12-14