I am reading "How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe", Thomas Cahill, Doubleday, 1995. The current chapters are on Saint Patrick, a Roman boy taken around 400 AD to Ireland as a slave at age 16. During his time as a slave and shepherd for his master, his life of perpetual cold and hunger drove him to pray, and to develop a strong relationship with God as he fought to stay alive. I mean, who else was he going to talk to? After about six years, he escapes back to the continent. Eventually though, he returns voluntarily, to this place of sorrow, as a missionary. And was used by God to transform the world.
I am reminded of other missionaries through history who went all out (or is it all in?) Missionaries to Sub-Saharan Africa and to the South Pacific in the 19th century sometimes packed their belongings in coffins, because they understood this to be a one-way trip. And some early missionaries to China were given conditions by the emperor, if they wanted to stay. (I paraphrase):
"You must speak our language, eat our food, wear our clothing, marry our women, and never depart my lands. In all areas, save your personal appearance, you must be men of the Middle Kingdom, subject to the Son of Heaven. Do you accept?"
They did.
Then there were the Moravians, who started as a movement under the leadership of Jan Hus, who was burned at the stake as a heretic on 6 July, 1415. His followers continued on, some of them settling in Moravia, in the Hapsburg Empire. In 1722, a small group of refugees established a village in Saxony (modern day Germany). Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravian_Churchtells tells us something interesting:
"In 1722, a small group of the Bohemian Brethren (the "Hidden Seed") who had been living in northern Moravia as an illegal underground remnant surviving in the Catholic setting of the Habsburg Empire for nearly 100 years, arrived at the Berthelsdorf estate of Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, a nobleman who had been brought up in the traditions of Pietistic Lutheranism. Out of a personal commitment to helping the poor and needy, he agreed to a request from their leader (Christian David, an itinerant carpenter) that they be allowed to settle on his lands in Upper Lusatia, which is in present-day Saxony in the eastern part of modern-day Germany. The Margraviates of Upper and Lower Lusatia were governed in personal union by the Saxon rulers and enjoyed great autonomy, especially in religious questions...
The refugees established a new village called Herrnhut, about 2 miles (3 km) from Berthelsdorf. The town initially grew steadily, but major religious disagreements emerged and by 1727 the community was divided into factions. Count Zinzendorf worked to bring about unity in the town and the Brotherly Agreement was adopted by the community on 12 May 1727. This is considered the beginning of the renewal. Then, on 13 August 1727 the community underwent a dramatic transformation when the inhabitants of Herrnhut 'learned to love one another', following an experience that they attributed to a visitation of the Holy Spirit, similar to that recorded in the Bible on the day of Pentecost."
Oh my!
Out of this transformation came a "Prayer Watch"-- a continuous prayer meeting-- that lasted a hundred years... And out of THIS prayer meeting, missionaries were sent out, some of whom SOLD THEMSELVES INTO SLAVERY as indentured servants, to get to the New World to preach the gospel.
And it started with a visitation of the Holy Spirit, leading to Community Transformation.
And so we say, "Over here Lord! Come visit us too!" Meanwhile in America, church attendance drops whenever the weather is bad...
I have been writing today about the commitment demonstrated by the Moravians and some other missionaries, but this Ireland book I am reading describes an even greater level of personal commitment-- VOLUNTARY human sacrifice:
"These bodies all owe their amazing state of preservation to the chemical properties of the peat, which has leatherized the skin but left it otherwise intact, so that we can see every physical detail-- even smile lines around the eyes-- just as we could have in life. All the bodies were sacrificed, and all the faces are at peace. In other words, all went willingly, one might almost say happily, to their sacrificial deaths-- like Isaac, trusting to the last the goodness of the sacrificing priest and, even more important, in the goodness of the father
god...
The most conclusive evidence that the bogmen were sacrificed is the story their bodies tell of the manner of their deaths. Each submitted himself naked to an elaborate, ritualized Triple Death. In the case of Lindow Man, for instance, his skullwas flattened by three blows of an ax, his throat garroted by a thrice-knotted sinewy cord, his blood emptied quickly through a precise slitting of his jugular. Here is the ancient victim of sacrifice, the offering made out of deep human need. Unblemished, raised to die, possibly firstborn, set aside, gift to the god, food of the god, balm of the people, purification, reparation for all- for sins known and unknown, intended and inadvertent. Behold, god's lamb, behold him who takes away the sins of all.
Patrick declared that such sacrifices were no longer needed. Christ died once for all. I'd bet he quoted Paul, his model, who in his letter to the church at Philippi recited this mysterious poem about sacrifice, the oldest Christian hymn of which we have record:
Though he possessed divine estate
He was not jealous to retain
Equality with God.
He cast off his inheritance,
He took the nature of a slave
And walked as Man among men.
He emptied himself to the last
And was obedient to death--
To death upon a cross.
And therefore, God has raised him up
And God has given him the Name-
Which-is-above-all-names,
That at the name of Jesus all
In heaven high shall bow the knee
And all the earth and depths
And every tongue of men proclaim
That Jesus Christ is LORD--
To the glory of the Father.
"Yes, the Irish would have said, here is a story that answers our deepest needs- and answers them in a way so good that we could never have dared dream of it. We can put away our knives and abandon our alters. These are no longer required. The God of the Three Faces has given us his own Son, and we are washed clean in the blood of this lamb. God does not hate us; he loves us. Greater love than this no man has than that he should lay down his life for his friends. That is what God's Word, made flesh, did for us. From now on, we are all sacrifices-- but without the shedding of blood. It is our lives, not our deaths, that this God wants. But we ARE to be sacrifices, for Paul adds to the hymn this advice to all:
'Let this [same] mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.' "
Commitment. Sacrifice. How much do we believe?
Are WE all in?
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