Yesterday, we celebrated St. Patrick’s Day. A day when we commemorate St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland, when we think of Leprechauns and pots of gold. St. Patrick is best known for bringing Christianity to Ireland. There is a legend that he used a three-leaf clover to teach people about the doctrine of the Trinity.
Many people in Ireland attend church services on St. Patrick’s Day. The Lenten prohibition on alcohol is also lifted for this particular holiday.
What many do not know about St. Patrick was that in his youth he was taken as a slave to Ireland. St. Patrick wasn’t native to Ireland, but rather likely Great Britain. He eventually escaped slavery and returned to Great Britain. But later, having experienced a vision calling him to return, he went back to Ireland as a missionary. Despite many difficult years being held in slavery, he still returned to the land and the people that enslaved him.
This week in worship we are reflecting on freedom. What it means to be free in Christ and the barriers that hold us back. St. Patrick knew something about freedom, because he had lost his freedom for so many years. And upon receiving it, he uses his freedom to return to the land of his captors to spread the good news of the gospel.
“For freedom, Christ has set us free.” Let us consider what we have been set free from and set free for. Maybe our stories aren’t exactly like St. Patrick’s, but we can understand freedom in our own ways. We have all been held captive at some point, whether by old ideas, past hurts, past failures, regrets, and more. Let us live into our freedom in Christ, a freedom that is always moving us forward and out into the world to do the work of the Gospel.
See you in worship,
Pastor Nadia
