St Columba
1989 (Year C), 9 June /
Feast of Saint Columba
St Anne’s Hoxton
It’s good to be here today with such a gathering of people and it’s entirely appropriate that we should celebrate the feast of St Columba, for St Columba had much in common with the people of Hoxton. Rumour has it that St Columba had to leave Ireland rather like people leave Hoxton – quickly and under the cover of darkness with a crowd chasing. But unlike the people of Hoxton, who when they leave go up the road to De Beauvoir, he set sail, with twelve of his friends and went off to islands just off the Scottish mainland.
Now the journey was undertaken in a coracle. I don’t know how many of you have seen one of these amazing contraptions – they’re just like an upturned bowl and about as comfortable – it must truly have been a miracle that he got the thing anywhere let alone across the Irish Sea. The only time I ever tried to sail in one we spent a crazy hour going round and round in circles.
It put me in mind of another intrepid journey in a similarly suitable craft. Here’s how it is described.
They sailed away in a sieve they did,
In a sieve they went to sea;
In spite of all their friends could say
On a winter’s morn, on a stormy day
In a sieve they went to sea!
And everyone said who saw them go
‘O won’t they soon be upset you know!
For the sky is dark and the voyage is long
And, happen what may, it’s extremely wrong
In a sieve to sail so fast.’
Far and few, far and few
Are the lands where the Jumblies live.
Their heads are green and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a sieve.
Maybe St Columba left Ireland because he had to, maybe he set out in faith with a desire to convert another country – it doesn’t matter really, what is important is that he set off on a journey. The Jumblies set off with a great deal of gay abandon and in the face of prudent warnings and respectable advice. They called allowed, ‘Our sieve ain’t big, But we don’t care a button and don’t care a fig, In a sieve we’ll go to sea.’
There are of course those who always stay at home and ‘tut, tut’. Those who pour scorn on the daring travellers. Columba must have known them, you meet them every day, the Jumblies had to listen to them too:
And everyone said who saw them go
O won’t they soon be upset, you know
For the sky is dark and the voyage is long
And happen what may, it’s extremely wrong
In a sieve to sail so fast.
Far and few...
This journey provided the Jumblies with opportunities to do things they’d never done before. All journeys provide us with new experiences. The journey of your life is a list of such things. Some you will have seized, others will have slipped away. A few people given the opportunities took them and changed the course of history. St Columba, if the legends are to be believed had lasting significance on this world. He was called to go and rid a community of a monster. He did it so successfully that they’ve been looking for it ever since, for the community lived on the banks of Loch Ness.
Journeys are not easy.
The water it soon came in, it did
The water it soon came in
So to keep them dry, they wrapped their feet
In pinky paper all folded neat
And fastened it down with a pin
And they passed the night in a crockery jar
And each of them said, ‘How wise we are
Though the sky be dark and the voyage be long
Yet we never can think we were rash or wrong
While round in our sieve we spin.
Far and few...
So things have started to go wrong and they’ve got water lapping round their feet. Maybe a bit came over the side of Columba’s coracle but he was undaunted too. He did his work, maybe not as much as is claimed for him, but he did his work nevertheless. And on one occasion at least he returned home.
The Jumblies did the same thing:
In twenty years they all came back,
In twenty years or more.
And everyone said, ‘How tall they’ve grown
For they’ve been to the lakes and the Torrible Zone
And the hills of the Chankly bore’.
And they drank their health and gave them a feast
Of dumplings made of a beautiful yeast
And everyone said, ‘If only we live,
We too will go to sea in a sieve
To the hills of the Chankly Bore.’
Far and few...
The incentive for this daunting journey is the possibility or promise of finding ‘a land covered with trees ‘furnished with useful and delightful commodities and returning mysteriously taller from... the lakes of the Torrible Zone, and the hills of the Chankly Bore.
We are all on a journey, that’s what Columba has to tell us. A journey into God. We may not have to cross the sea to another island but we, like him are all on a journey.
And just like Columba and the Jumblies our journey’s end will be to arrive back at the place we first started from. Although it will be different now because we will be looking at the place anew, through the eyes of God. Another poem has these words, ‘The end of all our exploring, Will be to arrive at where we started, And know the place for the first time.’
The gospels are littered with stories of journeys, the prodigal son, the good Samaritan, Jesus himself is constantly on a journey. His first began before he was even born. And the journey is always to God. The Christian journey is unique, because we’ve already seen and tasted the God whom we seek. A famous quotation, you’ll all have heard is this, ‘You would not seek me unless you have already found me’.
God is present in our lives in all kinds of ways, we do not have to wait till death to reach our end and so may Columba who we remember tonight and the Jumblies inspire us farther along our road and point us towards God. AMEN