St Olave

1993 (Year A), 29 August (St Olave’s Day)

St Olave’s Woodberry Down

It often helps the understanding of events in our lives if we have things to compare them with. In the comparison we learn about ourselves. So, for example, if we’ve been bereaved, it helps to talk to those who’ve been through a similar experience. People with alcohol problems meet to share and compare their experiences in an effort to enlighten the things they are going through. And the same thing is true with the lives of the saints. We gain insight if we compare them with the lives of others.

Now it occurred to me as I read about the life of Olave that it bore a distinct resemblance to someone my mother told me about many years ago and I offer it to you now as a way of getting into the saint we’re gathered here to celebrate.

Sir Brian had a battle-axe with great big knobs on;
He went among the villagers and blipped them on the head.
On Wednesday and on Saturday, but mostly on the latter day,
He called at all the cottages, and this is what he said:

‘I am Sir Brian’ (ting-ling) ‘I am Sir Brian’ (rat-tat)
‘I am Sir Brian, as bold as a lion – Take that – and that – and that’

Sir Brian had a pair of boots with great big spurs on,
A fighting pair of which he was particularly fond,
On Tuesday and on Friday, just to make the street look tidy,
He’d collect the passing villagers and kick them in the pond.

‘I am Sir Brian’ (sper-losh)
‘I am Sir Brian’ (sper-Iash)
‘I am Sir Brian, as bold as a lion – Is anyone else for a wash?’

Olave, you all probably know, had a great deal in common with Bad Sir Brian Botany. He was a thoroughly unsavoury character. He fought. He pillaged. He was a pirate. He became King of Norway only because people were terrified of him and fled in the face of his aggression. I guess that in making Norway, Christian, he ‘blipped’ a good few people on the head and if people got away with just being kicked in the pond they’d think they got off lightly.

And the similarities between these two don’t end there. Dictators can only be sustained if they keep tight hold and compel people to behave. Just look what happened to President Ceausescu. The minute they lose control. The minute people start to believe in themselves and hope becomes stronger than fear, then they’re done for. Listen first what happened to Sir Brian:

Sir Brian woke one morning, and he couldn’t find his battle-axe;
He walked into the village in his second pair of boots.
He had gone one hundred paces, when the street was full of faces,
And the villagers were round him with ironical salutes.

‘You are Sir Brian? Indeed!’

You are Sir Brian? Dear, dear!

You are Sir Brian, as bold as a lion? Delighted to meet you here!’

He was feared no more by the villagers. The end came quite soon.

Sir Brian went a journey, and he found a lot of duckweed:
They pulled him out and dried him, and they blipped him on the head.
They took him by the breeches, and they hurled him into ditches,
And they pushed him under waterfalls, and this is what they said:

‘You are Sir Brian – don’t laugh, You are Sir Brian – don’t cry;
You are Sir Brian as bold as a lion – Sir Brian, the lion, good-bye!’

Olave’s rule of Norway was so harsh that the people rebelled against him – it was helped of course by Cnut, king of England and Denmark and the result was that Olave was exiled. Did he learn? No, not he. He tried the following year to regain the throne, this time with Swedish help. He was defeated and killed at the battle of Stiklestad on this day 963 years ago. On the other hand, Sir Brian was much more fortunate, he learnt the error of his ways before it was too late.

Sir Brian struggled home again, and chopped up his battle-axe,
Sir Brian took his fighting boots, and threw them in the fire.
He is quite a different person now he hasn’t got his spurs on,
And he goes about the village as B. Botany, Esquire.

‘I am Sir Brian? Oh no!
I am Sir Brian? Who’s he?
I haven’t got any title, I’m Botany - Plain Mr Botany (B).’

Olave’s death should really have been the end of it. The man who couldn’t learn a lesson. A tyrannical despot who cruelly put others to death finally meeting his own dreadful end. And a very just end it was. But it wasn’t the end, from his grave springs of healing water were reported. His body, reputedly incorrupt, was enshrined. Forty years after his death his feast was celebrated by all Scandinavian nations. Nowadays even people in Woodbury Down remember him.

The truth is, that nothing has an end, unless, and this is a big unless – unless it has a maker. And in Christ, in Olave and in us, our Divine Maker has ruled that death will not be our end. Our end is God and that end floods back in glory to our mortal days. It gives a hope and a meaning to whatever Christians do for love of God or love of our sisters and brothers. We are in fact all heirs of everlastingness.

We cannot in this life, possess the end we peruse; for we cannot reach our end, until we cease from self, and turn outwards to God and the children of God. Olave if he teaches us nothing else, reminds us that such self-forgetfulness is not attained in this body. ‘Flesh and blood’, says Christ’s apostle, ‘cannot attain the kingdom of God,’ but ‘See I show you a mystery – all need not sleep the sleep of death ... all must undergo change, though it be in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump. For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.’

That is what the man to whom this church is dedicated has to teach us. Even at the end of all our striving we are totally dependent on our Divine Creator. For he is or beginning and our end. All must be caught up and transformed in that death and resurrection which Christ fulfilled for us. Therefore with all we have, and all we are, we are bound to shower forth the praises of our Maker and Redeemer. AMEN