Father Aidan's Sermon – Sunday 13th July 2003

The apostles were sent out by Jesus like prophets of old to speak on behalf of God and they had nothing.

I thought I would tell you about Sea Sunday so there is a connection.

Since I last saw you I have been on Holy Island, Lindisfarne, with Faith and Light, from Monday to Friday on retreat. There were 25 of us: 8 people with learning disabilities the parents and the rest friends. The weather was wonderful apart from Thursday night when we had a shower of rain. It was fine all the time which was quite extraordinary for that part of the world.

So the Gospel fits in with people with learning disabilities, they are described in the Gospel, they have nothing, God said “don’t take anything with you, you don’t need anything. The only thing you need is me”. People with learning disabilities, in a sense, have nothing: no GCSE’s, no SAT’s, no degrees, nothing really that they need to survive with, in our busy world. No high flying professionals, although some of them have managed computers, but nothing much. They are stripped of everything like the apostles were.

This is a cloth from Lindisfarne the island (pointing to a cloth draped over the altar) it has a Celtic pattern on it, a circle. The first night we were there we made a Celtic cross. The Celtic design is about there being no beginning or end. One of the powerful ideas [of this Celtic design] is that the eternal light of God, is woven into our lives and we are woven into the lives of God in Jesus Christ.

Holy Island is a holy island because men of prayer lived there. St Cuthbert and St Aidan are the Saints of Holy Island. We met a man of prayer, an Anglican priest retired, and he gave us sculptures of the sea. This is [sculpture of] a fish from the sea. You can pass that, have a look and pass it along whilst I’m talking, and this is a strange heart with the mark of a sword thrust through it. He was a sculptor; he went along the beach and he picked those up off the beach and gave them to me, he gave us all some. He said he used to pray beforehand and sometimes he would adapt them a bit.

The first one he showed us was a very clearly visible mother and child, Virgin Mary and the child and he said they are sculpted by the sea and the wind, sculpted by God and he uses them as a focus of prayer. We did quite a lot a praying during the week, we had morning and evening prayer together, we had Mass together and the Eucharist, it was an ecumenical thing. There was an Anglican male priest and an Anglican female priest and a Methodist minister and myself and one or two leaders.

We had Mass every morning and an Anglican Eucharist every morning. The Catholic Mass on Tuesday afternoon and the Anglican Eucharist on Thursday for everyone. We had morning and evening prayer together and a celebration of reconciliation on Thursday evening and then we had a lovely prayer service on the beach looking over to St Cuthbert Island. We did quite a lot of praying. The first thing was to become aware of how Jesus is woven into our lives.

That is one of the thing that Holy Island gives us - the importance of prayer. In some ways its easy to prayer on Holy Island; maybe the tide dominates your live. It covers the causeway twice a day so you can't get off when the tide's in. It’s a peaceful, beautiful place, and there are lots of areas which are very prayerful.

We went to the Farne islands and there the rock stacks are full of puffins, cormorants. The island where Cuthbert was is the inner Farne where the Arctic Turns, the Sandwich Turns were nesting, dive bombing us. In the morning and the evening on Lindisfarne you can hear the seals moaning above the tide coming in or the tide going out. It is a very prayerful place.

There is a tameness about the birds, its amazing, the sparrows and the blackbirds are so tame. The crime rate on Lindisfarne is zero, so we are told that if you come in late at night then don't expect to find the key was or number you had to press to get in. Doors aren’t locked on Lindisfarne. There was no problem they were always open. A Holy Place still. A place where Aidan and Cuthbert were still around.

The second thing that we found was how our own lives were intertwined. Jesus sent the disciples out in two’s he did not send them out individually. We need each other. Our own lives are entwined with each other. We lived in community, we lived together from Monday to Friday and in some ways it was easy to do that for a short time but it was a good community it was a safe place.

If you are doing 10 miles an hour in a car on Lindisfarne you might be done for speeding. It’s a very relaxed placed with very few cars there. So for people with learning disabilities, especially the children, it was easy to have them there. There was no danger for them and they could wander anywhere. Living in community, intertwining our own lives; people believing in Christ. United by believing in Christ by different traditions. Seeing the riches of our different traditions was good. Also seeing how Apostles taught us so much about Christ.

Billy was with us and Robert from our community. Robert just enjoyed it so much - just enjoyed being there with us in community. Billy was a delight, I shared a room with Billy. He woke me up several times during the night and it was difficult keeping him in bed in the morning after about 6 0’clock; telling him breakfast wasn’t until quarter to nine, but he was great. One of my best memories of him, as his eyesight is very poor, is when he said, “oh, that’s a nice dog Father isn’t it” I said “It’s a litter bin Billy”, he could have been feeding it dog biscuits all day and never have noticed.

It’s sharing our lives together like that with Bethan and Clare and Billy and Robert. It drew us into a community in which we realised that we needed so little to enjoy each other. So it was a lovely time of retreat together, a very joyful time and I’m very lucky to be able to do that to, have that. Matthew and James Wormleighton were with us too and it was great to see those young men; the gentleness of them and their sense of fun and how we need young people so much with a great sense of fun and laidbackness. A coolness about them but also a great sensitivity both to people with learning difficulties and to the prayerfulness. It was a lovely week.

I just wanted to tell you about that as its Sea Sunday and the Holy Island of Lindisfarne depended on Seafarers down the centuries. Aidan was a seafarer as was Cuthbert. Cuthbert’s was always going by sea, getting in a boat and trying to escape from everybody so he could get on to praying. He was such a man of prayer. He kept being dragged back to being Bishop or Prior and he did not want it; he wanted to be alone with God. Aidan was equally attractive and there's a story about Aidan that is lovely. Aidan was a Bishop and he wandered round and round, doing what the apostles had done. Preaching the good news, trying to convert the communities and families in Northumbria and Aidan walked everywhere. King Oswith, his friend, bought him a horse and he said “You’re a Bishop, you should be on a horse, you could do so much better”. Anyway, Aidan was going along and he met a poor man and all he had to give him was his horse, so he gave him his horse. King Oswith was really annoyed and told him off for giving away that lovely horse which he had given to him (a souped up BMW I suppose in those days) and Aidan said to him to his friend “you worried about the child of that mare, I was more worried about the child of God” and Oswith fell to his knees and asked for forgiveness.

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