"The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few."
As I announced last Sunday morning, we are to have a curate. Christine Barclay is to be ordained a deacon in our cathedral in Perth on Sunday 28th October and will spend at least the next two years here at All Saints. She will learn about the ordained ministry alongside all of us, both lay and ordained, as together we exercise our Christian ministry in this congregation and in this community. Some of you met her at the coffee morning yesterday.
Christine will be ordained by Bishop David in his cathedral - our cathedral - which is, as you may know, notable for being the first cathedral to be built in Britain after the Reformation. Although not completed until the early years of the twentieth century, it was consecrated in 1850. It is dedicated to St Ninian, whose feast we celebrate today.
It is likely that, during the service of ordination, which will also see the installation of a new dean of the diocese and two new canons, a litany will be sung. Most likely, it will be the litany to be found in the Scottish Ordinal of 1984. It contains the following petitions:
As you were glorified in Ninian, bringer of good tidings, lighten our darkness.
As you empowered Columba, apostle of our land, strengthen our weakness.
As you received the worship of Kentigern, Mungo the loved one, deepen our love.
As you advanced your kingdom through the work of Margaret, Mother and Queen, fill us with zeal.
These four petitions invoke four people whose names are inextricably bound up with the history of the Christian faith in Scotland. And the first of these is Ninian, bringer of good tidings . He tops the list, as it were, because he is acknowledged to be our first saint. Ninian brought the good tidings to this land some two hundred years before St Columba. In fact, the year 397AD is celebrated as the beginning of his mission.
Despite his prominence in the Christian story of Scotland, Ninian is a figure of whom we know little for certain. The principal texts that deal with his life come not from his own time, the late 4th - early 5th century, but from hundreds of years later: from the first half of the 8th century, a few lines in the Venerable Bede's History of the English Church and People; from the same century in an anonymously written Latin poem, The Miracles of bishop Ninian; and from the 12th century, in Ailred of Rievaulx's short biography, The Life of St Ninian.
Ninian's name is associated with Whithorn, down in Dumfries and Galloway, south west Scotland. It is here, so the story goes, that Ninian founded the first monastic settlement in what is now Scotland. Built of stone and coated with lime-plaster, his building stood out, shining white in the sun, gleaming bright in the rain. The monastery became known, in Latin, as Candida Casa, the White House, before becoming Whithorn in the Anglo-Saxon rendering of the same.
Ninian, we are told, was born in Britain and educated in Rome. He was consecrated bishop in the year 394 and returned to Britain having been appointed, as Ailred puts it, 'apostle to his native land.' Ninian travelled home via the city of Tours, where the man we know as St Martin of Tours, was then the bishop.
According to Ailred, Ninian remained for a while with this holy man. It was Martin, you will recall, the former Roman soldier, who, having already given almost all his clothes away to the poor, was confronted by a naked beggar. By this time, Martin had only his cloak to cover him, but he took his sword, cut the cloak in two and gave half to the poor man, wrapping himself in what remained. That night, he had a vision of Christ, who appeared to him arrayed in that part of the cloak which Martin had given to the beggar. "Martin," said our Lord, "you have clothed me in this robe."
In time, Ninian took his leave of Martin and travelled on, ever northward, towards journey's end on the Solway Firth. 'Straight away,' Ailred tells us, 'this diligent workman entered upon the field of his Lord, rooting out what had been wrongly planted, scattering what had been wrongly collected, and pulling down that which had been wrongly built. Then, with the minds of his people purged of error, Ninian began to lay in them the foundations of the true fait-h, building with the gold of wisdom, the silver of knowledge, and the precious stones of good works.'
From Whithorn, Ninian and his monks travelled on missionary journeys across Scotland, as far as Stirling and Perth, the stories full of conversions and cures, good works and preaching of the gospel.
"The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few."
In this morning's gospel, we heard that Jesus did the same, that he went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every infirmity.
The thought here, and in the following verses, is that his disciples, the twelve, are to do precisely the same work. Jesus saw that there was much to do and that some of his closest companions were ready to share in that work, for when he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them.
He had compassion for them. It is worth pausing just for a moment to consider that word, 'compassion'. The word here translated 'compassion' is actually rather stronger in the original, where it implies something like 'pain of love'. Jesus saw the people of his land as shepherd-less people. They were as if wolves had harried them and left them bleeding because they had none to lead and protect them. It was a comment upon both the occupying Roman power and upon their own religious leaders. Jesus saw the people - saw their very great needs - and he felt the pain of love for them.
Jesus had this strong compassion for them because he loved the people as a parent loves a child. It is compassion difficult to define except in terms of what it was not. It was not patronising. It was not shallow or sentimental. It was not a mere palliative. And it was not without cost, as we noted last Sunday. The compassion of Jesus, because it was grounded in holy love, took him to a cross.
Beautifully, these verses imply that Jesus is the true shepherd of the human flock. He lays down his life for the sheep. But he is not defeated by time and death. He has power to lay down his life, and power to take it again. Only in his shielding strength and wise leading is the flock safely fed.
Jesus gives two pictures of humankind. The first is rather sad, with the people depicted as a ravaged flock. The second, however, is glad, with the people depicted as a field ripe for harvest. Is the glass half full or half empty? Is it a problem or an opportunity? It all depends how you look at it. If only we could always see things with the eyes of our Lord. How much simpler it would be, how much better would we know what to do.
Jesus saw the situation and he saw also people ready to respond to the gospel; he saw labourers ready to be sent out into the harvest. He knew that he must delegate the work. And so we see in these verses the beginning of ordained ministry.
Note the crucial place that prayer is given. Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest.. . The prayer is not to be a substitute for the labour: the disciples were not called simply to reap, but also to pray. The work will not be done without prayer. The pattern is repeated two thousand years on as prayer is requested for those being ordained to the sacred ministry.
So, as we give thanks for the ministry of Ninian in our land, let us pray for the ministry to which each one of us is called; let us pray for vocations to the religious life and to the ordained ministry; and let us pray for Christine as she prepares for her ordination in the cathedral that bears Ninian's name.
Sermon by: Jonathan Mason