"Do the Little Things"

​Yesterday was Saint David’s Day and, particularly in this centennial year, I want to commemorate our patron saint. Thankfully, Saint David turns out to be surprisingly relevant, with much to teach us about living as Christians in our time.
 
Unfortunately, Saint David is not well known. I have a degree in Church History, but I had never heard of him when I first came here. I guessed that Saint David was the great Old Testament king from whom Christ is descended. In case you have wondered the same thing, I am here to tell you that they were not the same person. Our Saint David is the patron saint of Wales, by which I mean part of the British Isles, not the large animal that swims in the ocean!
 
I have tried, without success, to discover why our founders chose Saint David as our patron when our parish was established back in 1925. But even if Saint David’ is not a household name, not even here at Saint David’s!, Saint David has been part of our history.
 
Not too long after I arrived, I found a large stone under our altar. The Altar Guild knew all about it, but I doubt many other people did. Apparently, Father Tyler, our priest in the nineteen fifties and sixties, brought it back from a pilgrimage he made to Saint David’s Cathedral in Wales. I was intrigued, but didn’t think much about it.
 
But when we got our new altar and decided to bring the stone out, I was startled to see that it was carved. It’s a fragment from the Cathedral itself! I would like to think that Father Tyler got permission to take it, but this is one of those cases where it is probably best not to ask.
 
In a post 9-11 world, hauling stone on airplanes is tricky, but I also brought back a stone from a pilgrimage to Saint David’s Cathedral a couple of years ago, which now sits on my altar at home. Getting my stone back was not a problem because it is about the size of a quarter, and I just picked it up off the ground. That makes me less impressive, but probably more legal, than Father Tyler!
 
In my first year here, I also learned that we were part of a network of Saint David’s Episcopal Churches in the United States that supports Saint David’s Cathedral in Wales. I have no idea when that started, but I send them a little money every year in the name of our parish to maintain the connection.
 
I say all that to show that we have paid attention to Saint David in different ways throughout our history.
 
But Saint David can help us in our particular moment, too.
 
Saint David was a Celtic Christian living at a time when Celtic Christianity was in retreat. Pagan tribes from Germany were overrunning England, pushing the Celtic Christians to the margins, places like Wales in the west and Scotland in the north.
 
Saint David was part of the Celtic Christian resistance. (So was the historical King Arthur. I briefly fantasized that Dabid and Arthur knew each other, but they lived at different times and in different places.)
 
In one famous story, Saint David advised the Welsh fighting men to wear leeks to distinguish themselves from their Saxon enemies. That way they would know who to attack and who not to attack when things got confusing.
 
Saint David also participated in the wider Church. In another famous story, David was preaching at a Church Council, but no one could hear him. So, God raised up the hill on which David was standing and, at the same time, the Holy Spirit came upon him in the form of a dove. You can see an image of that moment on our banner. And the Dove has been a symbol of Saint David ever since, including on our Saint David stained glass window.
 
David’s role in the Celtic resistance and at the Church Council remind us that Christian people are called to look beyond our immediate environment, to have an impact on our world, and to join with our brothers and sisters in other places to discern God’s will. That’s an important reminder when Christianity seems to be in retreat in our time and place, as it was in David’s.
 
But mostly Saint David was a monk. David himself lived at the monastery where Saint David’s Cathedral now stands, and he founded other monasteries all along the western coast of Wales.
 
And there are lessons in his monastic practice as well.
 
Saint David was strict in his monasteries. He wouldn’t let his monks eat meat, drink anything other than water, or use domestic animals for labor. As you might guess, those rules were NOT popular. At one point, David’s monks grew so angry that they tried to poison him. David prayed over the poisoned water and food, then ate and drink without harm.
 
It's fun to imagine what meals were like after the failed poisoning. I’m guessing they were a little tense! But Saint David continued to serve as abbot of the monastery, and it appears that some or all of the monks involved in the foiled assassination attempt stayed on. If so, they all must have gone through a process of reconciliation. I wish we knew more about that.
 
David’s rules were strict even by the standards of monastic houses of that period. I certainly have no interest in following his rules!
 
But, especially in challenging times, we need to double down on our spiritual practices, on our ongoing formation and growth as Christian people. And for many of us, that may well mean simplifying our lives or practicing some forms of self-denial.
 
As it happens, Lent, the season of self-denial, begins next Wednesday. Saint David invites us to be intentional about things we might give up or take on in an effort to eliminate some of the distractions in our lives and draw closer to God.
 
But what David and his monks mostly did, what monks have mostly done in every time and place, was pray. And that is probably the best lesson of all.
 
Despite his occasional forays into the larger world, Saint David mostly lived outside of the major currents of his time. Day after day, he and his monks prayed and worked and did their best to get along with each other. And that seems to have been what mattered most to Saint David. His dying words of advice were, “do the little things, the small things you've seen me doing.”
 
In that, David was like us. We mostly don’t have a big impact on the world around us. We mostly try to be faithful out of sight in our little corner of the world.
 
But David did have an impact. His monasteries were like Christian seeds that ultimately bore rich fruit when Christianity began to spread through England once again.
 
I think the same thing may be happening now. There are certainly plenty of problems in our nation and in our world. But, for the first time in many years, the younger generation is more religious than their immediate elders. It may be that revival has begun.
 
Whether or not that turns out to be right, Saint David reminds us that our task is to stay faithful in the little things, to engage the wider world as we are able, and to trust that God is at work through it all. I pray that God will help us here at Saint David’s to heed our patron’s reminder! In Christ’s name. Amen.