Pentecost (Columba, Abbot, 597), 9 June 2019
Austwick, Clapham, Keasden
Picture the wild goose, flying beneath a morning sky, red at the end of a stormy night; hovering over a pebbled bay at the back of a small Hebridean island. And picture below, at the water’s edge, a small group of wet, bedraggled men in a tiny boat washing up onto the rocky shore. Their leader looks back to the south, his eyes following the course they have travelled, to confirm that the coastline of Ireland is no longer in sight, and says, “This is the place.” As the goose passes above, the men step off and begin their walk inland.
Now picture the wild goose, flying through time, crossing the island to rest in grass alongside a cluster of buildings wherein the same group of men we saw earlier are now gathered in prayer, their leader intoning the Psalms as they together respond. The building which contains them is the work of their hands, a place of devotion and learning.
Today the church remembers Saint Columba, an Irish abbot and missionary evangelist credited with spreading Christianity in Scotland. He founded the abbey on Iona, for centuries a dominant religious and political institution in the region. Of a high-born tribal family, the legend goes that Columba had to leave Ireland sometime around the year 560, after causing the bloody battle of Cúl Dreimhne which left many men dead. The repentant Columba resolved to expiate his offence by going into exile and win for Christ as many souls as had perished at his hands. The monastery at Iona which he founded, he developed into a school for missionaries. One of the most famous of his alumni was St Aidan, who in the mid-seventh century travelled south to found the monastery on the island of Lindisfarne, now known as Holy Island. [1]
The wild goose moves on through time; finding the island of Iona a perfect nesting-place, its compactness meaning that the geese are never far from water. As the wild goose flies through the centuries, the old monastic buildings fall into disrepair and ruin; new ones are built and then in time dismantled and abandoned. The wild goose was there a century ago when other groups of men spent two decades of summers in working parties rebuilding the abbey. Today the wild goose once again nests alongside a vibrant abbey, a centre of prayer, worship and contemplation; and takes to the skies above the ferries bringing visitors to the busy island day by day.
The Benedictine abbey church had reached a substantial size by the fifteenth century, but following the Scottish Reformation, Iona once again fell into ruin - although it continued to be a place of pilgrimage for many visitors. In 1938, the Reverend George Macleod, minister of the dockland parish of Govan, Glasgow, took unemployed skilled craftsmen and young trainee clergy to Iona to rebuild the monastic quarters of the mediaeval abbey and to develop a new form of common life on the island. [2]
Macleod was an energetic and enthusiastic young minister “appalled by the social deprivation in Govan and the Church’s lack of response”. Macleod’s new experiment proposed two things. First, that unemployed craftsman would be invited to restore the ancient Abbey buildings, and second, that future ministers in the Church of Scotland could come and be prepared, working side by side with the craftsmen while living in community. [3]
That original task became a sign of hopeful rebuilding of community in Scotland and beyond. The experience shaped – and continues to shape – the practice and principles of the Iona Community, the ecumenical community which continues to use the site to this day. [4]
Today is also Pentecost, and what better way to consider the work of the Holy Spirit than by chasing the wild goose through place and time. For legend has it that from the time of Columba to the present day, in these northern lands the Holy Spirit has been symbolised by the wild goose. Unlike the calm and gentle dove, a wild goose is in essence untamed, uncontrolled and unpredictable. And like the wild goose the Holy Spirit blows to and fro on the wind; coming in strangeness and power to disturb the status quo and to set people onto a new adventure with God.
It is this Spirit, I think, which links Columba and George Macleod. Both men inspired to turn the darkness into light - for Columba turning the darkness of his tribal battles back home in Ireland into the light of teaching and sharing the gospel with the people of Scotland; for Macleod turning the darkness of unemployment in his dockland parish, into the light of bringing work and worship together and in that way restoring to Iona a living community rooted in a life of prayer.
This wild goose Spirit carried the two men’s work way beyond their original vision. Columba’s missionary initiative spread way beyond Scotland into England, Europe and beyond. Macleod’s working parties became the Iona Community which today is a worldwide movement of people committed to living out the Christian faith by bringing worship, faith and spirituality together with social justice and campaigning, environmental stewardship, peacemaking, healing and reconciliation. This is a diverse and inclusive community - like the one which the wild Holy Spirit engendered on that Pentecost in Jerusalem. Spend time on Iona today and you will hear every type of language spoken, see every type of person represented, all working together in the demanding common task of being faithful disciples in the everyday world. [5]
May the wild goose keep flying for us - may the Holy Spirit continue to bless us and disturb us. In the words of the hymn we earlier sang, by John Bell and Graham Maule of the Wild Goose Resource Group,
Even now, as on that earliest day
we feel uncertain. So we pray:
Lord, give us Pentecost again
through city square and country glen.
With or without new tongues of flame
make your church worthy of your name. [6]
Notes
[1] Wikipedia pages referenced here: Canada Goose, Columba, Aidan of Lindisfarne.
[2] Wikipedia: Iona Abbey, Iona. Iona Community: Our history.
[3] Josh Sweeden, Book Review. Ronald Ferguson, Chasing the Wild Goose: The Story of the Iona Community.
[4] Iona Community: Our history.
[5] Iona Community: Our concerns.
[6] God’s Spirit came at Pentecost. John L Bell and Graham Maule, © Wild Goose Resource Group, Iona Community, Glasgow. In the collection Known Unknowns: 100 contemporary texts to common tunes.
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