The ends of the earth
Preacher: Revd Dr Donald MacEwan
Readings: Isaiah 35:4-7a; Mark 7:24-37
Why is St Andrews called St Andrews? The reason is found in relics. For hundreds of years, certain bones of St Andrew were kept in this corner of Scotland, in a precious casket called a reliquary, in different buildings on the cathedral site, the now ruined St Rule’s Church and the Cathedral itself. Which bones? A tooth, an arm bone, a kneecap and three fingers of his right hand. We know from the Bible that Andrew was a fisherman who became one of Jesus’ disciples, the brother of Peter. It is later sources which speak of his missionary work, and martyrdom, put to death on an X-shaped cross. A further source says that in the 400s, a monk called Rule (or Regulus) was told in a dream to move these particular relics to “the ends of the earth”. After travelling for 18 months by land and sea, the monk landed in this remote place, on a headland called Muckross, and consecrated a site for keeping the sacred relics. In time the home of Andrew’s bones was named for the apostle himself – St Andrews.
You too may well feel that you have come to the ends of the earth in arriving in St Andrews. It may have taken a flight or two or more; ten days quarantine; a long train trip, changing in Edinburgh, and still five more miles from Leuchars Station; a car journey on ever skinnier roads. Now here, there seem to be only three streets, and walk in most directions and you find cliffs, rocky shores, long stretches of sand, and the sea. Is this remote outpost really to be your home for the next year or four? Can you really abandon your son or daughter to this medieval village so far, it seems, from anywhere?
Perhaps more seriously, how does it feel to be beginning or renewing studies in St Andrews at a time like this? How comfortable is it to be leaving precious offspring behind, away from the security of home? There seem so many reasons to be fearful. Many have travelled to St Andrews so conscious of those desperate flights out of Afghanistan at just the same time. Thousands have left behind their homes, their way of life, their beloved families and friends to go to the ends of the earth, to Oxfordshire, to Virginia, to Tajikistan, to Pakistan.
We also begin this academic year in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. There will be fears that illness will strike, even here far from places of high population density. And we all share the anxiety of not quite knowing how plans will pan out. Will we return to the lecture-room? Will we make friends in a time of restrictions in halls? Will we only ever know people by the top half of their face? One legend around the coming of Andrew’s relics here was to keep them safe while the rest of his body was being taken on a perilous trip to Constantinople. For many people, Coronavirus has threatened the sense of safety which St Andrews has usually provided.
Which brings us to the psalm set for today, so beautifully sung for us by members of St Salvator’s Chapel Choir. Psalm 46 depicts astonishing events studied in our Schools of Earth and Environmental Science, and Geography and Sustainable Development – earthquakes, landslides, storms, tempests, rising seas, rivers and floods. Indeed this psalm seems to describe the ends of the earth – literally, in v. 6:
God hath shewed his voice, and the earth shall melt away.
When I read this psalm in preparing for today, I couldn’t help but think of climate change. The hills carried into the sea in v. 2 hints at rising sea levels. The raging and swelling waters of v. 3 bring to mind the waves crashing on to the shores of Louisiana, New Jersey or, not so long ago, Mozambique and Bangladesh. The melting earth of v. 6 recalls the extreme heat of this summer, and wildfires in Australia, western North America, Greece and Siberia.
The existence of these phenomena in Bible-times gives no credence to climate-change deniers. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC) has never argued that storms and floods, fire and heat are brand new. But it is clear beyond doubt that these extremes are more frequent, stronger, more intense and have greater than ever impact on a world in which humans have altered ecologies so radically.
There’s another extreme from climate change deniers – people who say that we are all completely doomed, that we cannot possibly avert total destruction, that the end of the earth is coming and so we might as well throw another steak on the coal-fired barbecue. But the psalm offers a different perspective. Twice – in vv. 7 and 11 – we hear the refrain: The Lord of hosts is with us: the God of Jacob is our refuge. And we remember how the psalm begins: God is our hope and strength: a very present hope in trouble.
This psalm neither denies that scary stuff is happening, nor abandons the world to a desperate fate. Instead it holds out hope in God, that the loving Creator from whose hand comes all that lives and evolves (as we prayed earlier) will continue to be faithful to his world, upholding it, in the midst of it, helping it, inspiring peace.
What then of the other readings set for today? How do they connect with earth, wind and fire; with the ends of the earth? It seems to me that they make the general specific in speaking of healing. The gospel portrays two vignettes of Jesus’ work. He encounters two people who are struggling with troubles. One is a girl with an unclean spirit – it’s not clear how we would translate that today, perhaps a significant mental disability. The other is a man with profound hearing loss affecting also his speech. They are individuals, unnamed but vividly real, who call forth in our minds all the troubles of human lives, our health in body or mind – our physical constraints and mental health.
And Jesus heals them. This does not give a guarantee that our problems in body or mind will quickly flee away. If so, it would mean redundancy for my colleagues in Student Services and Occupational Health, and the loss of about half of what Sam and I do, week by week. Sorry, Sam – I’m not sure the budget will stretch to your salary if no-one requires our pastoral care.
But these individual miniatures do not offer false comfort, but grounds for hope. And if you don’t believe me, perhaps you will be persuaded by the words of Tom Wright on this passage, until recently Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity here:
This is what we long for and pray for day by day: that the joy, the justice, the love, the rescuing and restoring power of God’s ultimate future would come into our lives ahead of time, right now, today. We learn, in our weakness and continuing frailty, that we can’t have it all right away. We still await God’s full new creation.
Indeed we do, but, as Tom goes on to say, we are called to pray with the persistence and hope which the suffering girl’s mother showed to Jesus. We are called to pray to God, our hope and strength, a very present help in trouble.
I know that parents, sisters and brothers, family and friends pray for their loved ones here. And I know that students here pray for people back home. This Chapel is a house of prayer – at Sunday services, in Evensong, and every weekday morning at 8.45 am for morning people among you. But the Christian faith sees faith and action as hand in hand, part of the same whole. Praying for people through the pandemic goes hand in hand with caring for them, helping them in their needs, being considerate and respectful of others. Praying for refugees goes hand in hand with working for peace, finding better ways to foster human flourishing than the machine gun and drone strike. And praying for creation, our common home goes hand in hand with lives of commitment towards the environment and being carbon neutral, as individuals, a University and society.
The end of the earth has been predicted many times, and yet here we are, at the beginning of the Martinmas Semester in this the 608th year of the University of St Andrews. This was the ends of the earth when, it is said, St Rule brought a basket of bones ashore. God has been the hope and strength of many many generations of students and scholars here, and remains a very present help in our troubles both as people and as a planet. In these ends, I hope, is our beginning.
END