Holy Trinity and Christ Church, Gosport
Deanery Eucharist, Feast of St Birinus
6pm, 4th September 2005
Text: ‘The harvest is rich, but the labourers are few’ (Mt 9:38)
The labourers may be few – but not all are unknown. When tonight’s service was fixed, it was a great delight for me to discover that September 4th is a Saints Day. No someone in the premier league, but very much the third division. In fact, someone who almost certainly sailed past the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Gosport Peninsula on the start of his missionary journey to this country sometime in the year 640.
Not a lot is known about Birinus. His name suggests that he came from the North of Italy, and he seemed to come to the attention of those around Pope Honorius I, who were taking an increasing interest in the evangelisation of England. He was consecrated Bishop in Genoa (another North Italian flavour), and then travelled up through France. International communication wasn’t as good then as it is now. But on arrival at Fareham Creek he was supposed to have gone up the Meon Valley. His desired goal was much further North, the old Kingdom of Mercia, which included the Midlands and the West Midlands and much else. However, he found the locals that he met at the start of his journey so ill-informed about anything to do with Christianity that he settled for modestly focussed ministry. His Episcopal seat was established eventually at Dorchester in Oxfordshire, and the name of the nearby village of Berinsfield is witness to his local repute. And local he remained – hence his position in that third division in the calendar. He got the local King, King Cynigils, to accept Christianity and it all happened very locally. He died after fifteen years work, about the year 650.
I am not sure what he made of the Roman Fort at Portchester, or whatever Gosport looked like then in those far-off days! But had he been travelling today, I think he would have been with us tonight as a local Christian leader. And so, too, tonight – joining two churches, Holy Trinity and Christ Church: don’t forget how essential the Trinity and the Person and Work of Christ are as ingredients of the Christian faith. There is, inevitably, an air of uncertainty around. What are the two congregations going to make of each other? Is there going to be an invasion of lots of Roman practices from down the road? Don’t worry! I will supply the churchwardens with a check-list of what to watch out for, such as the things I won’t do if you get my meaning!
But I think Father Ian’s ministry here will be about deeper things. Perhaps we need to speak less of invasion and more of integration, Christian growth, the modest, local, careful attention to spiritual detail and mission: unspectacular, but needful and very much in the tradition of Birinus. He didn’t charge further North to where he was expected to go, and where perhaps he hoped to go. He made do with the less eye-catching terrain of where he knew he was needed.
For all of us, I suspect, our work for the Gospel, indeed the rest of our lives as well, can be a bit of a nervous mixture of charging ahead with a vision that is far away, sometimes leaving people behind in the process, or of dealing with the local, the people whose confidence needs to be gained and affections won. This is not a tattered encouragement to resist any sort of change: far from it. Birinus, Ian, Peter Hancock, you, me, all of us, are not called to a ministry that spends all its time consolidating. We are, however, called to a mission of local uncertainty, in the Lord Jesus Christ.
+ Kenneth Portsmouth
