- Pastor Ben
- 10 hours ago
What the real Patrick can teach the church about courage, empire, and the way of Jesus
St. Patrick’s Day gets dressed up as a light holiday. Green shirts. Shamrocks. Parades. Maybe some bad Irish jokes.
But the real Patrick gives us something much stronger.
Patrick was kidnapped as a teenager, taken to Ireland, and enslaved. He eventually escaped and made it home. Then later, in one of the most radical moves in Christian history, he chose to go back to the place of his suffering because he believed God was calling him there.
He did not go back to dominate. He did not go back for revenge. He went back to serve. He went back to bear witness. He went back to live the Gospel.
In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus resists every attempt to make faith about domination, exclusion, or fear. He keeps moving toward the margins. He tells the truth. He confronts religious hypocrisy. He centers the poor. He refuses the logic of empire. Then in Acts, the early church keeps living that same way. They share what they have. They cross lines of class and ethnicity. They speak with courage. They refuse to let political power or public pressure define their mission.
That is resistance in the way of Jesus.
It is not performative outrage. It is not cruelty dressed up as strength. It is not winning at all costs.
It is the steady refusal to let empire shape our souls.
Patrick fits right into that story. His life looks a lot more like the church in Acts than the shallow version of religion our culture often serves up. He knew suffering. He knew what it meant to be dehumanized. And still, he did not hand his heart over to bitterness. He returned with courage, conviction, and a Gospel big enough to break the cycle.
That matters right now.
Because we are living in a time when Christianity is too often used as a tool for power. We are watching Christian nationalism try to reshape faith into something Jesus would barely recognize. We see fear of the stranger, obsession with control, scapegoating of vulnerable people, and a version of religion that seems more interested in winning than in love, justice, mercy, or truth.
Luke-Acts resists that.
Patrick resisted that.
We need to resist that.
In RESIST, one of the central claims is that faithful resistance is not just about what we oppose. It is about what we embody. We do not resist hate only by condemning it. We resist hate by building communities of belonging. We do not resist lies only by calling them out. We resist lies by telling the truth and living truthfully. We do not resist domination only by criticizing empire. We resist domination by practicing the way of Jesus here and now.
That is the church’s calling.
Not to bless the systems that crush people.Not to stay quiet when faith is hijacked.Not to retreat into private spirituality while the world burns.
Our call is to live as if the reign of God is real. Because it is.
So this St. Patrick’s Day, let’s remember the real Patrick. Not the legend. Not the marketing. The man who went back without revenge. The Christian who resisted empire by serving. The witness who chose courage, truth, and love.
That is the kind of faith we need now.
And that is the kind of resistance Jesus still calls us to practice.
