Prophets of the Lovely Reversal
- St. Aidan's
- 6 days ago
- 6 min read
Feast of Saint Aidan: Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Bk 3, Ch. 5;
Psalm 103:13-18; 1 Cor. 9:16-23; Mt. 9:27-30
The Rev'd Cameron Partridge
August 30, 2026
Good Morning, St. Aidan’s (and St. Cyprian’s). Happy Feast Day!
Today we commemorate our founder, Aidan, Bishop of Lindisfarne in the British kingdom of Northumbria. He was likely born somewhere in the late fifth or early sixth century of the Common Era. Along the way he became a monk based at Iona, an island and ancient monastic center of Celtic learning just off the west coast of Scotland amid the Hebrides. Iona had become known as an Irish monastic outpost since the people of the region had given the island to the community of Irish monks headed by Columba (521-597 C.E.) in 563 C.E.[1] These monks did not stay on the island but went out on foot traveling through the region, sharing the good news of God in Jesus Christ. When Oswald became king of the Northumbrian region in 535, he asked for a monk of Iona to be made bishop to further anchor the faith in the area and create a base for preaching on the north east side of his kingdom. Initially, as we heard in our first reading from the Venerable Bede, and as relayed by Marilyn Geist in the narrative at the front of your booklets, the monks chose someone else who didn’t work out.[2] This man came back to Iona after some time – a few months? a year? – and declared that the people were “ungovernable” and of “an obstinate and barbarous temperament.” They wouldn’t listen to him. There was no point. But as “the Irish Fathers” reflected on this situation in council, Aidan found a clear but kind way to say, essentially, it wasn’t actually them, it was you. Referencing the Apostle Paul’s image of beginning with milk before moving on to solid food, he suggested that whoever led this effort needed to meet people where they were. As Bede describes it, the room turned and looked at him and knew, this was the one who needed to take up this effort. Aidan’s contrast with the earlier candidate tells us everything Bede wanted us to know. While the earlier monk was “more austere” (Bede) or “bleak and severe” (Geist), Aidan was “particularly endowed with the grace of discretion, the mother of virtues.”[3] Elsewhere Bede says Aidan had “outstanding gentleness, holiness, and moderation.”[4] In another passage he comments, Aidan “cultivated peace and love, purity and humility,” and that “he was above anger and greed, and despised pride and conceit.” He “used his priestly authority to check the proud and powerful; he tenderly comforted the sick; he relieved and protected the poor.”[5]
These qualities of Aidan strike me this morning as we celebrate his feast at this moment in our world, a moment fueled by anger and outrage, of intensified exploitation, violence, marginalization and pain. They make me wonder, how might the qualities of Aidan ground and form us to be Christians in this world, in this moment? A time when Christian are too often experienced as rejecting, filled with “us and them” judgment, as sources of hatred and polarization. The Feast of Aidan is day to remind all Christian communities named after this particular forbear, ourselves included, of the Aidan-inspired charism of our call. We are entrusted with a commission, as Paul says in our second reading, to meet people where they are for the sake of the Gospel (1 Cor. 9:17). As Aidan-inspired emissaries of that Good News, we are to be people of gentleness and humility; people who check judgment and hatred with clarity and kindness. We are called to be beacons of hope and light, sharing through the witness of our lives the Good News of God in Jesus Christ who came among us as a sojourner, sent to heal the broken, to seek out the lost, to liberate the oppressed, to release the captives, to renew creation. The fourth century Cappadocian theologian Gregory Nazianzus (c. 329-390 C.E.), preaching more than a century prior to Aidan, invites us to celebrate the Good News as our feast and our witness:
This is our feast, this is what we celebrate today: God’s coming to the human race, so that we might make our way to [God]… so that we might put off the old humanity and put on the new, and that as we have died in Adam so we might live in Christ, being born with Christ and crucified with him and buried with him an raised with him. For I must experience the lovely reversal: as pain came out of happiness, so happiness must return from pain.[6]
I love Gregory’s phrase “the lovely reversal.” I love the urgency of his declaration that he – that we – are meant to experience it. The Good News is not simply a story. It is something that changes everything. It is something we take into ourselves and live out in the world as a transformational vocation, each and every day, each and every one of us. Aidan lived out that lovely reversal.
A little more than twenty years ago I remember seeing a movie called Transamerica. I saw it in the theater, and while it struck me as significant to have a humanizing, positive portrayal of a trans character in a mainstream movie – a woman who travels across the country with her long-lost son – I have to say, the movie was not my favorite. My favorite part came at the end as the credits rolled. I remember sitting in the darkened theater as the song accompanying the credits began – the pluck of a guitar, a bass. And then a lilting, beautiful, soprano voice began to sing. I listened and thought, is that… Dolly Parton? It was. The song was called Traveling Through.[7] I sat there, listening to the words, and just smiled and smiled.
Well, I can't tell you where I'm goin', I'm not sure of where I've been
But I know I must keep travelin' 'til my road comes to an end
I'm out here on my journey, tryin' to make the most of it
I'm a puzzle, I must figure out where all my pieces fit
Like a poor wayfarin' stranger that they speak about in song
I'm just a weary pilgrim tryin' to find what feels like home
Where that is, no one can tell me, am I doomed to ever roam?
I'm just travelin', travelin', travelin', I'm just travelin' on
Questions I have many, answers but a few
We're here to learn the spirit burns, to know the greater truth
We've all been crucified and they nailed Jesus to the tree
And when I'm born again, you're gonna see a change in me
God made me for a reason and nothin' is in vain
Redemption comes in many shapes with many kinds of pain
Oh, sweet Jesus, if you're listenin', keep me ever close to you
As I'm stumblin', tumblin', wanderin', as I'm travelin' through
I'm just travelin', travelin', travelin', I'm just travelin' through[8]
If ever there was an emissary of the Good News, an inspiring prophet of the lovely reversal, an Aidan-inflected bearer of the Gospel, it was Dolly Parton, who died this week.[9] I had not known prior to hearing that song, that she was such an ally to the LGBTQIA+ community. I had remembered and appreciated her from the first time I saw her in the movie 9 to 5 when I was in third grade, in which she so cheerfully stoked transformation and liberation among her office colleagues in the face of a blatantly patriarchal, misogynistic boss. She had given so much back to so many oppressed communities over so many years. What a loss. What an inspiration to all of us, an example of not only Christ-like but also Aidan-like service in our day.
St. Aidan’s, this is our feast. This is what we celebrate today. The life of one who followed Christ, who in his own way lived out that lovely reversal, and calls all of us – from the Dolly Partons to the residents of this neighborhood and the wider Bay Area to join in bearing God’s life-changing, hope-inspiring Good News.
[1] Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 843. The Venerable Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People trans. By Leo Sherley-Price, revised by R.E. Latham (London, UK: Penguin Random House,1965, 1995), Book 3, Chapter 4, p. 148.
[2] Geist names him as Corman, but Bede doesn’t name him. The name Corman was supplied in Hector Boece’s 1527 Scotorum Historiae a Prima Gentis Origine but its historical accuracy is doubted. Sarah McCann, Bede’s Plures De Scottorum Regione: The Irish in the Historical Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum. PhD Dissertation, National University of Ireland, Galway, 2013, p. 26. https://researchrepository.universityofgalway.ie/server/api/core/bitstreams/a41de047-0965-4c8d-8715-4538c1b4427f/content
[3] Ecclesiastical History, 3.5, p. 151
[4] Ecclesiastical History, 3.3., p. 146
[5] Ecclesiastical History, 3.17, p. 170
[6] Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 38.4 “On the Theophany” in ed. Brian E. Daley, S.J., Gregory of Nazianzus (New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 118
[7] On Dolly Parton’s support for the trans community: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/flashback-see-dolly-parton-stand-for-transgender-equality-124584/
[8] Dolly Parton, TransAmerica Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (2005), Track 21. The lyrics can be found here: https://genius.com/Dolly-parton-travelin-thru-lyrics
[9] Ben Beaumont-Thomas, “Dolly Parton, country star, actor and philanthropist, dies aged 80 after cancer diagnosis.” The Guardian, August 25, 2026: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/aug/25/dolly-parton-country-singer-dead
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