The Saint and the Reverend

a devotional for winter

Photo by Steffi Pereira on Unsplash

Thank you for joining us!

Before we begin our devotional, I wanted to share a Comment Highlight from last week:

On our discussion last week, asking how everyone was doing in these early weeks of January, Megan replied:

While winter can be gloomy and tiresome, I find something comforting in these quiet days between. We have space to think & grow our minds and hearts before the busier energy of spring. It can be a challenge to accept the beauty in the gloomy, mundane days of winter but I think if we’re open to it we can see the beauty here in this space between.

I love the way you phrased this, Megan! Megan’s insightful words and work in and around the topic of how faith and being a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) interweave can be found at her website here!

If you want a chance to be featured in next week’s Comment Highlight, all you have to do is post a comment on any of this week’s posts or threads. That’s it!

Now, on with this week’s devotional…

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here is a tree 
at the edge of the woods
martyred
its bare, broken branches
like hedgehog spines

or perhaps
like a rain of arrows
stuck fast
in the bark;

and yet alive
with the sound of chipmunk
and red squirrel
and sparrow
chatter;

death is not the end
they say;

or rather,
death does not look
the way
we expect,

an arrow-shot tree
alive
like a saint
at the edge
of the woods.

As I’ve written before, I am not Catholic. But I do find certain saints to be of real interest, especially the ones with compelling stories.

So here’s one: have you heard of Saint Sebastian?

Many Protestants probably recognize him, even if they don’t know his name. Sebastian is almost always depicted in art and iconography as a young handsome man, either nude or barely clothed, tied to a tree and absolutely riddled with arrows.

Gruesome, right?

According to the story, Sebastian was a soldier in the Roman army who was secretly a Christian. He would use his position of authority to aid Christians who were being persecuted and even convert other guards and soldiers to the faith. When he was caught, he was sentenced to death by the emperor, leading to the most iconic lasting image we have of him.

But something I find particularly interesting about Sebastian is that his most famous—or infamous—image was not the end of the story.

He was left for dead, yes, but actually rescued from the tree and saved from death by another Christian, a widow named Irene, who tended to his wounds. Though a less common depiction than Sebastian’s “first martyrdom” with the arrows, there are some truly beautiful paintings of Irene and Sebastian. My personal favorite is by Hendrick ter Brugghen, called Sebastian Tended By Saint Irene, which is truly a marvel of light and artistic structure.

Yes, Sebastian went on to be truly martyred later, but not before he was able to fulfill his calling by confronting the emperor who had ordered his first execution.

Saint Sebastian’s feast day is this week, on January 20th. This week—today, in fact—we observe a federal day to honor Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr, another martyr whose cause history often only remembers in part.

Like Sebastian, King’s legacy is often stripped down to the most famous pieces. In King’s case, his photos, quotes, and speeches that are remembered are often the most palatable ones. The ones we can pass around easily, share without hurting anyone’s feelings.

But that was not the end of the story.

King was complicated. He was a man of extraordinary faith and yet deeply passionate in ways that we would find uncomfortable if he still lived today. He pushed on the darkest structures of our nation and ignited momentum to make change. But it’s worth asking, when we honor his memory and share his most famous quotes: what change would he insist upon today? What structures would he pinpoint now?

Would we still listen?

Martyrs are an unsettling reminder that following the path of change, challenging the darkest structures of history in the service of God’s grace and justice, can end in sorrow. This week, I am reminded that the stories written by God with our lives are rarely tidy. There will always be missing pieces, things that will be remembered and some things that will not.

But no matter where our roads lead, only one thing is clear to all, whether martyr or no: in service of God’s justice there are no guarantees. There is only a voice calling us onward, and we must follow.

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