Sermon: Two Warriors

Those of you with sharp eyes will have noticed that on the service sheet for today Oswald is described as a Martyr. If we are to acknowledge him as such, he is a martyr like no other - killed as he was not in the arena or at the stake but on an ordinary battlefield in 642, perhaps at Oswestry. Since that battle and an earlier one at Heavenfield (through which he had regained the kingdom of Northumbia) essentially define his life-story, a more natural designation might have been Warrior or Soldier. But with that term he would have been immediately set within the ordinary dilemmas of war. So the Church has chosen instead to play safe and exempt him from any such evaluation. But, I think, at a price. So what I would like to do this morning is consider with you the stories of two warriors, and how they have been treated through history. Oswald will have his turn in due course, but I want to begin with King David.

Today we tend to prefer the image of David as poet, as musician and author of the psalms. But through most of history that is not how our fellow Christians have for the most part responded. They found in David not only a good ruler but also a fighter active on God's behalf. And in that depiction there has sometimes been interaction with David's flaws, but more commonly not. Those of you who know your Bibles really well will know that that kind of selectivity already begins within Scripture. The much later Chronicles effectively rewrites David's story in order to exclude his more dubious acts, with him now seen as single minded in his attempt to secure Jerusalem and build a temple for God there. So, for example, there is now no mention of David's adultery with Bathsheba nor of any events that had taken place in the north of the kingdom and which the earlier account in Samuel had seen as integral to his rise to power.

A temptation at this point might be to contrast the two accounts in a rather naïve way, with the earlier version pure history and the latter idealised fiction. But closer examination of the former also suggests moves in a not dissimilar direction. So even the familiar incident of David's struggle with the giant Goliath was probably not originally part of his story. Instead, reading between the lines of Scripture we discover that the real hero of that encounter is the now forgotten Elhanan. Compare I Sam 17 with 2 Sam.21.19, and you will see what I mean. Yet it was David who was to go on to become the great hero of all small states struggling to maintain their independence against superior forces. Hence, for instance, Michelangelo's great statue of the young David in Florence. Nothing will stand in the way of this determined young man, nor thus of Florence also under the guidance of God.

In the case of Oswald there are quite a number of accounts to compare, the best known of which is of course in Bede's History of the English Church and People. In the later middle ages Oswald was to become a popular saint throughout Europe but in variants far removed from their original English context. Oswald became a great king in Germany or Norway with the pagan god Odin's symbol, the raven, now usurped to speak of his power in battle, and heads of him multiplied in pilgrimage shrines such as Schaffhausen in Switzerland, Hildesheim in Germany, Utrecht in the Netherlands and Echternach in Luxenbourg. Fortunately for Durham, we can be reasonably sure that what remains of his skull is still with us, as an examination of Cuthbert's tomb in 1899 appeared to confirm.

Even so, different versions of his life-story were also generated within the English context. So, for example, written four centuries after Bede, Reginald of Durham's version is significantly different in emphasis, a matter of some relevance as such a local product presumably exercised a major influence on how those who worshipped in this place understood the saint's significance. Even the music for Oswald's feast-day has survived in a manuscript now preserved in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. So we can have a pretty shrewd idea of how Oswald might have been perceived in the English high-middle ages. Certainly, the obsession with relics was no less powerful in Durham than it was on the continent. Not only was his head here, but, as one fourteenth century list reveals, the cathedral's authorities were also accustomed to point to the presence of his mail-shirt, a bit of the cross from Heavenfield, an ivory sceptre and even a rib in a silver gilt case, and one can see why. It was a way of tapping into the power of someone who had been consistently portrayed from the beginning as a great fighter on behalf of the Christian Church.  

But how accurate is this portrait? And what of the version in Bede himself? Bede, as you will all know, is often described as ‘the father of English history'. He is our best source for the early history of this land, and was also largely responsible for popularising the BC/AD chronology that we now use. Where Bede can be tested against other sources, he generally comes off well, and so we can be fairly confident that what he says about Oswald is largely correct. But that does not mean that there are no grounds for suspicion: that Oswald's life might not have been entirely as Bede describes it. If falsehoods are unlikely, omissions and differences of emphasis were still utilised to point in a somewhat different direction.

Bede, as you may know, was a firm supporter of the Synod of Whitby that secured the triumph of Anglo-Saxon papal Christianity over the more localised Celtic version of the Irish and native Britons. The result is a tendency in Bede's history consistently to downplay their role. So, while Bede mentions Oswald's long period of exile on Iona and his closeness to Aidan whom he summons as an evangelist from that island, there is no mention of Oswald asking for the intercession of St Columba in his victory at Heavenfield. Yet we know that this played a key role, at least according to the earliest account that we have of Oswald's life, from Columba's biographer, St Adomnan. Again, little attention is paid by Bede to the fact that Oswald's opponents were often fellow Christians, as was the British Cadwallon who was defeated at Heavenfield. Likewise, it is only incidentally that we learn that pagans fought on Oswald's side at the later battle of Oswestry.                  

Now in none of this is it my intention to undermine Oswald's sanctity. It is just that, as with King David, his life was almost certainly more ambiguous than tradition eventually passed down to us. Yes, he played a decisive role in the advance of the Church in England, but qualify this with the recognition that this may sometimes have come at the expense of other Christians. Yes too, he was generous to the poor as in the various incidents recorded in Bede, but, if he was ‘humble' as Bede insists, it must have been in a way compatible with the typical roughness of the Anglo-Saxon court that we find so vividly described in a poem like Beowulf. Otherwise, he would surely never have survived.

All of us would like a simple world with good wholly on one side and evil wholly on the other. But that is not the kind of reality with which we are faced. David and Oswald sought to do God's will in the same sort of ambiguous situations that would allow many another soldier to be described as a martyr, and not just those narrowly operating on behalf of Israel or the Church. Our task as Christians today, following in their footsteps, is, yes, to enjoy the simple stories but also to be aware of their underlying complexity.

In a similar way, to give but one last instance, in the current battle against terrorism it needs to be acknowledged that there are some wonderful gentle and good Muslims just as there are some demonic monsters acting on our own side. In short, - my moral for your consideration - may our faith ultimately flourish not through simplistic propaganda but through valuing all sorts and conditions of humanity as we prayerfully search for God's will in the real, and not some artificially constructed ideal world. In that real world, David and Oswald will shine more gloriously, not less. Amen.