First Reading: Ecclesiastes 2.12–25
So I turned to consider wisdom and madness and folly; for what can the one do who comes after the king? Only what has already been done. Then I saw that wisdom excels folly as light excels darkness. The wise have eyes in their head, but fools walk in darkness. Yet I perceived that the same fate befalls all of them. Then I said to myself, ‘What happens to the fool will happen to me also; why then have I been so very wise?’ And I said to myself that this also is vanity. For there is no enduring remembrance of the wise or of fools, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How can the wise die just like fools? So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me; for all is vanity and a chasing after wind.
I hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to those who come after me – and who knows whether they will be wise or foolish? Yet they will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. So I turned and gave my heart up to despair concerning all the toil of my labours under the sun, because sometimes one who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by another who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun? For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest. This also is vanity.
There is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink, and find enjoyment in their toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God; for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? For to the one who pleases him God gives wisdom and knowledge and joy; but to the sinner he gives the work of gathering and heaping, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a chasing after wind.
Gospel Reading: John 16.1–15
I have said these things to you to keep you from stumbling. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God. And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me. But I have said these things to you so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you about them.
I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. But now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts. Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.
I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
Sermon
It’s odd, isn’t it, when you hear words of Scripture that don’t sound terribly religious at all. Ecclesiastes says, “What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun? For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation.” That’s not the kind of verse you’ll find printed on a Christian fridge magnet. It’s brutally honest. Vanity of vanities, says the preacher. The wise man dies just like the fool.
And yet, Ecclesiastes smuggles in something important. If all our striving comes to dust, then perhaps the best we can do is enjoy the gifts God gives in the moment. Eat, drink, find joy in our work. Because joy is a gift, not a possession.
Now, compare that with Jesus in John’s Gospel. He doesn’t sugar-coat life either. Jesus warns his followers; “They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think they are offering service to God.” This is not a recruiting slogan. You can’t imagine it printed on a poster outside St Faith’s. “Join the Church: guaranteed persecution and probable death.” And yet, he says, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.”
So Ecclesiastes and John agree: life is tough, often unfair, sometimes lethal. But alongside that grim honesty is something else. God gives joy in the midst of futility. God gives the Spirit in the midst of suffering. And that brings us to Birinus.
Birinus was not a likely candidate to win fame. He wasn’t born into a great dynasty. He wasn’t a general or a politician. He was a monk from Lombardy who decided, somewhat rashly, to set off for pagan England in the 630s. His original plan was to head north, beyond the Saxons, to convert the barbarian tribes. But he never made it. He landed in the South—Oxford, Berkshire, Winchester—territory of the West Saxons. Wessex. He stayed, he preached, and astonishingly, the West Saxon king, Cynegils, was baptised, right there in the Thames at Dorchester. Birinus, a foreigner, convinced a king. That’s not bad for a wandering monk with a dodgy Latin accent.
But let’s not romanticise it. Birinus didn’t arrive in a leafy Hampshire postcard. He arrived in a violent, fractured society, riven by warlords and superstition. He had to navigate the politics of powerful kings, and preach a Gospel that sounded ridiculous. One God? A crucified Saviour? Eternal life? It made no sense to the Saxon mind.
And yet he persisted. Not by clever strategy alone, and not because he had all the answers, but because the Spirit of truth was at work. The Spirit, as Jesus promised, takes what is Christ’s and declares it to us—again and again, across cultures and centuries.
Which makes Birinus a particularly good saint for us to remember, because he reminds us that holiness doesn’t always happen where you expect. Sometimes God plonks you in Hampshire and says, “Yes, here will do nicely.”
Picture him, if you will, turning up in modern Hampshire. A wiry Italian monk, stepping off the train at Havant. He looks around for the pagan Saxons he’s meant to convert, and instead finds a Greggs, a kebab shop, a Poundland and a drunk man shouting after a bus. Would he despair? Perhaps. Or perhaps he’d roll up his sleeves, grab a sausage roll, and start talking to whoever would listen.
Or imagine him on a Sunday morning in Havant High Street, trying to preach the Gospel between the perfume counters of Boots and the smell of Macdonald’s burgers. “Repent and believe the good news,” he cries, while shoppers hurry off with discount trainers, and someone asks him if he bought his walking staff at TK Maxx. He’d be baffled, of course, but then he was baffled back in Dorchester too. The Gospel has never been an easy sell.
And yet—somehow, against all odds, Birinus converted a king. He baptised Cynegils in the Thames at Dorchester in Oxfordshire. That was the beginning of the Church in Wessex. From that watery moment flowed Winchester Cathedral, Chichester, Portsmouth, Havant. All of it traces back to an immigrant monk who thought he was in the wrong place but turned out to be exactly where God needed him.
So don’t despise the day of small beginnings. Birinus didn’t set out to be “the Apostle to Wessex.” He just did the next faithful thing. Preached, taught, baptised, trusted the Spirit. He died, like the wise man and the fool of Ecclesiastes. But unlike the fool, he found joy in God’s gift. And the Spirit of truth carried his work far beyond his own life.
Which leaves us with a question. If Birinus could find God’s purpose in seventh-century Hampshire, can we find it today? In our discount stores, supermarkets, harbours, housing estates? Or do we convince ourselves that God is only really at work somewhere else, in somebody else’s story?
The Spirit of truth still moves through these streets. This is sainted space, holy ground. The joy of God is still offered, even in our sense of futility. Birinus is proof that even in a land of pagans—or Greggs pasties—God can plant a seed that will change a kingdom.
So let’s not look down on our own patch of ground. We live, after all, in the land of a saint. Amen.
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