St. Patrick’s Day: A Brief Theology of Partying

Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone! I always love celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. I actually happen to be part Irish. Like many Americans I am quite the mutt with ancestors coming from lots of different places, but primarily from Northern Europe and the British Isles particularly. Norris after all means “people from the north” or “northerner.” But we always liked to highlight our Irish-ness over and above any of the other parts of our heritage. My mom frequently told us we had a lot of Irish in us from her side, Scotch-Irish to be precise…and gave some of us Irish names like “Sean” and “Ian,” but we never really had any stories of where the Irish lineage came from. My guess is this is a pretty common story for many American families who have been here for a long time. It was just one of those family things passed down through the generations that begins with way more detail and slowly gets watered down from one generation to the next. Like a game of telephone stretched out over the centuries. It starts like: “Oh, old Seamus Spraggins (which later became Spragens, my mom’s maiden name) came over on the ship the Flying Mathilda in 1683 with nothing except the clothes on his back and big dreams of making a new life for himself (all of which is made up…except for my mom’s maiden name). And it becomes, “We’re Irish.”

One of my brothers-in-law is actually a first generation Irish-American. His parents were both born there and really did come to make a new life for themselves in New York, like so many other Irish immigrants over the last two centuries. For some reason I derive some kind of personal pride from his family’s history. I’ve bragged about it to others at various times at cocktail parties. “My brother-in-law’s parents are actually FROM Ireland,” I boast with a great look of satisfaction. It’s some strange compulsion to need to make up for my vague family history with his clearer version. We do this with everything. Our feeling of importance or value goes up with closer proximity to the actual subject in question. “Oh, you like Heinz ketchup? Well, I’m actually from Pittsburgh where Heinz ketchup is made.” Drop the mic and walk out. Just our human nature alive and kicking with the classic one-upmanship. Not that I’ve ever used that Heinz ketchup one before…I totally have! How does one derive importance from ketchup? I digress.

But, as I am sure you have experienced, you don’t need to be Irish to love St. Patrick’s Day. It’s a day when we remember the Lord sending Patrick to Ireland to share the message of God’s radical grace with the people there. And we commemorate this amazing bit of history by wearing green and/or orange (which by itself is a whole history of bloody religious tension in Ireland between Protestants and Roman Catholics…but that’s for another time), we think about fantastical little creatures that live at the end of rainbows with pots of gold and grant wishes if you can catch them, and we party! It is a holiday that is synonymous with going out and getting sloshed.

You might expect me to poo poo this in some way being that we are a ministry and ministries are usually expected to tow the moral line and wag that long finger of the law at people to try to keep them in line too. At least that’s what many of us have experienced in church and/or with Christians…or we know someone who has…or we just need someone or something to rebel against so we pick up that cultural stereotype and run with it. Whatever the case may be, I want to defy those expectations. Frankly, I think the response of partying on St. Patrick’s Day makes total sense and is actually biblical.

St. Patrick - Party animal

This day is all about remembering the fact that God saves! He chose Patrick to go and be a messenger of his awesome unconditional grace to the island of Ireland. He wanted to save them…to bring them into his family…to set them free from their sins! There is nothing better…nothing more worthy of celebration! Jesus says so himself, “I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Luke 15:7). Amen and Amen! That said, our parties here and now are often little more than expressions of our brokenness, our need to be saved. It is that old cliche’ trying to “drown our sorrows.” We’re trying to numb out…to not feel…to not remember.

BUT, St. Patrick’s Day carries with it the promise of something much better. The kind of party that only gets better the longer it goes and that you never want to leave. And Jesus is the host! Jesus loved a party. His first miracle happened at a wedding reception and was for no purpose other than to keep the party going and make it even better with some really good wine (John 2). The Bible itself concludes with a party as we all gather together to feast at Jesus’ table, an image of the eternal celebration of heaven promised to us (Rev. 19:6-10).

C.S. Lewis picked up this imagery in his Narnia series when Bacchus, the pagan god of wine (surprise, surprise), shows up to celebrate Aslan freeing Narnia from the evil Telmarine interlopers in Prince Caspian. And again by describing Aslan’s table in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader covered anew everyday with an unending array of rich food and drink. The forgiveness of sins, the redemption of all things, is cause for celebration! A time for rejoicing! When “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Rev. 21:4). It is a promise of an eternal party for you and for me. And so Happy St. Patrick’s Day indeed.

The part-Irishman

Recommended Reading