The teacher was smiling and nodding her head, when I interrupted, “Actually, St. Patrick was from England,” I said. “He wasn’t Irish. He was brought to Ireland as a slave, but he escaped, and then later he came back to Ireland to introduce them to Christianity.”

That’s not an exact quote I’m sure. It has been a long time since this exchange took place, but I remember some of the words I chose, because I was more careful back then about how I talked about my faith. “Introduce them to Christianity” sounds like he gave them a disease or something. In my heart of hearts I would have preferred to describe it in more personal language. As a younger person I felt weird and different for being a Christian, and I was a tad bullied by the disapproval of my peers into avoiding any direct, naked discussions about my faith so I generally talked about it as though I were a detached observer and not as the participant that I truly was. I regret that.

Confession: In truth, I was enjoying this moment a little too much. Pride gave birth to this exchange. I was an obnoxious, little, know-it-all sort of kid in Jr. High, and it can’t be said that I spoke up for noble reasons. I had a contentious nature that enjoyed confronting their secular notions with the truth of the holiday’s Christian beginnings. I’m sure it rubbed them both the wrong way, and they couldn’t be blamed for that.

I remember that the teacher looked at me puzzled for a second, her head cocked to the side and hands on her hips. The girl looked at me like I had just said that the capital of the United States was actually Cleveland, Ohio. After a moment the teacher said, “Is that right? Well, we’ll have to look that up.” She went over to an encyclopedia, which was nearby because we were in the library, and after a few minutes came back confirming that St. Patrick was, in fact, a Briton, not an Irishman.

Although, like most American mongrels, I can never be exhaustively sure of my ancestry, there is not a strong Irish presence in my family tree. If anything it tends to lean more heavily towards other portions of the British Isles. I do celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, but not because he was a Briton (as were my ancestors actually! Isn’t that word “ACTUALLY” an obnoxious sort of word?), but because we are brothers in the same family and in the same cause; the family being that of Christ, and the cause being that of the Gospel.

Years later, while we were living in California, one of my children came home from school and told me that one of his classmates asked his teacher why St. Patrick’s day was a holiday and she told the class that St Patrick is “somebody we celebrate because he freed slaves in Ireland.” I was outraged. A paid educator taking such pains to avoid any endorsement of Christianity (perceived or otherwise) that she completely misrepresented the holiday’s beginnings and the historical figure of St. Patrick. I wanted to go to school, seek this teacher out and have an actually-filled conversation with her. However, as I thought about it that teacher wasn’t so far from the truth. After all Patrick did help to free men from slavery to sin and death by telling them about the Gospel.

St. Patrick did come to Ireland to free slaves. I have to own that is true.

So, unlike some, I won’t be pretending that I’m Irish on St. Patrick’s day this Sunday, but then again I don’t need to. For I am a Briton (by ancestry), as was the good St. Patrick, but more importantly I am a Christian, as was Patrick, and his is a story worth celebrating.

St. Patrick was a missionary who went to a people that were not his own with the good news that Jesus died to save them from their sins, and in this message we study the account in Acts 10 of another missionary, Peter, who went to a people who were not his own to tell them how they could be saved. I hope you can come be part of the conversation.