Feast of St. Andrew, transferred
Matthew 4:18-22
I
imagine our patron saint, Andrew, as a guy with tired, sore feet. That’s true for all disciples and apostles, I
suppose, because being a disciple and apostle means being on the move.
Now,
for we disciples and apostles gathered here this morning, that may not sound
much like good news. In fact, a call to
be on the move may seem like the last
thing we want to hear. Many of us are
emotionally and spiritually exhausted by the recent election and its
aftermath. I’ve heard from faithful
people who long for a time after presidential elections when we stopped
arguing, and tacked back toward the center, and tried to come together despite
difference. And I’ve heard from faithful
people who no longer feel safe in their own nation, or in their own city, or
even in their own church, because they fear what the recent shift in our
political life will mean for them and for people they love. We can wish that weren’t true, but we can’t
wish it away. If nothing else, we have
to be present to pain, and listen to people’s frustration and grief, and walk alongside
them through it.
And
as we walk with them, we find ourselves on the move again – just like
Jesus. We always seem to find him walking
alongside people. All through the
Gospels, he’s moving from one place to another, proclaiming good news and
inviting people into it.
That’s
how I imagine the setting for today’s Gospel reading on this feast of our
patron saint, Andrew. Picture the
reading as a movie scene. It opens with
a shot of two guys in their fishing boat on the Sea of Galilee, which is really
just a lake, smaller than Lake of the Ozarks.
The sun is rising, and they’re beginning their day as they’ve begun a
thousand days before. We don’t know much
about Andrew and Peter. They’re not
high-class types, but they’re not paupers either. Basically, they have a small business. They get up every day, and do their work, and
sell their catch, and mend their nets, and get up the next day and do it all
over again.
Well,
up in the corner of the movie scene, a figure comes walking slowly along the
lakeshore. It’s Jesus.
As he comes more fully into the scene, he looks over toward Andrew and
Peter, out in their boat. They’re close in,
so they see Jesus coming. And I’ll bet
they know who he is. Just before this morning’s
reading, Matthew tells about Jesus beginning his public ministry in Galilee, preaching
and proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew
4:17). He must have attracted attention,
this local guy who’d decided he was a prophet, stirring people up and calling
them to turn their hearts and their lives in a new direction. So I’ll bet Andrew and Peter know who’s
walking toward them in the morning sun.
As
he comes near, Jesus simply calls out, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for
people” (Matthew 4:19). And then, I
imagine, he just keeps on walking. So
Andrew and Peter look at each other, wondering what to do.
Now,
maybe they had a miraculous moment of clarity.
Maybe they knew God was calling them to a life of discipleship and what
that was going to mean. But I doubt
it. Instead, maybe they were simply
captivated by what they’d been hearing from this preacher and prophet who
described a world of God’s love in contrast to the bitterness and injustice of
the world around them. Maybe their
hearts burned with the possibility that such a world might be real. Maybe they knew, if nothing else, that they
had to find out more. So, as Jesus keeps
on walking, Andrew and Peter quickly row in, and get out of the boat, and jog
after him down the lakeshore. They
follow him – not because they suddenly understand everything Jesus is about but
because the hope of God’s beloved community sets their hearts on fire. So they follow – which, by definition, makes
them disciples.
From
there, they spend the next few years following this messiah on the move. It couldn’t have been comfortable. Following Jesus, they didn’t even know where
they’d stay from one night to the next.
They ate based on the kindness of strangers. They put themselves at risk from the Romans,
who didn’t take kindly to wandering bands and their leaders who tended to look
like revolutionaries.
But
Andrew and Peter also saw signs and wonders.
They heard good news that God particularly blesses those at the bottom
of the scale. They saw people
healed. They learned they could be so
much more than they’d ever imagined.
They received Jesus’ power – power to be with people who suffered, and
heal them, and speak good news, and cast out the demons that delude us into
thinking we’re merely secondary characters in someone else’s story. As followers of this messiah on the move,
they had hope – hope that even the poor in spirit, even those who mourn, even
the meek, even a couple of fishermen
from Galilee could burn with the brightness of God’s purposes. They began to see that they were bearers of holy
light and that Jesus was sending them out to shine that light among others.
So,
that’s why I think Andrew must have had tired, sore feet. He started walking that morning by the lake,
and I don’t think he stopped until his own martyrdom. Different traditions say Andrew brought the
good news to Ethiopia, or to Ukraine, or to Russia, or to Greece, where he
was executed on an X-shaped cross. Even
in death, Andrew was on the move as his remains were reportedly taken to
Scotland, for whom he became the patron saint – which explains why a bunch of
people in Kansas City are wearing tartans and listening to bagpipes as they
celebrate this saint’s day.
As we march to the bagpipes this morning, we
are Andrew’s spiritual descendants, ourselves following a messiah on the move
for more than 100 years. In 1913, the bishop
sent people way out here to Brookside, on the outskirts of a growing city, because,
as the bishop said, “our
own city – right here – is our greatest and most crying mission field.”1 They started meeting in a back room of
Wolferman’s grocery store at 59th and Brookside. They bought property at the corner of Meyer
and Wornall and settled there in 1922.
But even having found a home, the people of St. Andrew’s kept following
the messiah on the move. We followed
Jesus to the neighborhoods around us, sharing the word about Dr. Jewell’s
powerful preaching. We followed Jesus as
the city kept moving south, planting a church in Red Bridge in 1958,
appropriately named for Andrew’s brother, Peter. We followed Jesus to Haiti, building
relationships there that have grown for more than 25 years. We followed Jesus downtown to the Kansas City
Community Kitchen, and down the street to Southwest High School, and east to
the Grooming Project, bringing good news of dignity and hope in contrast to the
world’s news that only the strongest matter.
But we’ve only just begun following our messiah
on the move. A couple of years ago, you
blessed me with the opportunity to take a sabbatical, one of the best journeys
I’ve ever known. I visited nine
congregations in the Episcopal Church and the Church of England. Each one, in its own way, was figuring out
how to keep going on its journey to proclaim the Good News without tossing its tradition
off to the side of the road. From
Seattle to Denver to rural Maryland to London, each congregation was learning
how to reach the people around them in new ways while still honoring the
tradition they had known and loved for decades (or centuries). I was blessed to tell their stories and take
away some lessons for other congregations hearing the call to stay on the
move. And today, we get to celebrate the
fact that someone actually wanted to publish it. The book is called Beating the Boundaries because I believe that’s what God is asking
us to do – to go to the boundaries of church as we know it, and cross over into
relationships with the people we find on the other side.
But we’d been hearing that call well before I
went on sabbatical. That’s what our
Gather & Grow initiative is all about – following Jesus as he leads us
among people in our community. The
worldly concerns of building designs and construction estimates sometimes
distract us from the point of Gather & Grow. The point is to take the next steps in a
100-year journey of connecting with people. You don’t have to be a statistician
to see that fewer people go to church now than in years past. OK, says our messiah on the move and his
sore-footed apostle, Andrew. OK. That means we need to find ways to go to them
and show them God’s love. And that means
finding new ways to “be church” for the people around us. It means following Jesus across the street, enabling
the Word to take flesh and dwell among us by engaging with people whom God
brings our way.
Gather & Grow feels like a long journey,
and we still have miles to go. But that
perseverance is part of our story, too. I’ll
bet guiding this church through two world wars and a Depression felt like a
long journey. I’ll bet building this
worship space in 1952 felt like a long journey – one that took six years and three fundraising campaigns and still didn’t give them the building they
wanted. I’ll bet founding St. Peter’s in
Red Bridge felt like a long journey. And
still, today, Jesus calls us to get out of our boats to follow him and fish for
people. Like our patron St. Andrew, we
follow Jesus because that’s where our hope rests. We may not understand every word that comes
out of his mouth. We may not know
exactly where the journey is leading or how it’s supposed to look. Sometimes, we may not be able to see much
more than the world’s divisions and anxieties lying ahead of us. We’ve been on this path for years already,
and our feet may be sore. But as Jesus
passes by and says, “Follow me,” we say, “Yes, I will, with God’s help.” So we follow him out of this nave, our
congregation’s glorious boat. And we follow
him out the door, always trying to keep up with our messiah on the move.
1. The Silver Jubilee of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church,
Kansas City, Missouri.
Commemorative booklet from the parish’s 25th anniversary, Oct. 9 and
10, 1938, held in St. Andrew’s archives.
Page 10.
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