Feast of St. Andrew

In the Jewish tradition, the name you give your child has everything to do with your hopes and dreams for who that child will grow up to be. Many people name their children for beloved aunts and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers. Names have meaning. This community of faith is named for St. Andrew. I’m thankful we are St. Andrew, and not St. Barnabus, after the red barn that our forebears met in during the early years, and that burned down.

Andrew was a fisherman, a very obvious occupation for a boy who grew up on the Sea of Galilee, and who probably sat by his father in his father’s boat, and had it not been for Jesus, Andrew would have raised his boys to be fishermen too. But Andrew encountered Jesus, and Jesus said to Andrew and some others, Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.

This encounter changed Andrew’s life forever. Andrew left a sure occupation, a certain paycheck, to follow Jesus, who he really only knew by reputation, the teacher, the rabbi. Not only did Andrew leave his livelihood, he also left his family, and in Andrew’s culture, it is the family that confers any honor and status. Now being a fisherman wasn’t a lofty profession, but being a hardworking son had a degree of respect. Andrew and the others left that to follow this teacher, this one who had no home to lay his head, had no discernible livelihood, had no food to eat, for the promise that he would fish for people.

I can’t even begin to imagine what that meant to Andrew. Maybe it was just about adventure, maybe it was about hanging with a brotherhood, maybe Andrew experienced something in this man, Jesus. What we know from this side of the story is that something amazing did happen, but Andrew couldn’t have known that.

I look toward Andrew as an example of discipleship. Jesus encountered Andrew and Andrew was changed. He didn’t have all the answers, but he knew greatness when he saw it. He may have been judged by his boyhood pals he left behind as being stupid, or even wrong. But discipleship is not about being right or being wrong, discipleship is about being changed by this encounter with Jesus.

Jesus’ life and death and pain and suffering and resurrection from the dead is about the new life that God offers us, and that new life, that new creation, changes us, transforms us. Living in the new life that Jesus begins for us, is exciting, and scary, and it isn’t easy. Discipleship isn’t easy. But as Andrew did, when we are changed by this encounter, we invite others to join us. We invite others into this transformation that God offers.

New life is about hope in the midst of difficulty, hope when all hope seems lost. You and I, just like Andrew, can offer hope in this broken world. We must be the ones who invite, come and see, come and see what this new life looks like, come and see, what wholeness and peace looks like. Come and see.

Our King and Savior now draws near: Come and see.