Epiphany 3 2008

Isaiah 49:1-7

1 Cor 1:1-9

John 1: 29-42

Among the disciples who comes to mind first? If you say Andrew, I’ll be surprised unless your name is Andrew. Peter, James and John get top billing among the disciples. Andrew is the younger brother of Peter.

My brother Don can tell you about being the second child, following in the shadow of an older sibling. Teachers expect the same performance from the second as from the first, whether in the positive or negative column. The older one is supposed to take care of the younger one….finish the fights…look out for and include in the games even when the second child has no interest in your games.

So who was Andrew and what can we learn from him?

Andrew was a disciple of John the Baptist. Out in the Jordan River some distance from the city of Jerusalem, John was a strict Jew. No dancing, no women, no nothing. Praying, eating honey and wild locusts, preaching a repentance of sin, baptizing but John was also the one who recognized Jesus as the lamb of God, the one to come. John did not hold in that information but shared it with Andrew. In a sense John the Baptist gave Andrew permission to follow Jesus.

Andrew approached Jesus and Jesus asked him a question: “What are you looking for?” It is not a casual question, but goes to the core of what Andrew is really seeking. Have you ever met a person who just skipped the surface stuff, went right to the core of things and asked you who are you? What do you seek? What are you really looking for in life? What do you need to make you happy?

Interestingly, Andrew responded to the question with one of his own: “Where are you staying?” The question does not mean the physical location of his residence in the region but “Where are you living, Jesus? What lives inside of you? What is it that gives you such life?”

Jesus answered, “Come and See” which we might better translate as come with me, stay with me, talk with me, get to know me, and you will understand. Andrew spent the next 24 hr with Jesus. We don’t know what they talked about, but something happened to Andrew in the presence of Jesus and Andrew became a disciple.

The next morning the first thing Andrew did was to go and find his big brother, Simon and brought him to Jesus. Andrew did not try to convert Simon, or change him in any way; he just brought his brother into the presence of Jesus. When Jesus met Simon he told him from that point on his name would be Cephas or Peter. We know all about Peter: the one who tried to walk on water; the one who promised to stay with Jesus through thick and thin and within hours denied him; the one who preached to thousands and all were saved. Peter is there when Jesus was transfigured. Peter saw and heard Jesus talking to Moses and Elijah. Peter was with Jesus when the child was brought back to life. Peter was in the action, in the inner circle and in each of these scenes Andrew seems to be either absent or on the margins.

We do have another story or two in which Andrew plays an important part. Jerusalem was situated along a major trade route connecting Rome and Egypt. A lot of people came through Jerusalem. One day while Jesus was preaching, two Greeks stopped to listen. When Jesus finished the two men told Phillip they would like to meet Jesus. Phillip called for Andrew and Andrew introduced those two Greeks to Jesus. The two men became disciples. Andrew is a person who introduces people to Jesus.

Another time a lot of people were sitting on the grass on a hill over looking the Sea of Galilee. Jesus has been teaching and afterwards the crowd seemed to be hungry. There is a little boy with five loaves of bread and two fish in the crowd. He might have been at the fringe of the crowd with Andrew. We don’t know exactly how the encounter went but somehow Andrew told the lad that he wanted to take him to meet Jesus. When Jesus met the boy, perhaps the small child offered him the food, or maybe Jesus asked if he wanted to share his fish and bread and see something wonderful happen…in any case.. Jesus took the bread, broke it, distributed it to the thousands and there were twelve baskets of left over.

Now stop and think about how you met Jesus. Who introduced you? Who was your Andrew? If it was not the famous Peter who is always at the scene of action, was it a person like Andrew? Was that person quiet, accepting, affirming and inviting? Was she or he interested in you and took you seriously? Was there some connection between the person and Jesus?

When have you been Andrew for another? When have you invited a friend, neighbor, or work acquaintance to come to a dinner at St. Paul’s, to help us with the Thrift Shop, or one of our mission projects? When have you invited someone to services? Like Andrew we need to bring people to meet Jesus. We need a lot of Andrews in this world, in this congregation, in this church.

There are Sunday’s when I feel the weight of the circumstances of your lives, the illnesses, the instability of jobs, the conflict in families, your concerns about relatives, your journey through grief, and I can’t fix any of them. Every Sunday we pray together and we gather around the Lord’s table and we are fed spiritual food for the journey. In a sense each of us brings another to Jesus; in prayer, in fellowship, in common faith. This is important and I want you to know that Jesus is here for you no matter what the circumstance, fear, doubt, problem, pain, grief, or worry. Jesus never leaves or abandons us. Our friends may desert us, our families may splinter, our loved ones may die, our bodies may crumble from age and disease but we are never alone!

Most of us cannot be Peter, preaching sermons that convert thousands, but we can be Andrew. Most of us are not going to be the first Christian the world names but we can been the Andrew that told some acquaintance about Jesus. We may not be the one who is invited to the inner circle to the mountain to witness the transfiguration or the ascension but we can be who we are and whose we are! We can live our faith, resisting the temptation to retaliate on those who hurt us; we can forgive because we have tasted the sweet sense of being forgiven. WE can give to right injustice in this world because we follow Jesus and his witness for justice.

Tomorrow we honor the witness of Martin Luther King Jr who said in a letter from Birmingham jail, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affect all indirectly.”

In Christ there is no East or West, North or South but one fellowship of souls united in one Lord.

Prayer: Dear God, help us to see that although we have all come on different ships, we’re in the same boat now. Open us to see that we are all your children and remind us to extend our hospitality to those in need. When in our humanness we neglect the ministries of love, peace, justice, impel us to be instruments of your reconciliation. Help us to work to change circumstances that oppress people in our world. Increase our faith that we can bring others to your sustaining loving presence. Amen