Good morning fellow St. Andreans-- family, neighbors, and friends. Our festival day! Always so much fun—family from near and far,
old friends, new friends. A special welcome
and word of thanks, as for so many years, to our friends of the Syria Highlanders. We are reminded by your presence to include
in our prayers the important ministry and work of the Shriners’ Hospitals for
Children, which you all continue to serve as your fundraising mission. It’s a great pleasure for us to have the opportunity
in this small way to share in that with you.
Thank you for that opportunity.
This year again St. Andrew’s Day, was circled on the calendar by our
Vestry as the official conclusion of our stewardship campaign for 2018--and the
idea is that St. Andrew’s Day would be a good and really fitting occasion to
share a prayer of dedication of our offerings of time, talent, and treasure. (In reality we continue to receive pledges of
financial commitment for 2018 through the end of the year and sometimes with a
last few to be received at the beginning of the new year, so if you haven’t
gotten your cards in yet, there’s still time!)
But today we dedicate all that in
our prayers, expressing our gratitude to God for his grace and mercy in all
ways, and above all for the gift of his Son and his work at the Cross, for forgiveness
and restoration, for our new life in him, and in a very particular way for the
privilege of sharing that life together, with one another, here at St.
Andrew’s. And in that context I want to pause once again
this year over a phrase in our gospel for St. Andrew’s Day that is at the thematic
and theological heart of what Matthew wants us to understand about Christian life,
Christian discipleship, Christian stewardship.
Jesus calls to Andrew and Peter: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers
of men,” the beginning of a new chapter of the holy story, the first
evangelistic invitation to join in the life and work of the Church of God, the
Body of Christ. And then, Matthew tells
us, “immediately they left their nets and
followed him.” And to shine a light
on those four key words: “they left their nets.”
I’ve shared with you before the experience of I guess—insight--that I had many years ago, one
afternoon back in the 1970’s, when I was pretty new in my adult Christian walk
and was looking for something in the parish library of St. Mark’s Church in
Berkeley. I happened upon a newsletter
with the title, “Acts 29.” You’ll remember
that later that evening when I was back in my apartment I had this moment of
curiosity and opened my Bible to see what Acts 29 was all about.
The book begins with Jesus and the Disciples at the Mount of the
Ascension and then traces the work of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and then
flowing through the life of the rapidly expanding Christian community and
expansion of the Gospel from Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the ends of
the earth. So: Acts 29. And I opened the Bible only to find that the
Book of Acts comes to an end at chapter 28, with Paul preaching and teaching
under a kind of house arrest in Rome. There
is no Acts, chapter 29. A pause, and
then the lightbulb over my head. Acts
29: what comes after Acts 28. As Paul
Harvey used to say on the radio, “the rest of the story.” The part of the story that comes next. The part with us in it. The work of the Holy Spirit, the expansive
reach of the Gospel message to every tribe, people, and nation, and in every
generation.
The point here may seem fairly obvious.
But I’ll try to draw it out anyway.
Andrew and Peter were fishermen, a role and a way of life passed down
from father to son generation after generation.
Their nets were their livelihood, the tools of their trade. Those nets were what made it possible for
them to be fishermen, and so to take care of themselves and their
families. The sign of their place in
the community, their station of life, the source of their paycheck and their
pension.
And so, what this gesture represents-- this putting down of their nets:
from this point on, say Andrew and Peter, we’re not going to be relying
on our skills and resources, we’re
not going to be trusting in our
knowledge and experience and professional expertise. We’re not going to be known mainly as
“fishermen” any more. That’s behind us
now. It doesn’t mean we’ll never fish
again. But when we do, that will be just
what we do, not who we are. A new identification, if you will. We’re putting our lives, our future into your
hands, Jesus. Who we are going to be,
what we are going to be about, from now on.
We’re going to take what you have
to give, and be o.k. with that-- even if what you have to give turns out to be
different from what we thought before that we wanted. From this point on, we’re going to be all
about this one thing: following you,
Jesus. Not fishermen anymore, but disciples.
This is exactly the difference in the gospels between those who are in
the crowds, who come to see and hear Jesus, and then go home, back to their
ordinary lives, and those who become disciples.
The disciples are the ones who put
down their nets. Who stopped being
what they were, and became something new.
It’s one of those resonating
metaphors. They put down their nets--which
had given them their identity, security, self-sufficiency-- in order to say
that from that moment on, Christ would be sufficient for them.
Following Jesus wasn’t going to be
a hobby, a special interest, something to attend to in their spare time, after
work, on weekends, on the side. What
Matthew is communicating in this small narrative detail, that they put down their nets, is that now and
from now on, everything is different for them.
They don’t seem really to think this over strategically. They just set the nets down and go with him.
It probably doesn’t take any of us very much time in reflection to figure
out what our nets are--and how this
story of the calling of our patron Andrew and the beginning of his Christian
life can speak into our lives and have something meaningful to say to us on St.
Andrew’s Day and Stewardship Sunday. About
how entangled we get sometimes in the nets of our lives. About how our work and study and family roles
and community activities somehow become not what we do, but who we are. We can each of us preach that sermon for
ourselves and to ourselves. Thinking
about that old hymn, singing it softly to ourselves in the course of our day,
“take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to thee.” It’s all Acts chapter 29 from this point
forward. The challenge and invitation
every year, as St. Andrew joins us in our festival day. It’s
usually not about dropping out, quitting our jobs and heading off to distant
lands.
But it is always, whether we travel around the globe or never get more
than a few miles from the place where we were born, about how we think about ourselves, about why
we do what we do, simply and centrally—and just deep down, about who we’re
following.
If we would know that, if we know him, we would know everything we need
to know. And he comes to us this morning
as he came to Andrew. Present in his
Word, and as we break bread together and share the cup. And the truth of the matter is that if in our
hearts and minds we’re singing “take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord,
to thee,” then our 2018 Stewardship
Campaign will have been a rousing success, no matter how much money is raised
and how many ministries happened to be supported with new participation. That’s what Peter and our patron Andrew and
James and John are singing this morning.
And we are invited in our hearts and minds, in our imaginations, in our
souls and bodies, in all our lives, to sing along with them all in the next
chapter and chapters of the holy story. Acts
29. Whatever he may have in mind for us.
And of course for us this
morning, all with soaring bagpipes and rolling drums!
Blessings, friends of St. Andrew’s, on this St. Andrew’s Day, here in our
church, and in our homes and families, our circles of friends, our
neighborhoods, the places we work and study and play. Here we are, in our section of Acts 29. The
part where we, you and I, go fishing with Jesus.
No comments:
Post a Comment