You know, I don't know about you,
but usually when I think
about the calling of the disciples,
I think about the scene by
the See of Galilee,
with James, John, Simon Peter and Andrew
all mending their nets after a hard days' fishing –
or,
perhaps, them out in the lake still and Jesus pointing out to them a
shoal of fish that he could see and they couldn't.
And Simon
Peter falling on his knees before Jesus,
and Jesus telling them
that if they followed him,
he would teach them to fish for
people.
That's what I think of, anyway.
So this story
in St John's gospel comes a little strange.
In this passage,
Andrew is already one of John the Baptist's disciples, and, at John's
suggestion, goes after Jesus,
and then comes and gets his
brother, Simon Peter, and introduces him.
Not a fish or fish-net
in sight!
You wonder, sometimes, when the stories were being
collected,
who told what to whom,
and who was trying to
make who look good!
Not that it matters, of course;
truth
and historical accuracy weren't the same thing in Bible days,
and
don't need to be today.
So for now we'll stick with John's
story, since it was our reading for today.
And today's
story introduces us to a very important person –
Andrew.
At
least, Andrew is very important in John's gospel.
We don't often
think of Andrew, do we?
He's Peter's younger brother,
but
it's Peter, James and John who go with Jesus when he is
transfigured;
it's Peter, James and John who accompany Jesus to
the Garden of Gethsemane.
Andrew gets left out.
Andrew
stays back with the other disciples.
But here,
according to John's version of events,
Andrew was with John the
Baptist, and when they encountered Jesus,
he and his friend
went off after him.
“What do you want?” asked Jesus.
“Where
do you live?” asks Andrew, in return.
And Jesus says, “Come
and see!”
We're all so used to the idea that “Foxes
have dens and birds have their nests but the Son of Man has nowhere
to lay his head”
that it might strike us a bit odd –
but,
of course, when Jesus hadn't yet started his ministry,
he was
not yet itinerant,
and presumably still lived with his mother
and brothers in Nazareth,
or perhaps at his lodgings in
Capernaum.
Although, in fact, the story says that they were in
Bethany,
on the other side of the Jordan, where John was
baptising,
and later on they leave to go home to Galilee,
so
presumably he was staying with friends somewhere.
This wasn't
the same Bethany where Martha, Mary and Lazarus lived, though, so he
wouldn't have been staying with them.
This Bethany is sometimes
called Betharaba, to distinguish it.
I did read that the
questions have a deeper meaning –
I don't know enough Greek to
be sure,
but apparently they can be interpreted as Jesus asking
Andrew what he is really looking for,
Andrew asking Jesus who
he is at the deepest level,
and Jesus inviting Andrew to come
and find out.
But whatever happens, Andrew and his companion
spend some time with Jesus, and the first thing that Andrew does
afterwards is go and find his brother Simon Peter, and introduce him
to Jesus.
Andrew does this a lot in John's Gospel.
He
introduces people to Jesus.
First of all he introduces Simon
Peter –
to become Peter, that great Rock on whom Jesus was to
build his church.
And Simon Peter becomes one of Jesus' closest
friends and supporters,
far closer than Andrew himself
did.
Then a bit later on, Andrew introduces some Greek
travellers to Jesus;
the travellers speak to Philip, and he goes
to Andrew,
and then both of them take the travellers to see
Jesus.
We aren't told what happened next;
John goes off
into one of Jesus' discourses.
But it was Andrew who introduced
them.
And in John's version of the story of the feeding of
the Five Thousand,
it is Andrew who brings the boy to Jesus,
that nameless youth who had five barley loaves and two fishes,
and who was prepared to share them with Jesus.
Andrew brought
the boy to Jesus.
Yes, well.
I've heard, and I'm sure
you have too, lots of sermons on St Andrew where they tell you that
you ought to be like him and introduce people to Jesus.
Which is
all very well, and all very true,
but it's not quite as simple
as that, is it?
First off, when preachers say things like
that, the congregation –
well, if I'm any representative of it
–
go all hot and wriggly and feel they must be terrible
Christians because it's so long since they last introduced anybody to
Jesus.
And the ones who are apt to feel the hottest and
wriggliest are those who really do more than anybody else to
introduce people to Jesus.
But you see, Andrew only
introduces people to Jesus when they want to be introduced.
Simon
Peter, his brother, was probably already following John the Baptist,
and was anxious to meet the Messiah.
He may, of course, have
thought that the Messiah, the Anointed One, would rebel against the
occupying power, an earthly leader,
but, of course, he soon
learnt differently.
The Greeks in chapter 12 of John's Gospel
had asked for an introduction.
The boy with five loaves and two
fish was anxious to share his lunch with Jesus, but couldn't get past
the security cordon of the disciples.
And when our friends
want to be introduced to Jesus,
that's when we need to imitate
Andrew.
If they don't want to know him yet, and we keep trying,
we'll just end up being utterly boring and probably lose their
friendship!
It's probably better to just pray for our friends,
and hold them up to Jesus that way –
if and when they are
ready for more, they will let you know.
There is, as the
Preacher tells us, a time for everything!
Brixton Hill, as
a church, does have activities which =make Jesus known in the
community,
what with the various youth activities,
the
Warm Space on a Thursday
and Pop-In.
We are giving
people the opportunity –
they know what a church stands for,
and if they don't, they can always ask.
We may never know how
much we've done for people,
how much our example has led them to
want to find Jesus for themselves,
to question the easy,
unthinking atheism popularised by Richard Dawkins and his ilk.
That's
as it should be –
our job is to be ourselves, to be Jesus'
people, as we have committed ourselves to being.
So what
sort of people are we going to be being?
I think Jesus gives a
very good picture of what his people are like in that collection of
his teachings we call the Sermon on the Mount:
poor in spirit
–
not thinking more of themselves than they ought;
mourning,
perhaps for the ungodly world in which we live;
meek, which
means slow to anger and gentle with others;
hungry and thirsty
for righteousness;
merciful;
pure in heart;
peacemakers
and so on.
They
love everyone, even those who hate them;
they refrain from
condemning anyone,
or even from being angry with them in a
destructive way;
they don’t hold grudges or take revenge,
value or use people just for their bodies,
or end their
marriages lightly.
Their very words are trustworthy.
In
short, they treat everyone with the greatest respect
no matter
what that person’s race, creed, sex or social class.
They also
treat themselves with similar respect, looking after themselves
properly and not abusing themselves any more than they abuse others.
We don't, of course, have to force ourselves to become
like that in our own strength –
we'd make a pretty rotten job
of it!
We do have to give God permission to change us, though,
to “let go and let God”.
We have to be willing to
allow God to work in us,
gradually transforming us into the
people we were created to be.
It isn’t easy –
I do so
know!
But we do need to be willing,
or at the very least,
willing to be made willing!
And as we do so, we will be
able to have a response when our friends ask what Church is all
about, or who Jesus is.
And people are asking, aren't
they?
Like Andrew, they want to know where Jesus is.
Where
is Jesus in this dreadful war in Ukraine?
Where is Jesus in the
energy crisis, the rising cost of living?
Where is Jesus in the
strikes that beset us?
Where is Jesus in Brazil, in the USA, in
Iran?
Jesus answers us, as he answered Andrew:
“Come,
and see”.
And the answer, of course, is that he is there in
the middle of it all, as he always is.
“Behold the Lamb of
God,” said John, “Who takes away the sins of the world.”
There
are always dreadful things happening in our world.
There always
have been –
even back in Jesus' day, you remember, the
disciples asked what had gone wrong when a tower collapsed, killing
rather a lot of people.
Look at the book of Job, or at some of
the Psalms,
trying to come to terms with why bad things happen,
and so often to people who really didn't deserve it.
And
there are no easy answers;
all we can do is to trust and to
believe that God is there in the middle of it.
“Come and see,”
said Jesus, and they went and saw.
And we are invited to stay
with him exactly where he is:
in the middle of it all.
Amen.
