Sermon: Andrew the Apostle
Friday, 7 April 2023 09:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cjbanningAs preached at the Advent Evening Prayer ("with young preachers") service at St. Thomas' Episcopal Church in Glassboro, NJ on the evening of Tuesday, November 29, 2022.
Psalm 19
Deuteronomy 30:11-14
Romans 10:8b-18
Mathew 25:9-14
One of the peculiarities of this service of Evening Prayer is that the collect of the day is relegated to later on in the service, instead of the beginning, but if you had listened to it and to our readings today you might come to the conclusion that St. Andrew must not be mentioned all that much in the Bible beyond the story of his initial call. And if you had thought this, you would have been more or less correct.
The feast of Andrew the Apostle, then, is a good opportunity to reflect on what exactly it means to be called, and what each of us here today is called to do and to be.
Part of our calling is common to all Christians. God calls to us with the free, unmerited gift of grace, and enabled by that grace, our task is to respond to it with faith. St. Paul fleshes out exactly what this entails in this evening’s epistle: we respond to grace by confessing with our mouths and having faith in our hearts. But, of course, this only pushes back the questions. How much confession is enough? After all, we also have to use our mouths for other things, like eating and breathing and communicating many important things besides Jesus’ lordship. And what does it mean to have faith in our hearts? It is not intellectual certainty or emotional fervor, but an obedience to God which informs our will and expresses itself in our actions.
Similarly, when St. Paul tells us to confess Jesus’ lordship with our mouths, he does not mean only with our mouths. A Christian is called to make not only their words or beliefs but their entire lives into a confession of Jesus’ lordship.
The Book of Common Prayer 1979 elaborates on our common call as Christians in the catechism, which tells us that “the duty of all Christians is to follow Christ; to come together week by week for corporate worship; and to work, pray, and give for the spread of the kingdom of God,” and in our baptismal covenant, in which we promise to “continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers; persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever we fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord; proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ; seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves; and strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.”
But while Advent might be a time for Christmas cookies, there are no cookie-cutter Christians: each of us lives out the specifics of our calling as Christians in a context which is uniquely our own, utilizing our own particular strengths and weaknesses. How do we know what God is calling each of us to do as individuals? How do we figure out the specifics of how to confess Jesus’ lordship with our entire lives, to live out each of the promises of our baptismal covenant?
Some of the saints received majestic visions or dramatic revelations informing them of their vocations. One thinks of St. Paul on the road to Damascus, or St. Francis in the broken-down church of San Damiano, with Jesus speaking to him from the crucifix: “Rebuild my church.” Others seem to have been on the Earth with a conviction about what they were put here to do already fixed in their minds, knowing from an early God who and what God was calling them to be.
But what for those of us--the majority, I think--for whom God seems to be largely silent?
Arguably, Saint Andrew’s case was more like ours than some of the saints mentioned above. He was faced not with a majestic figure of Jesus in a white robe right out of a Tide commercial, haloed and surrounded by a choir of angels, but by a disheveled, slightly manic young man shouting at his fishing boat from the shore. Nor was Jesus holding a sign that said “I am the Messiah”--not that first-century Palestine was exactly lacking in false messiahs even if he had been.
The first and most important way we understand the specifics of what God is calling us individually to do is through prayer. It is right and good for us to put our needs and desires, and the needs and desires of others, before the Lord so that God’s will might be done, and to thank God for the many good things that God has given to us and to others. But it is at least as important to carve out time and space in our prayer lives to listen to what God might be saying to us. Whether it is as part of our online contemporary prayer group which meets on Mondays at 4pm on Zoom, or a few minutes of silent meditation before the start of the day, or some other practice, carving out time and space in our busy lives to listen to God is an important element of discerning our calling.
Indeed, for many of the saints just mentioned who seemed to receive their own calling with supernatural clarity, it is likely they were able to do so precisely because they had already mastered the practice of contemplative prayer.
And, lest I be convicted of hypocrisy, let me be the first to acknowledge that this is a practice at which I am spectacularly horrible.
So, then what?
We turn to the same norms of knowledge as we do for any other question. There's the Holy Scriptures and the sacred tradition, of course, although if the question is what city to move to or what job to take, we might not find all that much directly applicable. We have our faculty of natural reason, which is a fancy way of saying we need to figure it ourselves. We have our personal experience and the collected wisdom of our communities–our churches, our families, our friends. We blunder through life as best we can, taking each day as it comes–and if Scripture tells us anything about the apostles, it’s that they were spectacularly good at blundering.
The wonderful thing about God’s loving grace is that it grants us the freedom to not know all the answers. Sometimes all we have is the conviction that where we are is not where God wants us to be, and it can take years or even decades to figure out where we should be. Sometimes we are granted the comfort of knowing that we are doing the work we were given to do, at least for now. And sometimes we are taken to places we’d rather not go. There’s a reason why the liturgical color for an apostle is red.
Sometimes we might not be able to see the big picture of our lives, but we know enough of the little things God wants us to do to be able to make it through the day, the week, the year. And sometimes we are just entirely, completely clueless.
Like Andrew, we might be outshone by a sibling or a friend. We might not experience the fame or fortune or glory that secretly or not so secretly we really would like to have. But we can rest confident that God has called us, is calling us, will never stop calling us to where He wants us to be, and that if we trust in Him then there is no need for fear or distress, no matter how long it takes us to get there.
Psalm 19
Deuteronomy 30:11-14
Romans 10:8b-18
Mathew 25:9-14
One of the peculiarities of this service of Evening Prayer is that the collect of the day is relegated to later on in the service, instead of the beginning, but if you had listened to it and to our readings today you might come to the conclusion that St. Andrew must not be mentioned all that much in the Bible beyond the story of his initial call. And if you had thought this, you would have been more or less correct.
The feast of Andrew the Apostle, then, is a good opportunity to reflect on what exactly it means to be called, and what each of us here today is called to do and to be.
Part of our calling is common to all Christians. God calls to us with the free, unmerited gift of grace, and enabled by that grace, our task is to respond to it with faith. St. Paul fleshes out exactly what this entails in this evening’s epistle: we respond to grace by confessing with our mouths and having faith in our hearts. But, of course, this only pushes back the questions. How much confession is enough? After all, we also have to use our mouths for other things, like eating and breathing and communicating many important things besides Jesus’ lordship. And what does it mean to have faith in our hearts? It is not intellectual certainty or emotional fervor, but an obedience to God which informs our will and expresses itself in our actions.
Similarly, when St. Paul tells us to confess Jesus’ lordship with our mouths, he does not mean only with our mouths. A Christian is called to make not only their words or beliefs but their entire lives into a confession of Jesus’ lordship.
The Book of Common Prayer 1979 elaborates on our common call as Christians in the catechism, which tells us that “the duty of all Christians is to follow Christ; to come together week by week for corporate worship; and to work, pray, and give for the spread of the kingdom of God,” and in our baptismal covenant, in which we promise to “continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers; persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever we fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord; proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ; seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves; and strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.”
But while Advent might be a time for Christmas cookies, there are no cookie-cutter Christians: each of us lives out the specifics of our calling as Christians in a context which is uniquely our own, utilizing our own particular strengths and weaknesses. How do we know what God is calling each of us to do as individuals? How do we figure out the specifics of how to confess Jesus’ lordship with our entire lives, to live out each of the promises of our baptismal covenant?
Some of the saints received majestic visions or dramatic revelations informing them of their vocations. One thinks of St. Paul on the road to Damascus, or St. Francis in the broken-down church of San Damiano, with Jesus speaking to him from the crucifix: “Rebuild my church.” Others seem to have been on the Earth with a conviction about what they were put here to do already fixed in their minds, knowing from an early God who and what God was calling them to be.
But what for those of us--the majority, I think--for whom God seems to be largely silent?
Arguably, Saint Andrew’s case was more like ours than some of the saints mentioned above. He was faced not with a majestic figure of Jesus in a white robe right out of a Tide commercial, haloed and surrounded by a choir of angels, but by a disheveled, slightly manic young man shouting at his fishing boat from the shore. Nor was Jesus holding a sign that said “I am the Messiah”--not that first-century Palestine was exactly lacking in false messiahs even if he had been.
The first and most important way we understand the specifics of what God is calling us individually to do is through prayer. It is right and good for us to put our needs and desires, and the needs and desires of others, before the Lord so that God’s will might be done, and to thank God for the many good things that God has given to us and to others. But it is at least as important to carve out time and space in our prayer lives to listen to what God might be saying to us. Whether it is as part of our online contemporary prayer group which meets on Mondays at 4pm on Zoom, or a few minutes of silent meditation before the start of the day, or some other practice, carving out time and space in our busy lives to listen to God is an important element of discerning our calling.
Indeed, for many of the saints just mentioned who seemed to receive their own calling with supernatural clarity, it is likely they were able to do so precisely because they had already mastered the practice of contemplative prayer.
And, lest I be convicted of hypocrisy, let me be the first to acknowledge that this is a practice at which I am spectacularly horrible.
So, then what?
We turn to the same norms of knowledge as we do for any other question. There's the Holy Scriptures and the sacred tradition, of course, although if the question is what city to move to or what job to take, we might not find all that much directly applicable. We have our faculty of natural reason, which is a fancy way of saying we need to figure it ourselves. We have our personal experience and the collected wisdom of our communities–our churches, our families, our friends. We blunder through life as best we can, taking each day as it comes–and if Scripture tells us anything about the apostles, it’s that they were spectacularly good at blundering.
The wonderful thing about God’s loving grace is that it grants us the freedom to not know all the answers. Sometimes all we have is the conviction that where we are is not where God wants us to be, and it can take years or even decades to figure out where we should be. Sometimes we are granted the comfort of knowing that we are doing the work we were given to do, at least for now. And sometimes we are taken to places we’d rather not go. There’s a reason why the liturgical color for an apostle is red.
Sometimes we might not be able to see the big picture of our lives, but we know enough of the little things God wants us to do to be able to make it through the day, the week, the year. And sometimes we are just entirely, completely clueless.
Like Andrew, we might be outshone by a sibling or a friend. We might not experience the fame or fortune or glory that secretly or not so secretly we really would like to have. But we can rest confident that God has called us, is calling us, will never stop calling us to where He wants us to be, and that if we trust in Him then there is no need for fear or distress, no matter how long it takes us to get there.