by CCW | 30 November 2015 21:00
Andrew is the Advent saint. His feast day either immediately anticipates Advent or it falls within the first week of Advent, indeed immediately after the First Sunday in Advent. In either case,this feast inaugurates the cycle of the Church’s commemoration of the Saints throughout the course of the year. There is always, it seems to me, something rich and significant about beginnings.
Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland and, therefore, of New Scotland, Nova Scotia, as well, perhaps in both cases because of the connection to the sea. Yet, Scotland is a long ways from the land of the New Testament, a long ways from the setting of the story of the calling of the brothers Simon Peter and Andrew, and the brothers Zebedee, James and John, a long ways from the sea of Galilee. How much further away is Nova Scotia. This reminds us of the missionary impulse of the Christian faith. This doesn’t mean that Andrew ever laid eyes on either Scotland or New Scotland!
Yet, the spiritual point is clear. Those who follow Jesus become the ones who proclaim Jesus and make him known even “unto the ends of the world.” For much of the first millennium or more, Scotland must often to have seemed to be the very end of the world. Perhaps, too, the same might be said even now of Nova Scotia. And yet, the word has gone forth on the wings of the saints and has been carried forward by their witness to Jesus Christ. Critical to that witness, as the readings on this feast day reminds us, is the Scripture. The Feast of Andrew belongs to that pageant of Word and Song which is part and parcel of the Advent of Christ.
The epistle reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans is a kind of mini-treatise on what we might call ‘the theology of revelation’. It focuses on the significance of the Scriptures and upon preaching. The primary form of preaching is simply the proclamation of the Scriptures. Those that follow become those that are sent and those who are sent preach the good news of our salvation in Jesus Christ. There is an important emphasis upon the hearing of the Word of God through the preaching, meaning the proclamation of God’s word.
Something of the majesty and the wonder of God is set before us. The word proclaimed is heard and faith comes to birth in the hearers. In a way, we encounter the mystery of God coming towards us, his Advent, in and through the lives and witness of the Saints who are simply those who have gone before us with the mind of Christ. Andrew shows us the story of one, who having heard, immediately followed, “readily obeying the calling of thy Son Jesus Christ, and following him without delay” as the Collect so simply puts it. It is almost as if Andrew knows that “the night is far spent” and that “the day is at hand” as we heard on Sunday. There is a kind of directness and immediacy to his response to the Word of Christ.
Sometimes we like to think that we can control and manipulate people’s faith. We can’t. Faith can only come by the hearing of the Word and by that Word taking root whether quickly or slowly in our hearts. It can only happen, though, if the Word is proclaimed. And for that there always need to be those who called to preach. In a way, preaching is an image of the Advent. It is entirely about what comes to us through word and words in action and it is entirely about hope. It is the hope that others will hear and proclaim the truth and power of the God who is Lord of all and who seeks our salvation. It can only happen each in our own way, to be sure, and not least by the quality of our lives.
The poet George Herbert comments profoundly on the power and the limitation of our preaching. “Lord,” he asks, in ways that capture the rhetorical force of Romans, “how can man preach thy eternall word?” To raise the question highlights the mystery and the wonder, for man he rightly notes “is but a brittle crazie glasse.” And “yet in thy temple”– the Church – “thou dost him afford … “To be a window, through thy grace.” To be window elides wonderfully word and image in pursuit of understanding and mystery.
What are our churches except “glorious and transcendent place[s]” (at least if they are true to their principles)? Is that not part of the mission, the purpose? Stories of the Gospel, “anneal[ed] in glasse” – stained glass windows which are the bible for the illiterate of every age, no less ours than the centuries before – “mak[e] thy life to shine within/The holy preachers.” What is proclaimed has also to be lived and yet that cannot happen unless the Word be preached and heard. The true power of preaching, read proclaiming the Scriptures in the ordered life of the Church, consists in how it rings in the conscience, “For speech alone/Doth vanish like a flaring thing.” Life and doctrine, doctrine and devotion belong together.
We give thanks tonight for the witness of St. Andrew who belongs in the company of those whose “sound went out into all the earth,/and their words unto the end of the world.” May we be ready and willing to follow and let the word of Christ ring in our hearts and minds.
Fr. David Curry
St. Andrew, 2015
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