A message from Pastors’ Retreat speaker Richard Topping.
O God, grant us a tenacious winsome courage today. When we are tempted to give up, help us to keep going. When we are tempted to be blind, help us to see. When we are tempted to be angry, help us to love. Grant us a cheerful spirit when things don’t go our way. And give us your Spirit so that our lives witness to your love and mercy for this world. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Andrew first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found Messiah.” He brought Simon to Jesus.
A past moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA), Marg Carpenter, who spent most of her life promoting mission, said this: “I’ll say it one more time: the church is alive and well in the world. I’m tired of hearing anything else. I love mission, I love the church, I love the Lord Jesus Christ, and I love you Presbyterians, well most of you.
“I’ll tell you what,” she said, “we could do great things together in this denomination if we could get back to basics.”
Mission is what the church is and does as it is caught up in the movement of the triune God toward and for the world. Mission’s always been our M.O. in the world. Mission is just the church becoming and being what it is. Bonhoeffer said, “The Church is the Church only when it exists for others . . . not dominating; but helping and serving. It must tell people of every calling what it means to live for Christ, to exist for others.”
Post-Christendom church in a secular society needs repair around mission. It has always been who we are and what we’re here for as church. It is just we got lulled into thinking that staying open, teaching good manners and helping people assimilate to western values was often all we needed to do when we were at the cultural levers. Now that we have all become missionaries to a culture we thought we owned, we need to sand blast the grime of colonizing pretension and therapeutic niceness off the façade of the building.
Put another way, we might say the church needs reform around mission. Once more, we listen seriously to Jesus’ words — like the ones at the end of John’s gospel — “as the Father has sent me, so send I you . . .” and then Jesus animates mission with the breath of the Holy Spirit. And disciples (students) graduate to become apostles (sent ones) with a message of new life and reconciliation.
And so today at a church named after this missionary apostle, Andrew, it seems fitting to learn mission from Andrew. From the start of the gospel of John, Jesus incites Andrew to mission.
Zoom meetings and church services remind me of a commercial from years ago. You can still find it on You Tube. The commercial begins with a single woman lauding the excellence of Faberge Organic Shampoo with pure wheat germ oil and honey. She loves it so much she says, “and I told two friends.”
Faces and voices multiply inside boxes as a growing chorus of diverse people checkerboard the screen repeating the chorus, “and so on and so on.” And to think this early Zoom meeting started with one person. One person with some good news, about Faberge Organic Shampoo with pure wheat germ oil and honey spoke up, and the next thing you know through the miracle of exponential marketing, lots and lots of people now enjoy “super body, super shine and super smelling fresh hair.”
This commercial came to mind this week, as I was reading our lesson. Andrew and Philip each met Jesus stay for a while with him and then get all evangelical — a brother and a friend get pulled into the Jesus movement by the patience and persistent witness of these first disciples.
Today, we learn mission, especially, even dare I say it, “evangelism,” from St. Andrew in particular. Let’s suppose that what he does, as a new but faithful disciple of Jesus, is what we are also called to do as faithful baptized Christians. St. Andrew, the saint after whom your church is named, traces out a pattern of life that invites our imitation.
Andrew, before he was a saint, back when he was just plain old Andy; he was a follower of John the Baptist. And John’s job was to point toward Jesus. So when Jesus arrived on the scene, John says to Andrew and an unnamed friend, “behold the lamb of God” — the two of them somehow know that this is code for: “follow him now, he’s the one you want to be with.” Andrew and his friend start following Jesus. It’s all so cryptic. Without any formal introduction; rumour and hearsay, trust of a friend and vague words, they start walking behind Jesus, stalking him. Andrew and his nameless shadow friend.
That’s when Jesus turns around and asks them a question: “what are you looking for?” That’s the first thing Jesus says in this Gospel: “what are you looking for?” And the two used to-be-disciples of John the Baptist answer Jesus’ question with a question: “where are you staying?” Jesus answers their questioning answer with: “Come and See.” It seems that what these two disciples looked for was a place to stay — they were looking to “stay” with Jesus. And our Gospel repeats this word three times: and they saw where he was “staying” and they “stayed” with him. What is this Motel Super 8 or Hilton obsession.
There is more than meets the eye in this word: “stayed.” It means to remain, abide, to dwell. These two disciples really want to dwell with Jesus, where he goes and sets up shop is where they want to go. Stay has the sense of putting in time at a place, of a non-recreational interest. This is not weekend camping or seasonal residence staying; but finding a home and making it your own. This isn’t hedging your bets, let’s check this out for a while, non-committal, interest. This is put down roots, sign me up curiosity.
In the 15th chapter of John, Jesus invites his followers: “abide in me and you will bear much fruit.” ‘Stick and stay with me, and your life with blossom with a rich harvest of goodness and beauty.” It’s the same word: meno. The variety of translations — remain, abide, stay, dwell, make a home — make us miss the repetition. Andrew and the unnamed disciple are all in — they push all the chips to the centre of the table, they get up close and personal with Jesus so that Jesus’ life will leave a deep impression on their own lives. They stay with him.
I sometimes wonder in our own time — when at Amazon you can find an idiot’s guide to almost anything — whether we’ve got the patience to stay with Jesus. In our user friendly, mastery-oriented, drive through world, where we want everything quickly and immediately, staying with Jesus — abiding and listening and lingering with his words to us, takes time.
Could it be that sometimes I don’t get to telling anyone else about Jesus, because I haven’t lingered with him to experience death and new life. Without that slaying and rising with him, even if I did go and tell it could be non-sense, colonial impress, my translation of the Gospel —which is often code for exporting status quo privilege or what sells in with the secular — Jesus made in my image.
No, Andrew teaches us, we can’t graduate to the outreach department without first spending some time in the kind of deep Christian formation that could kill you in order to raise you.
In his beautiful little book, The Love that is God, Fritz Bauerschmidt puts it this way: “The kiss that the church exchanges with God in the daily routine of prayer and service can at any moment pass beyond ritual and turn, as Dorothy Day puts it, ‘to rapture, a burning fire of tenderness and love [for the world].’ ” 115. Go deep with God — in dying and rising with Christ — and you go wide with the world.
Andrew and his unnamed friend, said, “we want to go where you’re staying.” And they took the time to let the person of Jesus shape their lives.
They started following a Rabbi, and in the depths of staying with him, understanding blows open, confession goes large. He is “Messiah.” “We have found the one about whom Moses and the prophets wrote.” You are “the Son of God,” “the King of Israel.” Stay with Jesus and grow theo/logical, doxo/logical. Lingering in the depths of communion with Jesus is where mission is born.
Jonathan Edwards, an American theologian who lived during the times of the great religious revivals that swept the United States in the mid 18th century, wrote a wonderful treatise. The short title is: A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections. In the book, Edwards chastises people who say that God touched their lives, but then get all fervent and fluent about themselves. He notes how easy it is to get self-centred, talking about me and my religious experience, a sort of spiritual narcissism.
Edwards says that a sign of true conversation is that our affections get turned away from me, myself and I, and turned toward God in holiness and toward others with gentleness. How do you know someone has been touched by God, that someone has stayed with Jesus? Well, they get all eccentric – moved toward God and other people.
Look at what happens to Andrew in our lesson. He stays on with Jesus, learning and listening, maybe asking questions, and after he’s stayed a while, he thinks of his brother, Simon. Spend enough time with Jesus and suddenly wonder, “what about those I love?” Who Jesus is — he is for the people I know and love. And for those whose religious affections get shaped by encounters with Jesus, they’ve got to go, got to get to people who might know and believe and have life in Jesus’ name. Think “burning fire of tenderness and love [for the world].”
D. Bonhoeffer, at the illegal seminary of the confessing church at Finkenwalde in the years after 1935, had a creative pedagogy for students. He would send them out to meditate on passages from scripture for part of a day. At the end of the day, they would share what spoke to them. One student reported that he was tempted (by the devil) with thoughts of others while he trying to mediate on scripture.
Bonhoeffer said, “that’s not the devil; that’s the Holy Spirit. Other people should come to mind when you read scripture, now go back and meditate and take those people with you.”
Andrew features in three episodes in John’s Gospel, and every time does the same thing. Andrew has one card and he plays it all the time. He never says much to the people he meets. He isn’t the impulsive sort. He doesn’t visit with anyone too long. His friends drag him into doubt. He lives in the shadow of his loquacious brother.
But Andrew can introduce.
“When in doubt, introduce;” that’s the maxim he lives by. It’s as if he knows himself well enough to know that what people need, he doesn’t have. He finds people, people find him, and he takes them to meet Jesus. Do you remember who brought the boy with the loaves and fishes to Jesus in John chapter 6? Andrew did. When in doubt, don’t complain about what you don’t have, just bring what you do have to Jesus. Again, in chapter 12 of John, some Greeks say to Jesus’ disciples, “we want to see Jesus.” And who should take them to Jesus. Well, you guessed it, Andrew again. Andrew is the patron saint of evangelical networking.
Andrew meets Jesus, the Lamb of God, stays with him, and then he high-tails it home. Like lingering stokes commissioning. The encounter gives him news, good news, for his talkative brother, Peter. “I have found Messiah” and he escorts Peter into the presence of Jesus. Andrew’s gets it: Jesus is no one’s private possession. Jesus is God’s gift to the world: he is the light that enlightens everyone and all who believe in him become God’s children. Introducing Andrew introduces his brother to Jesus. That’s low key, small ‘e’ evangelism. That’s all it is: introducing those you know and love to the one who knows and loves them, Jesus Christ.
In conclusion, can I tie up one loose end? Way back at the beginning of our lesson, John the Baptist points two disciples in the direction of Jesus, one was Andrew, we didn’t get the other one’s name. We do know that this other disciple also “stayed” with Jesus. He lingered alongside Andrew in the company of Jesus. What we don’t know is what he did. I mean Andrew stayed, and then left to tell his brother the most wonderful news – I met Messiah! Andrew went home and brought another, Peter, into the company of Jesus. What did the “other guy” do? I mean he/she heard too. She stalked Jesus all the way to where he was staying. Did she tell two friends and so on and so on? Did he think of anyone else to talk to? Aren’t we staying with Jesus today in worship? And in a time like this when loneliness, fear, anxiety about our future and Zoom doom haunt our world, I am sure someone comes to mind. You just gotta’ hope that the unnamed disciple does the same thing as Peter, and brings somebody to Jesus. I hope to God that you do. Amen.
Rev. Dr. Richard Topping is principal of Vancouver School of Theology. This message was first presented to St. Andrew’s, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.