Monday, November 30, 2020            (today’s lectionary)
Feast of Saint Andrew, Apostle
Walking the well-worn trail
If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. There is no distinction between Jew and Greek. The same Lord is Lord of all.
Just checking my email every day I learn so much about Christian history. Missionaries and priests, heretics and martyrs, popes and social workers all followed paths they believed God sent them on.  On Thanksgiving I imagined walking on a well-worn trail from Plymouth to a Native American village, invited to a feast to celebrate God’s protection and provision. Whether we called God “God” or “Earth Mother” didn’t matter. We felt her presence, his presence in the midst of every bite of turkey and every word of thanks.
Now that we’re friends, what’s my duty to God and country? What’s my duty to my new friends? Which duty comes first?
How can they call on him if they have not believed? But how can they believe if they haven’t heard? How can they hear if I don’t preach? But how can I preach if I’m not sent. Isaiah rejoiced, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news?” And then he mourned, “But who has believed us?”
What then? Lots of different answers from our human mouths and hearts, but God speaks more clearly than any of us. I think it’s wise for me to say little and listen much.
Jesus walked and saw Peter and Andrew and said, “Come and follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” And at once they left their nets and followed him.
Saint Andrew is the patron saint of many countries – Barbados, Romania, Russia, Scotland, and Ukraine, also many cities as well as the Order of the Golden Fleece and the Patriarch of Constaninople. He didn’t travel to all those places, but at least his relics did. Pieces of St. Andrew are everywhere (how beautiful are the feet …).
Honoring the ancients makes me more honorable, I think. Realizing that I walk in a path too, guided by God like Andrew in Russia or William Bradford in Massachusetts, reminds me that my day is like a thousand years, and God’s thousand years are like a day. I can walk with assurance in my own brief moment of time, trusting the trustworthiness of God.
The law of the Lord is perfect, and it refreshes all our souls. His decree is trustworthy, for he is wise and we are simple. He loves us as we are, he pours honey from the honeycomb sweet upon our heads, he anoints us with his words, more precious than gold.
(Romans 10, Psalm 19, Matthew 4)
#
