“Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you.” In our first reading we heard the Deuteronomist teaching about the imperative of both observing the law and also of passing on faith. Which ought to both reassure and terrify us. We’re told that it’s not hard, but practicing and witnessing to God’s countercultural way of being community always carries risk. Christian tradition has it that Andrew the Apostle—whose feast we honor today—was martyred in Patras in Greece. And because he did not consider himself worthy to die the same kind of death as Christ, Andrew was crucified on an x shaped cross and spent the two agonizing days of his dying continuing to preach the Good News that God is with us and for us, no matter what.
Andrew is known to as an evangelist; as far as we know, that was his vocation from the moment he was called away from his nets to his dying breath. Churches that take the name St. Andrew usually do so because they understand their ministry as evangelism; the Brotherhood of St. Andrew, was founded to equip Episcopal laymen to share their faith. And to the extent that we continue to tell Andrew’s story, we might say that he is evangelizing we who are in this church even now.
Even though our current presiding Bishop has re-introduced the language into our lexicon, talking about evangelism still tends to make contemporary Episcopalians feel a little itchy. If for no other reasons than our cultural reticence to tell our faith stories, although the prospect of being crucified is not especially appealing either. And yet there is a powerful voice of reassurance running through all of our lessons. We can do this—whatever this task of passing on faith may be like in our time and place—because we have everything we need. The word we’re called to speak is already in our hearts and our mouths.
What’s interesting to me is that, although we encounter Andrew doing various things in scripture, he actually didn’t say much. Whatever his method of evangelism was, it didn’t seem to require a lot of talking. He’s not recorded as having made long sermons like Paul or Stephen, and he didn’t leave a gospel like his fellow apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Mostly, what we know that he did was Invite others to meet Jesus. In John’s version of the gospel we heard today, Andrew brought his brother Peter to meet Jesus, an introduction that changed the course of Jesus’ ministry and indeed of history.
So if we take Andrew as our example, the word we need to share really is that nearby. It is in the heavens, which already tell their own story of the glory of God as the Psalmist says. All we need to do it point to it. It is in our church community, which is Christ’s body in the world. All we need to do is invite people into it. So the word we share might sound like “look at what God has given us,” or “come and see” or “follow me, because I don’t want you to be alone.” It already is in our hearts and on our tongues. And if you need to “hear” it again for yourself, well then follow me. Follow me to this table, and taste and see that the Lord is good.
