"He brought Simon to Jesus"-Sermon for Epiphany 2, John 1:29-42:
This past November I was invited to be the preacher at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School’s annual celebration of the Feast Day of St. Andrew, their Patron Saint, which falls on November 30 each year on our church’s calendar. For those who may not be familiar with it, St. Andrew’s is a Kindergarten through twelfth grade Episcopal School here in Austin where my two children attend and were my wife, Ashley, serves as Lower and Middle School Chaplain. And St. Andrew’s Day, as they call it, is a very important day in the life of the school for a number of reasons. It is the day when they get to consider together the life of St. Andrew, the person…the friend and follower of Jesus for whom they are named…and whose legacy informs and undergirds all the teaching and learning and forming and creating and loving that happens in that particular Episcopal community. St. Andrew’s Day is also one of the few occasions each year in which they are able to gather their whole community, their whole school, of well over a thousand children and adults, that exists on two campuses, together in one place…in one great big room…their high school gym. Thus, the day is also a chance to celebrate their connectedness…their interconnected and shared life…made up of many individuals whose lives are all bound up together in a community of love and belonging. And I use the word community, rather than just school, intentionally. For all schools, at their best, are more than places created for simply the transfer of information from teacher to student…but to be places, much like our churches, including our own, St. Julian’s, where friendships are forged, families are supported, more than learning, but real growth and formation happens in body, mind and spirit. And this good and Godly work happens, and can really only happen, in an intentionally, thoughtfully and lovingly crafted environment of care and attention given one to another…rooted in a mutuality built on deeply connected relationships, love given and received, over much time and in many moments…both little and large.
And, I chose as the gospel passage to preach on…to think with them about their deeply connected life lived together…the very same passage that sits before us today as our Gospel reading assigned by our lectionary on this second Sunday in the Season of Epiphany. Further, I choose this passage specifically because it tells the beginning of Andrew’s story in John’s gospel. St. Andrew, the friend and follower of Jesus, the one I often like to describe as the Patron Saint of Connections. For, when we meet Andrew for the very first time in John’s gospel…the work of connecting is actually…exactly what he is doing. John tells us that following Andrew’s inaugural meeting with Jesus…the person who would change his life forever…turn his life upside down…or, really, right side up with love on the very top…following that initial experience of connection with Jesus, who is nothing less than love in flesh and bone…Andrew’s immediate response, the very first thing he does, is to run to his friend and brother, Simon Peter, and connect him, as quickly as possible, to Jesus…to connect his loved one…his own brother…to the one who would change Simon Peter’s life forever, as well.
And later on in the Gospel of John, as Jesus stands on the side of a hill preaching words of hope and love to many thousands of hungry people…there is present a young boy who has with him just a little food, at least compared to the size of the crowd…and it’s Andrew who sees the boy…who notices him…and connects him to Jesus…Jesus who then takes the meager meal that the boy is willing to share…blesses it and breaks it…a miracle of multiplication…such that every person present…woman, man and child…eat and are filled…with good food for mind, body and soul. St. Andrew, the Patron Saint of Connections…the one who first connected with Jesus himself, the source of the love that makes the world go round, and whose response is to connect others, other people, to Jesus and to the ever-widening community of love and belonging that Jesus came among us humans to form…and of which we as St. Julian’s Episcopal Church are a part.
Dr. Brené Brown, who has provided many of us a wholehearted and contemporary lens to engage with Jesus’ life and teaching, writes, “A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don’t function as we are meant to. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache. We hurt others. We get sick.” So, as I like to say…and have so many times and will again so many more times…I need you…and you need me…if we are ever going to become the healthy, fully alive, meaning-making, whole-hearted humans, that the God of love has created us to be.
And, of course, belonging necessarily means…belonging to another person in whose hands we generously and trustingly place our lives. And loving and being loved requires at least two people who have formed a bond of affection…for better or worse…for richer or poorer…in sickness or in health. Thus, it could then be suggested that for love and belonging to exist…it all begins with connection…with falling in love with each other. And I am not speaking here only in romantic terms…but, again, in terms of how Brené Brown speaks of the love formed in authentic human connection, which she describes as…“[a]n energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard and valued; when they give and receive without judgment; and when they derive substance and strength from the relationship that [they share].”
And to this end, I feel like St. Julian’s, this church…this community of love and belonging that we have, with God, created together and share…lives and exists very much in the likeness and image of St. Andrew, the friend and follower of Jesus…the great connector…in whose legacy we, indeed, live a life connected to God and to one another. For connection doesn’t always come easy. It takes great intentionality…great vulnerability and courage…to forge authentic connection. And yet there is maybe nothing more important that we do together…for the very foundation needed to grow, learn and thrive…begins in the relationships…the connections made beginning here…in our church, in our worship services, programs, classes, and ministries…and, of course, it continues beyond on our walls with those with whom we share a home…an office…work spaces and classrooms…a shared life…in which our own life…its meaning and purpose…its joy and potential for growth…is all bound up in one another. Our flourishing, yours and mine, is always all tied up in and with each other…our flourishing is always a matter of mutuality.
Tomorrow, as a nation, we will once again celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He too, like Andrew, among many things, was a great connector of people…maybe most of all people of different colors. And, on the subject of mutuality, Dr. King writes, “All this is simply to say that all life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality; tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. As long as there is poverty in this world, no man can be totally rich even if he has a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people cannot expect to live more than twenty or thirty years, no man can be totally healthy, even if he just got a clean bill of health from the finest clinic in America. Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.” Thus, to build on Dr. King’s words, our own health and vitality, our own joy and ability to live a life with meaning is built on, utterly tied to, each other’s experience of the same. Therefore, we should care a whole lot about each other’s experiences…get involved in each other’s lives…spend much time together and care well for each other…those we share a life with, those we agree with, and those we often don’t…but who we still remain connected to…which sounds like most families I know…church families…and literally our families.
Mutuality, as a spiritual matter, always suggests intimacy. Intimacy formed not by spilling our guts before one another…not by confessing our most shameful sins and failings and insecurities before each other…but through familiarity…through the intentional choice to make room in our lives for each other…and to do so often and with great care and intention. Author Curtis Tyrone Jones writes, “There's no key to great relationships, there's simply a well-worn welcome mat.”
As I was helping take down our Christmas decorations here at the church a couple of weeks ago and vacuuming up the pine needles on the carpet at the entry of our church, I literally noted that it is showing some serious wear and tear…the sheen is gone…the edges are a bit frayed…and I thought maybe it’s time for a replacement…but then I thought…how lovely…that wear and tear is from all of us coming into this community of love and belonging…finding hope and joy and meaning and direction…in the life we share together…the connections made with each other and the God of love in this place…and then going out again to take those connections…the love and belonging found in this Godly place…out of our doors and into the lives of all the people with whom connect…sharing with them the love and care we first found here…that then shapes and forms us and them just a bit more into the meaning-making, love spreading, wholehearted people God made us to be.
Thus, as we come to a new year, I am asking all of us to double down on the love and belonging we have found together in this place. That we make a priority of the time we spend together. That we wear out the carpet at our entry way…not with our own two feet…but also with the feet belonging to the others that we invite to join us in our ever-expanding community of love and belonging. For love and belonging, to God and one another, is what our hearts’ desire…they are the air we breathe…food for body and soul…what makes us fullyalive, meaning making people. And, it all begins with connection…with being courageous enough to fall more and more in love with Jesus and each other. For I believe with all my strength that like St. Andrew…the Patron Saint of Connections…St. Julian’s, in small and large ways, in the love we both give and receive, is particularly gifted at this life-giving, connection-like work…that has the power to turn this world upside down…or, again, really right side up…with love, God’s own love, right on top. Amen.