January 17, 2008
Gates
Epiphany 2A Jn 1.29-41
Peter was at the Pearly Gates before gate became a fashionable suffix for trouble. And Andrew, his brother, was even earlier, out there following the ragtag country preacher around when he suddenly got hooked enough himself to pass the word. And you know the rest of the story.
But we don’t know all that much about Andrew. The legend is he was probably crucified on an X-shaped cross and meant at least enough to the Scots that they named a golf course after him. But maybe the most important thing we know about Andrew was that he was a kind of advance man. It was he, after all, who got brother Peter on the sawdust trail.
The church makes a lot out of Peter. The celibates, of course, would rather ignore the reference to his mother-in-law. Rather would we claim that he started the apostolic succession without which the church would not be very whicher, but probably never meant to become the apostolic success that some seem to make of it. But we’ve never gone to much trouble over Andrew other than he’s got a special day right around the beginning of Advent.
When you think about it though, the ministry of the most of us is more like Andrew than Peter. We’re not called to rest on our laurels, to relish in the Petrine glory, waving the keys about.
We’re called to climb first out of the trenches and face the onslaught, to stake out the claims on the mission front, to go and tell it on the mountain, to love our neighbors enough that they, not we, can bask in Peter’s glory, golf course or no.
Finally, of course, it is ours to take it on the lamb for God.
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