November 30, 2000
© 2000 Grant M. Gallup
Deuteronomy 30:11-14 - The word is near you.
Psalm 19 Coeli enarrant
Romans 10:8b-18 The same Lord is Lord of all
Matthew 4:18-22 He said to them, "Follow me"
The mail once brought a questionnaire from the bishop's office which asked for my birthday, the birthday of my spouse, the date of our wedding anniversary, and of course my spouse's name and the name of my favorite saint. As an aspiring celibate, with no wife at all, and as a gay man without a husband, I named Gracie my cat as my spouse (it's also my twin sister's name) and said we were living W.B.O.C. (without benefit of clergy) in sin. I named my favorite saints day as the feast of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, feast day July 27. Their legend has it that they were walled up in a cave in the 3rd century persecution of the church and woke up two hundred years later after the troubles were over. There've been times I wished I could do that. A wonderful way out of the homophobia and racism, the militarism and persecutions and problems--especially if we could do it with all our favorite people, a lamp and a good library, all walled up in a snug cave. Maybe a case of a mutually agreed upon beverage. I'd join the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus quick as Rip van Winkle. I'd wake up eventually and rewrite "Looking Backward".
Whimsy aside, it's got to be Andrew who is my favorite saint. Andrew, the first disciple of Jesus. His name means "husband" and the verb "to husband" means to cultivate, to look after, to take care, to tend, to save. A farmer is said to husband the crops, an investor husbands the accounts entrusted to her or to him. Husbanding is what God is described as doing for Israel, in the Hebrew Scriptures. Andrew the Apostle husbands the faith of his own brother, Peter, and brings it to fulfillment in apostleship for him, for princely apostleship which led them all to us, the latter day saints.
In the thirty years it was my privilege to look to Andrew as the vicar of the mission of which he was patron in Chicago, I grew close to him. He is always the first among us at the beginning of the church year, and his day determines its beginning. This is appropriate for him who began all our discipleship, and so he has the place of honor, as the first to whom we look. As the old year retires and the new year makes its debut, it is always Andrew who is there with us at the seaside, with the good news that he can show us the Messiah.
Our favorite hymn for his day proclaims that Jesus calls us o'er the tumult of our life's wild, restless sea. Day by day his clear voice soundeth, saying "Christian, follow me."
The special "spin", as it were, that Andrew always puts upon the good news of Jesus is that "spin" of nearness. Matthew tells us that Jesus went to Andrew and Peter where they were--at seaside, in the midst of their trade, casting nets into the sea, fisherfolk. Jesus did not set up a storefront in Nazareth, or convert the carpenter shop into a Sunday school, or hang out a shingle with service times and healings. He encultured himself amongst fisherfolk, and likely worked among them as a carpenter, maybe even building their boats and learning from them their specifications for the wood, the size, the tempering. Jesus still calls us to share our skills and to learn the specifications of his own. Andrew tells us Jesus is here and now, and we need not postpone our enlistment. He'll accept our willingness, and show us our work, and "learn us" the specifications. We don't need to be walled up with the seven sleepers of Ephesus until better days come for the tasks he sets before us, in the doing of which we will learn Who he is. We can wake up and break out of our walled up caves and closets into the fray, for Jesus calls us.
Jesus went down to the seaside where the boats, nets, and fisherfolk were. He went down and talked in their language about the coming reign of God, about the Revolution God wanted them to start, and he talked aobut it in terms of fishing. This gospel was framed in metaphors of their knowing. They are not the only metaphors available to change hearts or challenge the workers and peasants, the scientists and intellectuals and philosophers, the cobblers and coopers and chemists. His cadre knew about fish, and he talked about the Greatest of Catches. They knew about nets, and he taught about networking. They knew about big fish and little ones, good fish and bad, and he talked to them about choices, and judgment, skepticism and faith. The nearness of God, the nearness of judgment, the nearness of the Reign. The good news is that Jesus comes to our seasides. He also comes to our workbenches, our laboratories, our studios, our classrooms, our librarys, our kitchens, our inns, our bedsides, our places of work and play.
He's there before we get there. His word precedes him, and precedes us. Moses preached the same gospel to Israel of old: "What I command you is not too hard for you, neither is it far off, that you have to exclaim, * Who will go to heaven and get it for us, that we may know about it and do it?* It's not beyhond the sea--it's not in Katmandu or Tubingen, in the Emerald Isle or faraway Assisi. For Andrew, it was not somewhere else, but right there, at his own side of little Galilee. God always comes to us where we are, not where we think we ought to go to find him in a shrine, a misty retreat, the holiest, best, and highest, the Dalai Lama's lamasery, Merton's Seven Storey Mountain. Moses, an old apostle of God, preached "the word is very near you. It's alrady in your mouth, waiting to be preached. It's already in your heart, in our convictions, so that you CAN do it.
The gospel of our own liberation is already inside us, in our aspirations and in our inspirations. Paul writing to the Romans preaches the same good news: "The word is nar you, it's already on your lips" because it is by talking up the sovereignty and friendship of Jesus, by acting now out of what we know and believe, that our liberation actually gets under way. We act our way into new ways of thinking, surely, more than we think our way into new ways of acting. The word is already on our lips, burbling like a babe in glossalalia sometimes, because it is trying to get uttered in our lives. The disstinctions based on race, family, sexuality--gender or orientation--all the individualties we have, indeed, do nothing but enrich the way the gospel is to be told and received and published. They are not there to divide, but to unite as a precious diamond is One in all its facets. They provide that there will be no place or language where their voice is not heard, that there will be beautiful feet everywhere, running to bring good news closer to all. The good news of Andrew's day is always that God is as close to us as the lips with which we praise God, the hearts with which we love. "Closer," as Augustine says, "than hands or breathing." Do not distrust your ability both to hear God's voice or to to God's will, to publish this delightful news, this lively news, this saving news, and to serve God's Reign in the Coming age which is close by -- can you not perceive it? It is jumping out of you, into the world.
GRANT GALLUP
CASA AVE MARIA
MANAGUA, NICARAGUA C.A.
Apartado RP-10
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