Isaiah 64:1-9; Mark 13:24-37; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9
If you're really wide awake this morning, you may have wondered in passing, Where's our psalm today? We usually sing or read a psalm between two of our Bible readings, remembering some of our ancestors in the faith who would sing nothing but the psalms in worship. But for this Advent season, as we are invited, awaiting God's coming or Advent to us at Christmas, to take stock of our lives individually and as a church, I decided to make use in worship of some of the riches I've found in this church's written history, to hear again some of our ancestral voices from the less distant past. And the first extract we've heard this morning is about the decision to found St Andrew's church here in Sheffield: a church in which those Scottish soldiers whose regiment was about to come here from Leeds, and others who had been members of Presbyterian churches in Scotland and had moved to Sheffield for work, could worship God after the form of their Presbyterian fathers - and, presumably, their mothers too, though you might not realise that from the written record.
Once the decision had been taken to form this congregation, it is not at all surprising to find that it was to be named after St Andrew - Scotland's patron saint. Those of you who have not been in St Andrew's before may not appreciate that we normally face towards the organ pipes in worship, but this morning we've changed round the seating in order to appreciate the fine window behind me dedicated to St Andrew himself, along with two of the others associated with his story: St Regulus or Rule and St Triduana. As one of the ex-Catholic members of this church pointed out to me recently, it's a bit ironic that a Reformed church which focuses so much on the Word of God, in Bible and sermon as well as in Jesus himself, should have such images. I want to make it crystal clear to everyone that I am not suggesting we worship God this morning through Andrew, Regulus or Triduana! Yet since we have been gifted with this visual aid, it seems churlish not to make use of it on Andrew's own Sunday in the year. I have to admit, however, to a shocking ignorance in the Minister of
St Andrew's: until yesterday, I had no idea who Regulus or Triduana were.
Just in case others may share my ignorance, I'll give you a potted history of the little we know of them - and it is very little, coming from a twelfth-century legend. Regulus, or Rule, was a monk of Patras in Greece in the fourth century. When he was warned by an angel in a vision that the Christian Emperor Constantine wanted to remove St Andrew's bones from Patras to his new capital of Constantinople - presumably to increase the flow of pilgrim tourists wanting to see famous sacred relics - Regulus was instructed to take the bones to ‘the ends of the earth' - which turned out to be the coast of Fife (sorry, not my words) where he was shipwrecked. Triduana was one of his companions, who later went on to become a patron saint of people with eye complaints, as a result of a rather grisly story, fortunately irrelevant to us this morning. But the result of their posthumous journey with Andrew was that Scotland claimed him as her patron saint, thus both underlining a separate identity from England and establishing the date of Scotland's conversion to Christianity as predating that of the heathen English by several centuries. Not that there was anything political about the legend, of course...
Coming at things from the Reformation point of view, Regulus' and Triduana's interest in Andrew's bones may seem rather beside the point to us today - though even we may be sometimes guilty of dragging around with us customs and traditions that should be dead and buried, but which have such associations with our history that we find it hard to let go of them. Be that as it may, let's get back to the heart of the matter, to Andrew himself.
What characterises Andrew, so far as we know him from the Gospel records? This: that he was someone who brought people to Jesus; whether it was his own brother, Peter, or the small boy whose loaves and fishes Jesus turned into five thousand packed lunches, or even, not long before the end of Jesus' life, a group of Greeks who wanted to speak to him. In other words, Andrew was a faithful follower of Jesus, someone who believed so passionately in what his teacher said and did that he wanted everyone else to have the benefit of contact with him too.
That can't always have been easy for Andrew. Family members don't always take one's deepest convictions very seriously. His belief that Jesus would be able to do something amazing with very unpromising material could easily have been exposed as unfounded, and he as a naive fool for believing in his teacher. And being a bridge across cultures is notorious for its deadly potential for misunderstanding.
Today again, compared with two or three generations ago, it is becoming less ordinary and more potentially embarrassing to admit any connection with faith - according to Richard Dawkins, for one, we're all gullible idiots with imaginary friends, the cause of all the world's bigotry, hatred and war. And given highly coloured readings like the one we have heard from Mark this morning - for coming into Advent, we've shifted Gospels from Matthew to Mark - what can we legitimately make of our faith's claims? The reading sounds like a science-fiction scenario: cosmic chaos and Jesus coming in clouds with great power and glory to judge the earth. Those who take it literally have indeed treated it that way, with themselves as the heroes and everyone with whom they disagree as the villains. But like the images in these stained-glass windows behind me, and like the legends which inspired these windows, such poetic language when translated into ordinary terms can convey only a fraction of the truths it holds. What I take from it is the serious assurance it contains that God's promises of transformation are not idle words to fool naïve optimists but have real outcomes; whether here and now, as lives are changed by Christian love and service, or at some future time, and the text tells us there's no point in guessing when.
In the meantime, we are still waiting. The world around us is already celebrating Christmas - or some sort of family harmony focussed around children, at least - partly because our culture has a residue of Christian understanding, partly because any sort of celebration may take our minds off the credit crunch and - who knows? - may stimulate the economy in a Keynsian way. But let us here in St Andrew's look life in the face, admit all that is wrong with our world and with ourselves, and set ourselves to await God's transforming action in hope.
And whatever our nationality, let us take a lead from Andrew in following Jesus and in sharing that experience with others, not through making great speeches, but through who we are and how we live our everyday lives. For though we may not be aware of it ourselves, our commitment to Jesus is turning us into the sort of people whom Paul describes in his first letter to Corinth:
I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind - just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you - so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.