Every year, on 30 November, the Christian Church marks St Andrew’s Day. The day is set aside to honour the apostle Andrew, one of the twelve men chosen by Jesus to be with Him during His earthly ministry.
Given our church is named in honour of Andrew, each year, on the Sunday closest to 30 November, we remember our church’s namesake. This year, we celebrated St Andrew’s Day on Sunday 28 November, with special morning church services followed by lunch to which all parishioners were invited.
At the 10:30 am service, Reverend Ian McGilvray, one of our parishioners and chaplain to The Mission to Seafarers Brisbane, shared the following St Andrew’s Day reflection.
Today we celebrate St Andrew’s Day.
Our church’s vision statement, “Knowing Jesus and making Him known”, is quite appropriate, given that our church was named after Andrew the apostle.
Andrew is a fine example of someone who lived up to this ideal.
The first striking characteristic of Andrew is his name. It is not Hebrew, as we might expect, but Greek – an indication of a certain cultural openness in his family towards the gentile Greek language and culture.
Having been involved with the sea and seamen most of my life I have a particular soft spot for Andrew and his brother Peter who were both fishermen. Andrew was obviously a seeker after God because the Gospel of John tells us that Andrew was a disciple of John the Baptist, whose testimony first led him to follow Jesus.
Andrew at once recognized Jesus as the Messiah, because the next thing he did was to rush off to tell his brother Peter that he had met the Messiah. Later they were both called to leave all things to follow Jesus.
Subsequently, Andrew is present on some of the important occasions recorded in the gospels and is one of the disciples more closely attached to Jesus.
- Andrew was the disciple who told Jesus about the boy with the loaves and fishes, that fed the 5000 (John 6:1-14).
- Before the Last Supper, when Philip wanted to tell Jesus about certain Greeks seeking Him, he told Andrew first.
- Andrew was present at the Last Supper.
- Andrew was one of the four disciples who came to Jesus on the Mount of Olives to ask about the signs of Jesus’ return at the “end of the age”.
Yes, Andrew had an ear for our Lord and was a faithful disciple. He not only led his brother to Jesus, but we know from early church history that, before his death in AD 60, he established many churches in what is now the Balkans and Western Europe.
As we seek to achieve our church’s vision of knowing Jesus and making Him known, remember and emulate the apostle Andrew, who set a fine example that we should willingly follow.
The St Andrew’s Day Lunch was held in the Parish Hall. The meal consisted of paella prepared and served by the Spanish Paella Man (he cooked the food outside in two huge gas-heated paella pans) followed by icecream and chocolate or caramel sauce in a cup, served inside by the “Icecream Man” (alias Rev Ian McGrath).
