Andrew's Fifteen Minutes

by Wye Huxford

We first meet Andrew in John 1.  Apparently he had heard John the Baptist declare that Jesus was "the Lamb of God."  Andrew and another person decided to follow Jesus around and ended up spending the day with Jesus. Early tradition suggests that this "unnamed" person with Andrew was John, the beloved apostle. Andrew soon goes and finds his brother Simon, telling him, "We have found the Messiah."

Simon will answer Jesus' call in his life and become better known as "Cephas, which, when translated, is Peter."  Of course Peter will become a key player in the story of Jesus found in the four gospels and a key player in the life of the early church described in Acts and the epistles.  Andrew is seldom mentioned in the gospels and mentioned only in a list of the apostles in Acts 1 beyond the Jesus story of the gospels.  Peter's name occurs 155 times in the New Testament; Andrew's name only 13 times.

Apparently not every follower of Jesus is called to be the upfront, well-known leader that Peter became.  But the few things we know about Andrew make him a character that we shouldn't overlook as we examine people in Scripture who served Jesus effectively!

One of those "few things" is the simple fact that Andrew is the one who "brought Peter to Jesus" (John 1). Perhaps with all that was going on where Peter lived at the time, he might have "stumbled on to Jesus" all by himself without Andrew's help.  But Andrew was unwilling to take such a risk and "the first thing" he did was to find his brother and bring him to meet "the Messiah."  Who wouldn't be happy to know that on the record of our life of service to Jesus was the fact that we brought someone - in this case a crucial someone - to Jesus?

John tells another interesting story about Andrew.  This one surrounds the great feeding of the five thousand and the Sermon on the Bread of Life.  According to John (chapter 6) a great crowd was coming toward Jesus, and Jesus said to Phillip, "Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?"  John makes it clear that Jesus already knew what He planned to do, but wanted to see what His fledgling young followers would do.

Phillip replies that it would take "eight month's wages" and then some to buy enough bread to give the people even "a bite."  Not to pick on Phillip too much (I probably would have said something similar) but he falls into the trap of thinking "it's all up to us" instead of "I wonder how God can use us to take care of this."  Andrew enters the picture, with John taking time to note that he was "Simon Peter's brother."  Clearly Andrew isn't occupying a starring role in the story if John feels compelled to identify who he is by saying "he's Peter's brother."

But Andrew says, "Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish.  How far will they go among so many?"  Clearly Andrew doesn't see exactly how that meager offering can solve the problem, but at least he doesn't say "that won't work!"  He seems to be operating with a sense of "I don't know how this will answer your question, Jesus, but I'm trying."

Everyone likely knows how that meager offering was used to feed the multitude of people about whom Jesus was concerned.  In fact, when everyone was fed, there were "twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten."  Perhaps a basket of leftovers was for each of the apostles, who like Phillip, might have wondered where the "eight month's wages" was going to be found to give the crowd a bite to eat.

In Mark 13, Andrew, in the company of the more familiar trio of Peter, James, and John, asks Jesus privately about when "the signs" would take place.  This of course is a pretty natural question when you realize that they had just heard Jesus say, "Not one stone will be left on another;  every one will be thrown down" in reference to the Temple and other "magnificent buildings" in Jerusalem.

We meet Andrew again during the final week of Jesus' life on earth when some "Greeks among those who went up to worship at the Feast" requested of Phillip an opportunity "to see Jesus."  Phillip consults with Andrew, and the two of them make the request known to Jesus (John 12:20-22).  We aren't told that Jesus actually met with the Greeks who desired to see Him, but His response to Phillip and Andrew makes it abundantly clear that Jesus sees the request as indicative of the fact His mission is reaching its climax and "the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified."

That's pretty much it.  Only the mention of Andrew in the list of the apostles in Acts 1 tells us any more about him.  In our cultural lingo, "his fifteen minutes of fame" has come and gone.

But actually that isn't true, is it?  Far more of us can find a soul mate in Andrew than in Peter.  Two things stand out in Andrew's life as we know it: [a] he is willing to bring others to Jesus; and [b] he is willing to offer Jesus whatever he has available, even if it is a meager five loaves and two fish when thousands need to be fed.

It makes me wish that when Luke introduces Peter's sermon on Pentecost, he would have said, "Then Peter, Andrew's brother, stood up with the Eleven . . ." (Acts 2:1).  Andrew was, it seems, always willing to make Jesus the main thing.  And he did that with grace and class.  May God raise up a crowd of Andrews in the world around us who will introduce others to Jesus and offer Him whatever they have.

The Crowds

by Wye Huxford

Matthew's story of Jesus is prone to involve "the crowds."  The Greek word typically translated "crowd" appears 174 times in the New Testament; nearly one-third of them are found in the 28 chapters of Matthew.

The Jesus we meet in Matthew has His heart ripped out by "the crowds" that He viewed with compassion, because they were, in Matthew's perfect analogy for his culture, "like sheep without a shepherd."  There is something palpable about the presence of Jesus in Matthew that attracts "great crowds" to hear Him teach.  Yet it is the "crowd" that will demand the release of a murderer and Pilate will wash his hands in front of that very crowd.

At the heart of Jesus' teaching in Matthew is what we call the Sermon on the Mount.  Matthew 5-7 describes what God intended Israel to be in terms that set the stage for what Jesus modeled as the paradigm for kingdom people to do kingdom things.  The sermon describes for us what fulfillment of the Law, not abolishing the Law, must look like.

Interestingly, Matthew introduces his account of the sermon by saying, "Now when He saw the crowds."  There is no detail as to what kind of people made up "the crowd" that day.  It surely was primarily Jewish in terms of faith, but little else can be said about them.  Perhaps some were people very impressed with what they had already seen Jesus do.  In Matthew's chronology, Jesus has recently been baptized, led by the Spirit to be tempted in the wilderness, and begun His ministry by declaring, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near"  (Matthew 4:17).  Peter and Andrew, along with James and John, have been called to be "fishers of men."  In common Matthew language, Jesus has been going about Galilee "teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people" (4:23).  Jesus certainly has a following, and just prior to the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew tells us "Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed Him."

Some of those people must have been sitting on the mountainside.  But along with them might have been some people who saw Jesus as a threat.  Even a casual reading of Matthew (or any of the other gospel accounts of Jesus' life) shows us that not everyone was impressed with Jesus.  For all we know the crowd could have contained some folks who were there out of curiosity and nothing more.

But at the end of the sermon "the crowds" come back into view.  Matthew tells us "The crowds were amazed at His teaching."  The word Matthew uses that is often translated "amazed" could mean something like stunned, awed, or astounded.   However one prefers to say it in English, the bottom line has to be that Jesus and His teaching had a huge impact on "the crowds."

It isn't as if Jesus is offering some "watered down" version of the gospel here.  The Sermon on the Mount continues to be an incredibly challenging word from God about what the kingdom of God should look like.  Jesus challenges us at every juncture of life that following Him requires a reversal of "how things are" so that they can be "as things ought to be" (or in its immediate historical setting, Israel finally living up to God's intentions for them).

Why is it that Jesus "stunned the crowds," but so often in our culture "the crowds" aren't all that impressed with what Christians have to say about life?  Research nearly everywhere suggests that our culture in general and Millenials in particular aren't "awed" by the message of the church.

Could it have something to do with how Jesus viewed "the crowds"?  As noted above, "the crowds" caused Him to be moved with compassion becaue He saw them as "sheep without a shepherd."  but if Kinnamon, Lyons, and others are correct, "the crowds" today tend to view us as judgmental, homophobic, far-right politically, and other terms less than "awe-producing."  If "the crowds" are reading some of the websites and Facebook pages that profess to be reflecting the gospel message, there is little wonder why "the crowds" feel that way!

Jesus must have viewed "the crowds" as opportunity, not threat.  And even though "the crowds" will turn on Him at the end, He still says "forgive them" and on the Day of Pentecost, a pretty impressive "crowd" responds to the gospel.

The realization that our world ("the crowd") is indeed "harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd" should evoke compassion, not judgment.  Until that happens, "the crowds" aren't likely to be stunned by what we have to say!

Talking With Our Neighbors

by Wye Huxford

A few weeks ago I picked up a book off my shelf that I had forgotten I had.  Written by Leroy Barber,New Neighbor is a collection of essays about life in the kingdom that spur one to think more seriously about what it means to be a kingdom outpost on behalf of the gospel.

One essay in particular seemed especially pertinent to the current discussion in our culture about justice, peace, and all the other issues that have been elevated to the front burner of the stove on which our public consciousness simmers.

The title of the essay is "Where is the church?" and here are a few of the more thoughtful lines.

"The church has lost its place in the heart of the neighborhood and not many people seem to care.  What used to be the center of the community is now an afterthought to most people, if a thought at all."  Or what about this one: "All my great ideas and intellect can't hide this heart polluted by mean thoughts, rotten attitudes and misplaced pride.  If not held accountable, this heart will think and do any number of unpleasant things.  Jesus gives life for my garbage.  His innocent blood was shed for me and all the guilty."

The essay concludes with this idea: "The church is to follow the example of Christ: the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us.  Jesus didn't retreat from the hostile world around Him.  He moved into our neighborhood."

Who among us hasn't memorized John 3:16 at some point in life?  For me, it was the "verse of the week" the first week of second grade at the public elementary school I attended.  I realize that we don't do that in public school anymore, but still suspect that if there is a verse in the Bible our culture seems to know about, it is this one.

I memorized it decades ago and have repeated it hundreds of times, but it took a long time for me to notice the phrase "the world."  It is so easy to hear that verse and think "the world" means people like me.  Yet for John, the phrase "the world" generally means the whole universe; and in more narrowly defined confines, "the world" as in those not on God's side.  Apparently the essayist noted above is thinking as Jesus thought when he says, "Jesus didn't retreat from the hostile world around Him.  He moved into our neighborhood."

People like Gabe Lyons and David Kinnamon have demonstrated the truth of what so many of us feel to be true - the church has little voice in our culture.  Relegated to the status of irrelevant, few of the movers and shakers in our culture are prone to ask the church about important social issues - whether it is abortion, homosexuality, same-sex marriages, justice, and peace.  It is challenging to transform the world with the gospel when the world has viewed us as irrelevant.

Yet "for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son. . ."  As kingdom people called to do kingdom things in our lives in kingdom outposts all over the world, the gospel continues to call us to transform the world.

Somehow we have to figure out how to change our status from "afterthought if thought about at all" to "center of the community."  Perhaps the first step to accomplishing that will be to move the "front burner" outside the church kitchen and onto a neighborhood street corner where the sweet aroma of peace in Christ can infiltrate the neighborhood in a life-changing manner.

Funerals and Things

by Wye Huxford

The more I read the gospels and listen carefully to Jesus, the more I begin to understand His mission.  Obviously that is a bit of a no-brainer kind of conclusion, but I'm amazed at the clarity of Jesus once I learn to read Him for who He is and not what my culture (both church and non-church) has often said about Him.

One of the words that seems to leap out at me these days is "intense."  Jesus was an intense man of God who is utterly determined to obey humbly the mission given to Him by the Father.  That intensity of purpose means that He pushed the envelope rather strongly at times.

A great example of that is the comment He makes to a would-be follower in Matthew 8:21, 22.  "Another disciple said to him, 'Lord, first let me go and bury my father.'  But Jesus told him, 'Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead'" (NIV).  This one has stumped biblical-studies scholars over the centuries at a variety of places.  Is the man's father already dead and Jesus is saying, "Don't even go to the funeral"?  Or is the man's father elderly and the man is saying, "It will be a while;  I have to wait until my father is dead and buried"?

Either way, Jesus is pushing pretty radically.  Jewish expectations were for sons, especially if this man is the eldest son, to take care of aging fathers and bury them properly.  Jesus is saying, if taken at face value, "Don't worry about that stuff."

Then, is the first "dead" describing a person physically dead or spiritually dead?  Most things I've read suggest that it is spiritually dead, as in, "Let the spiritually dead take care of the physically dead people."  Some have even suggested that Jesus is saying something like "Let the burier of the dead take care of burying the dead."

We could probably take Jesus in a kind of hyper-literalism here and miss the point.  Jesus Himself gives John instructions about taking care of His mother in John 19:25ff.  I can't find any other place where He expects of us what He isn't willing to do Himself.  This verse surely isn't suggesting that Jesus is some kind of hard-hearted tyrant who doesn't even care about the death of one's father.

But if the point Jesus is trying to make is that following Him means absolute allegiance, then He could not have picked a better way to make that point.  Few relationships would have been more intense in that day than a son to his father; yet even that relationship cannot stand in the way of our allegiance to Him.

In Luke's parallel account of these words, he adds the phrase, "Go and proclaim the kingdom of God" (Luke 9:60).  Jesus is not calling for allegiance for the mere sake of allegiance.  He wants those who follow Him to get clearly what is at stake - and that has to do with proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom.

So this really ranks among the more intense things Jesus ever said.  And it demands a kind of allegiance that is sometimes hard to offer.  I've never been disappointed by offering Him that as best I can!

The End of the Earth and The End of the Age

by Wye Huxford

In Matthew's account of the final words of Jesus before He ascended, followers of Jesus are commissioned to be disciple makers and teachers "to the end of the age."  Luke talks about this event in the opening pages of Acts; we are to be His witnesses "to the end of the earth."

Matthew's expression "end of age" appears five times in his account of Jesus' life (13:39, 13:40, 13:49; 24:3, and 28:20) and seems to suggest something like "the consummation of the age of the kingdom of God on earth."  The phrase is used only one other time in the New Testament - in Hebrews 9:26 - where the author of Hebrews uses it to describe the "once and for all" sacrifices of Christ in taking away sin.

Luke's expression, "to the end of the earth" appears to describe whatever part of the world that lies beyond "Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria."  Most of the book of Acts tells the beginning of how the gospel would impact "the end of the earth."  There are some exciting stories of what happens when the Jesus story is told in a variety of cultural contexts.

When you start thinking about all of this together, it makes you think that until, in God's sense of time, "the consummation of the age" and "the end of the earth" somehow cross paths, the mission to disciple, to teach, and to bear witness to the Jesus story remains in place.  To say that more bluntly, what Jesus began when He came to deal with the problem of sin once and for all (Hebrews 9), continues to be the basis of our disciple making, our teaching, and our witness to the world.

Despite the proclivity of the television preachers to know more about when "the end of the age" and the "end of the earth" will actually cross paths than Jesus did (see Mark 13:32, 32), our mission continues.  Living "in between" the time of His coming to rescue the world from the power of sin and death and His glorious reappearing at the end of the age and the end of the earth, we have been "transferred into the kingdom of His beloved Son..."  (Colossians 1:13).  Surely that rescue and transfer was not for us just to sit around and keep a secret.

The work God has blessed us with the privilege of participating in remains unfinished.  Until we reach the end of the earth and until God decides that it is time for the consummation of the Kingdom on earth, we have a mission.  It is a mission that is characterized by disciple making, by teaching, and by bearing witness.  It is an invitation to be part of what God is doing through the body of Christ, even to this day.  When Paul reminded the Corinthian believers that "we are ambassadors for Christ," he did so with the reminder that "God is making His appeal through us"  (2 Corinthians 5:20).

The "embassy" is still open, and our task as ambassadors is still unfinished!  In August 2000 I was in Albania teaching a group of believers on behalf of Seminary of the Nations.  A friend I made in Albania was driving me around, showing me his country.  We drove by the United States Embassy, and as he told me what the building was, I couldn't help but notice that it was boarded up.  When I inquired about that, he replied, "It's not safe for Americans to be here right now!"  That was a bit of a sobering moment, but I like living on the edge a bit.

It makes me wonder if sometimes it doesn't appear that out of fear of our surroundings the church has "boarded up the embassy" and called the "ambassadors" home.  Corralled up in our little safe havens, we dare not venture too far beyond the safety of the wrought iron fence and we require the right ID card at the gate.

Until "the end of the earth" and "the end of the age" cross paths, the embassy needs to be open - our mission is yet unfinished.  God's appeal can't be heard through boarded-up embassies.

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Walker Lecture Breakfast - July 11  

The annual Walker Lecture Breakfast presented by the European Evangelistic Society (EES) in cooperation with TCM with be held on Thursday morning, July 11, 2013, at 7:30 a.m.  Bob Russell will be the guest lecturer speaking on "Developing International Disciple Makers."  Tickets for the breakfast are $15.00.  For information about the breakfast and to purchase tickets, please contact Debbie Poer atdebbie.poer@tcmi.org or call the TCM office at (317) 299-0333.

Plan to join TCM and EES at the NACC in Louisville, Kentucky at the Kentucky International Convention Center, July 9-12, 2013. The TCM/EES Booth is 817 in the Exhibit Hall, and the TCM/EES Mini Experience will be in the Trackside Lobby.  Please come by to visit with us.