Today is St. Andrew Day. It has a peculiar function for the liturgical calendar. Advent, which begins the new church year, always starts on the Sunday closest to St. Andrew Day.

The apostle Andrew is a bit of a non-entity. He is frequently identified as Peter’s brother as if everybody knows who Peter was, but not who Andrew was. The curious thing is that Andrew was responsible for bringing Peter to Jesus. As the Gospel of John tells the story, Andrew was a disciple of John the Baptist. One day he heard John declare, “Look, the lamb of God” as Jesus passed by. Andrew and another disciple followed Jesus who invited them to his home where they spent the rest of the day. Andrew went to his brother Simon (who was about to receive the name Peter from Jesus) and told him, “We have found the Messiah.”  He then brought his brother to Jesus. That’s substantially all we know about Andrew.

It doesn’t sound like much until you consider the consequences of this simple act of Andrew. If Peter had not become a disciple, Christianity might have remained a small Jewish sect. After all, it was Peter who converted a Roman centurion and convinced the Jerusalem council that the Gospel was meant for everyone. If Andrew hadn’t brought Peter to Jesus, maybe most of us wouldn’t be Christians.

I’ve often made the observation that if each Christian brought one person to Christ, the number of Christians would double. Amazing! Andrew is the example of what can happen when one person tells another about Jesus.

Read John 1:35-41 and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Wayne