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Good morning! Today is St Andrew’s Day. Like most Scots, I suspect, I know very little about why our patron saint Andrew was chosen from a panoply of possibilities. The Galilean fisherman turned church planter seems a long way from home.  St Andrew’s Day these days is more about celebrating national identity and a bit of good-humoured blue and white flag waving than anything else.

What we do know from the gospels about Andrew is that he was a seeker after truth. He’d been hanging about in the desert lands with the wild prophet known as John the Baptist. John encouraged Andrew and his friend to go up to Jesus, who asked them what they were looking for. They answered with what seems like a puzzling question: ‘Where do you live, Teacher?’

You can tell a lot from an address: social standing, sometimes ethnicity, income. Jesus evades the question, and instead crosses potential barriers by offering hospitality, ‘Come and see,’ he replies.

Whatever happened that night over dinner, it was enough, the next day, to send our seeker Andrew to his brother with the words ‘We have found the Messiah!’

Hospitality, gathering round a table, is a key ingredient of our Advent and Christmas season. This year our gathering and celebrating will be different. In this season of Advent dreaming, can we imagine hospitality differently, to include people who are not like us, questioning the way we’ve always done things, in the spirit of Andrew? Socially distant, of course!

Hospitable Lord,

Who draws to yourself

Seekers after truth

May all who seek find

And be drawn into the circle of Love

Everlasting. Amen.