On the Feast of St. Andrew

Good morning, and Happy St. Andrew’s Day! For sixteen years now, this has been one of my favorite days of the year. There is something just so magical about seeing our whole community, kindergarteners who have just begun their journeys and seniors who will soon bid us farewell…educators who have taught 45 classes of St. Andrew’s students and many who just joined us this year….parents, some of whom went here as children…alumni….and trustees…all of us gathered together in one place. Look around and take it in…it’s a beautiful sight!

Our first St. Andrew’s Day was held in the small gym on the 31st St. campus…what we now call the “Creekside Theater”...until this gym was built in 1999, and we moved it here. In 2020, we gathered online for St. Andrew’s Day, and in 2021, we had the service on the football field amid what I remember as hurricane-force winds. And NEXT year, God willing, we will have our first St. Andrew’s Day in a brand new, state-of-the-art Athletics Complex and Student Union Building!

Over the years, the location of this special celebration has changed, the faces in the crowd have changed, our award winners have changed, the lunch menu has changed, the service projects have changed, and Lord knows that the world around us has changed….but the purpose and spirit of this day remains constant.

To put it simply, we gather to tell our story. On St. Andrew’s Day, we push the pause button so that we, as a community, can remember where we came from, imagine where we are going, and reflect on where each and every one of us fits into the story. It is, as our wise and wonderful kindergarteners proclaimed in their song for us this morning, “A story of the courage to begin, A journey of faith from within.” It is a story of gifts shared and miracles unfolding. 

St. Andrew's School Origin Story 

Let’s begin at the beginning, our origin story, if you will. In the early 1950s, the rectors of three Episcopal churches came to bishop John Hines to express their interest in starting elementary schools. These churches had all established preschools during the post-war baby boom to meet the needs of growing families, and now, bursting at the seams, they dreamed of extending their programs into the elementary grades. Hines insisted that, rather than competing with one another, they join forces and establish an Episcopal school for all of Austin. He assembled a board of trustees and appointed Scott Field Bailey, then the rector of All Saints, as its first chairman.

When it was time to choose a name for the school, Bailey recommended naming it after the apostle Andrew. He recounted the story that we just heard from John’s Gospel, the miracle of the loaves and fishes, when Jesus tasked his disciples with feeding an enormous crowd of hungry people. Most of them scoffed at what must have seemed like a ridiculous idea. How could their little band of penniless misfits purchase, let alone find, enough food for thousands of people? But where the other disciples saw nothing, Andrew looked for something. He found a child who had five barley loaves and two fish, and he brought the boy to Jesus. Alone, they may have fed the boy’s family…but Andrew, Andrew had the faith to believe that, in the hands of Jesus, this small gift could be transformed into something more. Indeed, Jesus blessed the gift and transformed it into an abundant feast that filled the bellies and the hearts of the hungry crowd…with leftovers to spare. The miracle of the loaves and fishes, thus, began with the faith of Andrew and the gift of a child.

The board chose to name our school after Andrew that day because they dreamed that this school would be a community in which children would be seen, where their unique gifts would be recognized, and where those gifts would be multiplied by the grace of God. And so, the faith of Andrew is, from the very beginning, the foundation that undergirds our story, past, present, and future.

Now with a name, the board filed a charter, articulating a simple yet lofty objective: the formation of a non-profit Episcopal day school that would aim to educate the whole child, body, mind, and spirit, with an emphasis on academic excellence and the development of character. The charter also stated that it was currently a school “without capital, stock, or assets.” A $50 donation was made, and with that gift, along with a small loan…and a LOT of faith in their hearts…the board hired its first headmistress, rented a house on Pearl Street, and opened its doors to a brave group of first, second, and third-grade students who would pay $20/month in tuition.
 

Since that first day of school 72 years ago, numerous trustees, volunteers, educators, and visionary leaders, guided by the faith of St. Andrew, have dreamed, given, labored, risked, and sacrificed to build this school into what it is today. Trustees who signed the note for the loan to purchase a plot of land for a permanent home - with their life insurance policies as collateral…a head of school who convinced the board to take a significant financial risk to purchase acreage in what felt at the time like the remote wilderness of southwest Austin with dreams of a high school campus, teachers and coaches who built departments and piloted programs, parents who enrolled their children in the first class of a new Middle School or a new upper school, or a new kindergarten. 

St. Andrew’s spirit has been with us in those giant leaps of faith, but also in countless small acts of faith, in all of the ordinary people who have brought their best gifts of time, talent, and treasure to this school, driven by their hopeful conviction in what this it can be, not just for their own benefit but for the impact of its mission on generations to come. Many of them are in this room today, many are with us in spirit, and many in these front rows are just getting started. 

Faith is the Through-Line 

When we look backward at our story, we can see a through-line of faith, and this history matters because it strengthens and encourages us as we set out to write the next chapter in our school’s story.

In our reading today from the Letter to the Hebrews, Paul also draws from the faith of ancestors to inspire his readers as they look to the future. The word “faith,” like the word “love,” can have many meanings…it might be a person’s religious affiliation, trust in another person, good intentions, or the chorus of a really catchy George Michael song from the 80s.

But the faith Paul is talking about here is something different. Faith, he says, is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” The Greek word that he uses for faith is “hupostasis,” which literally means something that “stands under” or a foundation. In other words, faith is more than just a warm fuzzy feeling or an optimistic hunch…is what stands under us, the foundation on which all of our hopes for the future are built. Paul goes on to tell the stories of those who went before them, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David, all as examples of extraordinary faith in action, ordinary people who gave of themselves for a future that they would not get to see. Abraham knew that he would not get to see the multitude of his descendants, and Moses knew that he would not get to see the promised land…yet they had the faith to see—and contribute—to a greater story. 

Today, we remember that we are also a part of a greater story. We look to those who have gone before us… our ancestors, our patron saint, our founders, and all of those who dreamed, gave, labored, risked, and sacrificed along the way to build the school we have inherited all so that we can look faithfully to a future that is, quite literally, under construction. 

Envisioning St. Andrew's Future 

Yesterday, I invited our Lower School students to join me in a very important exercise. On the Eve of St. Andrew’s Day, I asked them to close their eyes, to turn on their imaginations, and to dream their best dreams of St. Andrew’s in the future. While their eyes were closed, I noticed that many of them began to smile.

After a few moments, I asked them to share what they saw, and what they described was truly beautiful. For one thing, there was a lot of conversation about water features…lazy rivers, swimming pools, hot tubs, and water slides, just to name a few. They also had a lot to say about food…a cafeteria with every kind of food in the world, candy machines in every classroom, and, according to one first grader, an abundant supply of marshmallows.

Meanwhile, I suspect the teachers were dreaming beautiful dreams about parking…spacious parking lots as far as the eye can see.

One student shared her dream that St. Andrew’s would have a barn where students could learn to take care of animals, and another saw every sports team winning every championship. One student’s dream involved the addition of a preschool, and another figured, why not add a college so that students could just stay at St. Andrew’s as long as possible. They shared dreams of bigger buildings that could fit more students and, according to one, an elaborate zipline system so that students could come to school from all over Austin with no traffic. One student dreamed about a STEM center, and I told him that his dream might not be as far off as he thinks.

Their dreams were about more than just buildings, though. They also shared dreams of a school that had all kinds of people in it, a school where everyone felt known and loved, and a school that was always filled with joy and laughter. A third-grade student said that she dreamed about a school where students who have graduated all return to give back in some way because they love it so much. Another student came up to me after Chapel and, after having some time to think about it, said that his dream is that St. Andrew’s students could work together to feed all of the hungry people in Austin.

I could have spent all day listening to our youngest students dream their most wonderful dreams, some of them simple and some of them wild. I hope that today, each of you will find an opportunity to share some of your hopes and dreams for the future of this school with a friend, a colleague, or a family member.

My fellow Highlanders, as we are gathered in this space together, in that holy sweet spot between the past and the future, the place that matters most, the present, I invite you to see yourself in this big, beautiful story…to dream about the next chapter…and to consider the unique and precious gifts that you have to share? How might those gifts, given in the spirit of love and placed in the hands of God, be like loaves and fishes that multiply into a feast for thousands, or an acorn that grows into a sprawling Crusader oak tree, or a $50 donation that turns into a thriving K-12 Episcopal school that has produced thousands of exemplary scholars, artists, athletes, and servants, and whose story is only just beginning. 

I can’t think of a better way to end than to echo the song our kindergarteners sang. “The truth we come to know, as we live and love and grow, is the gift that opens our story. A story of the courage to begin, a journey of faith from within, With so much hope, joy and love….just imagine!” 

Amen.