Monasteries were set up to support the running of the cathedral. And men and women from all over Europe made pilgrimages to see the holy relics of Andrew. Today, pilgrims of another sort flock to the town to pay homage to the temple and saints of golf. After a sermon one day, the congregants stormed the cathedral, tore it down, stone by stone, in order to remove an idolatrous temple that housed a cult to a saint, to a holy man, named Andrew. When we think of saints, we often think of holy men and women, exceptional, morally superior, performers of miracles.
Saints are always other people.
We never include ourselves in their company. This way of thinking about certain holy people, and the veneration of these people, these saints, developed early in the Roman and Orthodox Churches, and continues today in those churches, as well as some Episcopalian traditions. Their views have a place in the tradition of the church. But there is an older tradition that is often overlooked, and that's what I would like us to see this morning. This older tradition is found in our reading from Ephesians.