Seventh Sunday of Easter
I have a lot of mothers in my life;
and that’s a positive thing. I have many
women in my life who function in a mothering way to me and I’m grateful for
them. Some of those moms go to church
with me every week. Now, I would never
say that I had favorite moms, but there are only two who actually get a card
from me on Mother’s Day. One of them is
the mom I met when I was born; she’s the mom I’ve known the longest. The other is more the mother of my children,
but funny story: she almost wasn’t.
Here’s a scandal if you like
scandals: Sherry had a boyfriend when I met her. I would never be so bold as to say I was so
charming, attractive, and funny that I stole another guy’s girl, but you know
me so you can do the math yourself. The
truth is, as the story has been told to me, the guy she was dating was a perfectly
good guy. It isn’t like, after meeting
me, she suddenly realized what a mistake she’d made. But, when Sherry and I met, we had a genuine
chemistry and we knew there was something there; so Sherry had a decision to
make. And because the other guy was a
good guy, it wasn’t an easy decision to make.
It was a little like the decision we
see played out in our Scripture reading today: she had to choose between two
good choices; only Sherry didn’t flip a coin over it like we read today. She anguished over it. She prayed over it. She made lists of qualities and character
traits. She sought the council of her
parents; well, her mother; her father was of no help. The way the story was told to me goes: his
only input to the conversation was, “What a great problem to have!” Not exactly the clear answer she was looking
for.
As Sherry and I were talking about
this story the other day, she said, “Well, it seems I made the right choice… so
far.” Because only time will tell if she
made the right choice, right? Even when
it’s a choice between two good choices, only time will tell if you’ve made the
right one. And as we look at the choice
the early church made here, I can honestly say, I have no idea if they made the
right choice or not; but that’s okay.
I have to admit that I’m not
entirely sure what the point of this story is supposed to be. Obviously, it isn’t supposed to be a model
for how we make decisions in the church.
I would not be okay with picking elders this way. I’d better not find out that the Nominating
Committee just narrows it down and flips a coin; that is not a reasonable
discernment process.
We read how the early church at
least prayed about it, so that’s good; but flipping a coin (or whatever) is too
big a gamble. I mean, it doesn’t even
seem like they’ve fully discussed the credentials of these two men, only that
they were present throughout Jesus’ ministry, like any of the twelve were
(although I’m not sure why that’s the criteria). But, someone should have at least asked, “Why
does Justus have so many names.” Joseph, called Barsabbas, aka Justus. Do we really want, as an Apostle, someone who
had so many aliases? That seems suspicious. I would have voted for Matthias just over
that.
But the bigger point of confusion
for me over this story is that I’m not sure Luke’s point is in telling it. What are we supposed to take from this
story? Is this just a historical
footnote? Are we supposed to see this as
a good thing? Are we supposed to see it
as a bad thing? Uncharacteristically,
Luke doesn’t really give us any indication as to what place this story even has
in the emerging story of the church.
I need my history lessons to have a
clear point. I need to know how those
historic moments shape the future. I
look back on the choice Sherry made when we met and I can clearly see the
implications of that moment in history.
It should interest you too: I don’t know where I’d be today if she’d
chosen differently, but I doubt my journey would have brought me here. I look at the children I help her raise and
see the importance of that moment in our history and the importance of that one
choice.
The choice of Matthias to replace
Judas doesn’t seem to make any difference to anything at all. This is the first and last time we hear
anything about him. That in itself isn’t
terribly significant; there are plenty of Apostles we don’t hear much about in
Acts. More importantly, we don’t hear
anything about Justus either. Can you
imagine being Justus? His only claim to
fame is being Apostle runner-up.
I have reason to suspect that what
we read about this morning is actually a mistake. Like I said, I’m not sure that’s the point
Luke is making, but this may not have been the right decision for the
church. To be fair, this happened before
Pentecost; the Spirit had not yet been poured out on the followers of Jesus. Peter had not yet begun to realize the implications
of the ascended Jesus. He had not yet
begun to realize the commission of Jesus to bear witness to him in Jerusalem,
in Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
Peter seems to be looking at things
through his old, pre-Spirit point of view.
Perhaps he was remembering Jesus saying things to them like, “Truly I
tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the
throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones,
judging the twelve tribes of Israel [Matthew 19:28].” So he does what he thinks is the sensible
thing: he fills the vacant throne with someone like one of those that Jesus
might have chosen; like someone like the rest of the twelve. He does what a responsible leader would: he
fills a seat so the organizational structure can continue.
The problem is, as they would soon
find out, that’s not often how the Spirit works. The Spirit of God does not care about
organizational structures; the Spirit cares about calling. I think we forget that far too often. I appreciate that people have looked on the
list of Lou Ray’s roles that I put together and I appreciate that some have
heard God’s call to fill in where they feel called. That was part of the point I was making in
putting the list together; but remember, that wasn’t what I asked you to
do. I asked you to pray.
I feel we need to reimagine how we
work as a church. For too long we have
all had jobs: my job is to preach; someone else’s job is to sing in the choir;
someone else’s job is to make visitors feel welcome; someone else’s job is to
call members when we haven’t seen them for a while. Those are fine things to do, but the work of
the church is not a job. When these
things are jobs, we wind up feeling like we can just do a thing when the Spirit
nudges us to do a thing because that is someone else’s thing.
The Department of Homeland Security
has a program to combat terrorism called, “If You See Something, Say
Something.” The beauty of the program, I
feel, is that the title of the program is the program. I’m instituting a similar program around
here. It goes like this: If You Feel
Something, Do Something. We should never
avoid doing a thing the Spirit directs us to do because it’s someone else’s job
in our organizational structure. Now, we
may need to coordinate our efforts, but no one will get upset if you feel
called to join them in their calling; healthy followers of Jesus will actually
embrace it.
One wonders how this story might
have gone differently, had they waited to make this decision until after
Pentecost. For all I know, maybe that’s
the point Luke is making with this story.
Maybe we’re meant to add our holy imaginations to this story and
envision all of the other possibilities the Spirit might have led them to. Maybe it would go exactly like it did. Maybe the Spirit would tell them, “You don’t
need to replace Judas; embrace eleven Apostles instead of twelve, perhaps as a
scar to warn against that kind of thing happening again.” Who knows, maybe the Spirit would have led
them to calling a gentile replacement and really blow their minds. But no, they took matters into their own
hands, they took care of the organizational structure of the church, but they
may not have paid enough attention to the mission of the church. So we’ll never know might have been.
Or maybe Luke’s point in telling
this story is that not every follower of Jesus gets to be famous. I like that point. Just because we never hear about these two
men ever again doesn’t mean that they didn’t go on to live Spirit-filled lives
that served Jesus. For all we know, they
went on to teach the Sunday school classes that inspired the next generation of
disciples. For all we know they were the
ushers, and greeters, and choir members, and bulletin-folders that make their
worship all the more inspiring. For all
we know, these two men were exactly like us.
Well, not Matthias: he got the fancy title of “Apostle.” No, for all we know, we’re just like
Justus.
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