Today we hear the story of the replacement of Judas as the twelfth apostle. This story takes place immediately after Jesus’ ascension, which we celebrated Thursday night.
By way of a brief diversion, a little bit about Ascension, for those who didn’t make it. It’s included in the Nicene Creed which we pray weekly. He ascended into heaven. It is one of the major feast days of the church year.
So the question is why? Why is it a major feast day, and why do we talk about it weekly?
It was explained to me this way. Through Jesus’ presence and involvement on Earth, the divine was brought us. We have the opportunity to see and experience the divine in this mortal world. In a rather simplistic analogy, but also one that worked for me, through Jesus, God rode the down escalator, to share divinity with us, here on earth.
Continuing with the analogy, Ascension is the up elevator. Ascension is when Christ takes our humanity back to God. Having fully experienced humanity’s best and worst, our love and tears, our sadness, our spite, and meanness, Christ returns to God with that first-hand human experience. Through Ascension, God who created the heavens and is eternal has experienced our finite earthly lives.
Today’s story of the replacement of the twelfth disciple occurs after Christ has ascended to the father.
Like the other first readings during Easter, today’s reading is from the book of Acts, rather than from the Old Testament. During the Easter season, we catch a glimpse of what the world was like for those first people who were xthat first church.
The eleven remaining disciples are waiting, unsure what to do, but waiting. Their first order of business is to replace the twelfth disciple. After prayer and consideration of the possibilities, there were two men left for the job, Joseph called Barsabbas, and Matthias.
As a decision maker, bureaucrat, and planner, I imagine how we would make this decision in modern times. We’d build spread sheets. We’d review resumes. We’d check references. We might check their Facebook page, build lists of pros and cons. Hire a head hunter. We might hold a convention and a complicated election process.
But that’s not what they did. To make this major decision, they prayed and then cast lots, an entirely random game of chance, similar to flipping a coin.
On its surface, this flies in the face of everything I professionally know about good planning and decision making. And yet, here it is. They cast lots.
This reminds me of a lesson I learned in grad school, about the value or accuracy or purpose of a decision making tool or process. I clearly remember the opening of one journal article about decision making. It talked about an ancient tribe that made decisions by consulting the shaman who would take chicken bones and put them in the sun. His decision was based on the way the chicken bones cracked. If they cracked this way, do this. They cracked another way, do that. We smart grad students thought this was absurd. Who could predict the future based on chicken bones?
But as the article continued, it became clear that the author was likening our tools and methods to the chicken bones. Our ways may have changed and gotten more complicated, but the certitude of the outcome had not. We, with our fancy spreadsheets, and analysis could not KNOW whether one path is ultimately going to be better than another. We might be able to reduce certain risks, or increase the chance of a better result, but it was ultimately a game of chance.
If the decision about the disciple vacancy were made today, we’d rely, or try to rely on our human ingenuity to make a good decision. But as much as we’d like to make decisions that are the best for the future, we cannot know which option is best. We cannot know for certain if this candidate or that candidate will serve us better. If voting for an initiative or not will be better for me individually or for us collectively. We contrive complicated decision making tools, and conduct predictive analysis, and in the end, we still don’t KNOW. What we do dknow is that our best thinking, predictions and convincing went into the outcome. We gave it our best effort.
But anyone who’s struggled with unexpected loss, or a bad turn of events knows, our best efforts do not protect us from a bad outcome. Bad things do happen, regardless of our best efforts. It’s not caused by or the result of our efforts. You can do everything right, and marriages fail, children are hurt, jobs collapse. It’s not you, or the decisions or plans you made.
While casting lots may seem like a reckless decision making tool, it accomplished something important for the apostles, and would for us too. Casting lots, or flipping a coin or eenie meenie strips away all pretense that we are in control, or that we can plan, analyze, or worry our way to a clearer, safer future. And in our hearts, we know we are not in control of much, least of all the future.
But here’s the thing, with God, we don’t need to be in control. God is already in our future, whichever future happens. And God is with us today, and can see a much bigger picture of our current and future than we can begin to imagine. For us to presume to predict or analyze or decide about that future is like the fish that doesn’t know it’s in water, because water is all it knows.
We only know what our human blinders and experience allow us to know. God is not constrained by time or space or place.
That’s the second thing I take from this reading. When we invoke God and invite him into our decisions and our future, God is there. And whatever happens, God will be there. Not my will but thy will be done. We need to have faith that thy will be done.
In the selection of Matthias, the apostles’ prayer wasn’t complicated or lengthy. “Lord you know everyone’s heart. Show us which one of these two you have chosen”. That’s a novel decision making process. Do a little work like the disciples did to narrow it down, pray and invite God in, and then decide. Decide with your spreadsheets, or resumes, or cast lots. It does not matter, and you cannot indemnify or protect yourself from the future, just by worrying about the choices you make today, so don’t.
Do we have the faith to trust that God will be with us regardless of the outcome, regardless of the decisions made by our kids, by our elections, by us? If so, we don’t need to worry quite so much, and we certainly don’t need to stress about how the decision is made, even if it’s a random game of chance.
While decision by chance may seem archaic, it is still used in some orthodox traditions. When I was in Seattle, my church shared its space with a Greek Orthodox mission. After being with us for 7 years, they moved to another site, and they needed to pick a name for their new church. They talked about many options, and in the end, they put the names on slips of paper, and pulled one out of a hat to decide. Their reasoning was that it was in God’s hands, not theirs, and God would make it right.
I’m not suggesting that Holy Apostles Greek Orthodox Church or Mathias were hand picked by God through the random chance of casting lots. I do believe God could do that. But by invoking God into decisions and into your future, God is present, working through you and your world, regardless of decision We can have that faith because God knows our hearts, knows our past and future, and because we have a great advocate in Jesus. The Gospel reading today is part of Jesus’ farewell discourse. The apostles overhear him praying to God. They hear Jesus, their great Lord and teacher, praying to God to protect them, as they are sent into the world. To protect us as we are sent out into the world.
We are not protected by being sheltered or removed from the world. On the contrary, we are squarely in this world. Not only in it, but sent even further out in it. Out into a world with danger, and risks, decisions and chance, and the Evil One. And God is with us today, tomorrow and next year. Out in the world.
As always happens, much has happened this week that relates to this morning’s readings.
This week, there was a second devastating earthquake in Nepal. When the ground can unexpectedly shake and kill thousands of people, and weeks later, the same thing happens again, why do we presume to try to make good predictive decisions about our future? Regardless of what happens, here or in Nepal, God is there. We cannot know our little future, or the world’s. We are not removed from the world, but expected to go out in it. Go boldly. God is already there, regardless of which path you take to get there, or how you decide which path to take, or the if the destination isn’t all you dreamed it would be.
This week, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was sentenced to death for his part in the bombing at the Boston Marathon. From a Gospel perspective, I am not sure what this death will accomplish. There were lots of people involved and affected in this tragedy. The brothers and their plans. The runner victims, who’d trained and worked hard to get to the point of running 26 miles. The spectator victims, who were at the wrong place at the wrong time. The judges and jury who deliberated and decided the life or death fate of the teenager suspect. It’s hard to sort through all of the people, their motives and if they deserve what they got. The runners and suspect, who trained perfectly and had their future planned. The spectators who arbitrarily stood in the wrong spot.
It’s made even harder because this story is wrapped in two very sensitive politically charged topics, terrorism and the death penalty. It’s easy to have strong opinions about this tragedy, with very different perspectives. It’s easy to believe we can see clearly enough to render an accurate picture of right and wrong. Honestly talk and listen to your brothers and sisters in Christ who see this differently, and you discover one of two things. Either you’re right, and they’re stupid, or maybe this isn’t as clear as you thought.
What we know from Jesus’ prayer is that God is present and protecting and loving in the midst of all of this. God is present with the victims and their families. God is protecting the judges and jury. God is loving Tsarnaev.
God is present, protecting, and loving us, as we make our way into the world. And this protection and presence should give us peace.
So, Go in Peace, to love and serve the Lord.
Amen.
