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You could make the case that
right here, in the first days of the first church in the
first chapter of the book of Acts, the church made its first
big mistake. Jesus left them in Jerusalem with nothing but a
promise and told them to wait. Waiting got to be too much.
With no idea what was to come, or when, anxious about the
future, uncertain about what they should do, they decide to
take things into their own hands.
I can just imagine impetuous
Peter—always ready to jump into a vacuum, to fill the
silence with words and take charge—taking over, saying,
“We’ve got to get organized here… Set up a structure for the
transition in leadership... Create committees and boards,
search teams and a term of office. Hey, I’ve got it! Let’s
have an election!” So they put up two candidates—Justus and
Matthias—and they cast lots. The lot fell to Matthias, and
that’s the last we ever hear of either of them.
One of the great preachers of
the 19th century, G. Campbell Morgan, believed
the church began by electing the wrong person. He believed
God had the Apostle Paul in mind all along, and if the
disciples had just been patient—if they had been willing to
hold steady and (as the old revival preachers used to say)
“wait on God,” if they had allowed the Spirit to move
first—God would have provided the appropriate replacement
for Judas. (Bruce Larson, Wind and Fire, page 27)
It’s the first and the last time
we hear of Matthias. It’s also the first and the last time
we hear of the disciples having an election.
1.
It might have been the church’s first big mistake.
It might have been the first
time, but it wouldn’t be the last time the church allowed
politics to come before Pentecost. It might have been the
first time, but it wouldn’t be the last time the church got
the human cart ahead of the spiritual horse, put the
election ahead of the empowerment, political power ahead of
spiritual power…and the temptation is still with us.
I’m reading Stephen Tomkins’
rather interesting new book with the incredibly boring
title: A Short History of Christianity. Listen to his
description of church politics at the end of the first
century:
In 897, Pope Formosus stood
trial for perjury, covetousness and unlawful promotion. The
unusual aspect of the proceedings was not so much his
innocence as the fact that he was nine months dead. His
successor, Stephen IV, had him dug up and enthroned in full
regalia, then screamed at him to answer the charges. When
Pope Formosus exercised his right to remain silent, he was
condemned, stripped, deprived of his fingers of blessing and
thrown into the Tiber River.
It was a bizarre new low for the
interminable brawls of church politics, but the decline
continued. Stephen IV was strangled the same year, his
successor lasted four months and the next one for only
twenty days. Sergius III followed, with the support of
Rome’s warrior Lord, Theophylact, and had a child by the
emperor’s fifteen-year-old daughter.
(Stephen Tomkins, A Short
History of Christianity, page 90)
That’s how the church began its
second century. And unfortunately, it wouldn’t be the last
time the church would get focused on the power and politics,
systems and schemes, and fail to wait for the Spirit.
E. Stanley Jones was probably
the greatest evangelist and missionary of the Methodist
movement. He spent most of his life in India and wrote
prolifically. In many ways, he was a man before his time. He
balanced the clarity about his faith in Jesus Christ as Lord
with an openness to other religions. He was a lover of
American democracy, but deeply committed to the common
humanity of all the people of the world and the need for
world peace and brotherhood. How we need his voice amid the
religious tensions, the sectarian violence, the hostile
rhetoric of our day.
I’ve been collecting his
writings (all of which are out of print), and a good friend
found a copy of his book on Pentecost and the book of Acts,
The Christ of Every Road, in a church rummage sale. I
cherish it. He describes the church as living between Easter
and Pentecost:
The church stands hesitant
between the two. Hesitant, hence impotent. Something big has
dawned in the church’s thinking—Easter. Christ has lived,
taught, died and risen and has commissioned the church with
the amazing Good News. But something big has yet to dawn in
the very structure, make-up and temperament of the
church—Pentecost. If the church would move up from that
between-state to Pentecost, nothing could stop it—nothing!!
Then he
describes the church of his day. Remember, this was written
seventy-five years ago:
Now the church is stopping
itself by its own ponderous machinery. Whenever we have been
troubled about our spiritual impotence, we have added a new
wheel—a new committee or commission, a new plan or
program—and in the end we have found that we have little or
no power to run the old or the new. We become
busy—devastatingly busy—turning old and new wheels by hand.
Pentecost is not a lived fact with us. Hence we worship
machinery instead of winning men.
(E. Stanley Jones, The Christ
of Every Road, page 25)
We worship
machinery instead of winning men and women to the cause of
Christ.
I want to be quick to say, I
believe in this church of ours. I’ve served as an itinerant
traveling preacher in the connection for more than
thirty-five years and I love it. I spent seven of those
years as a church bureaucrat, literally running the
machinery of this huge global conglomerate we call United
Methodism, and I believe in the work we did. I love this
church and the way we do ministry as United Methodists.
But I
also believe that all too often, Jones is right.
All too often we get machinery
ahead of mission, worshiping politics instead of waiting for
Pentecost. The unlikely election of Matthias might have been
the first time, but it wouldn’t be the last time the church
put politics ahead of Pentecost. It might have been the
church’s first big mistake.
2.
But maybe not. Maybe Matthias’s unlikely election was
exactly what God had in mind.
Take a look at verse 17. Catch
the poignant, understated tragedy of Judas and his fate:
“Judas: He was numbered among us, and was allotted his share
in the ministry.” He was one of us…and look how it ended. He
was a part of the ministry…how could it have ended like
this? Can you hear the veiled resentment in Luke’s graphic
description of Judas’s death and the curse upon the land he
purchased with the blood money? Can you imagine the mix of
emotions, of grief and disillusionment, anger and the desire
for revenge, remorse that one so promising could have fallen
so completely? Combine with that the lingering doubts about
their own failure to stand faithful in the moments of
Christ’s suffering and death.
All those emotions. All that
baggage. Maybe all that unresolved stuff stood in the way of
the free-flow of Christ’s spirit in their midst, blocking
God’s ability to do anything new. Maybe it was only when
they were willing to open their hearts to Matthias, open
their minds to a new voice and new ideas, open the doors to
a new disciple (Open hearts, open minds, open doors—has a
nice ring to it, doesn’t it?), only then were they ready for
what God had in mind.
And what God had in mind
was a body of servants, a band of brothers and sisters,
ready to serve the world.
True, we never hear from
Matthias again, but I like to think he went out to become
one of those unknown, common saints who carried the love of
Christ into unmarked, common streets and witnessed for
Christ in unheralded, ordinary ways. Maybe Matthias is the
model for the countless millions of unlikely disciples whose
story is never told, whose song is never sung, whose honor
is never praised. But they are the ones who in the end make
all the difference. Call Matthias the Patron Saint of the
Unnamed Faithful, the unlikely, the unknown who bear the
light of Christ into the world.
Maybe you could say Matthias was
the product of affirmative action, but as such, he is a
reminder that the true vision of the church is not a
high-profile roster of megastar preachers. Rather, it is the
vision of millions of disciples, moving into their worlds in
the name of Jesus Christ. The focus of the church’s ministry
is not just its larger-than-life heroes—Peter and Paul,
Barnabas and Timothy, Aquilla, Priscilla and Lydia—but
rather ministry is to be carried out through the lives of
the whole church where every Christian sees his or her work
as an avenue of witness and service for Jesus Christ.
Read through the book of Acts,
then check out St. Paul’s letters. Over and over you hear
the names of unknown saints whose stories are never told:
Sister Phoebe and the fellow
workers
Epaenetus and Mary
Andronicus and Junias
Ampliatus and Urbanus
Stachys and Apelles and the family of Astrobulus
Herodian, Tryphaena and Tryphosa (I wonder if they were
twins?)
Persis, Rufus, Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas
Philologus, Julia, and Nereus
Olympuas and all the saints who are with them…
Who are all these people? I
haven’t a clue! But at the end of his letter to the Romans,
St. Paul celebrates their ministry and offers them up to God
with the blessing:
Now, to him who is able to
strengthen you according to the gospel and the preaching of
Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery
which was kept secret for long ages, but is now made known
to all the nations…to the only wise God be glory
forevermore, through Jesus Christ. Amen! (Romans 16)
Unknown
saints. Unlikely election. Unlimited faith.
Wayne Cordeiro is the pastor of
New Hope Community Church in Honolulu—tough assignment, I am
sure!—an incredible church with over 10,000 persons
worshiping every week. When Cordeiro describes the ministry
of the church, he asks these simple questions:
Do you believe God loves the
world?
Do you believe God loves the people of this city?
Do you believe God loves firefighters, school teachers,
business people?
Do you believe God loves young people, retired people, rich
people, poor people?
And of
course, everyone would answer with a resounding “Yes!” Then
he asks:
So, how do you suppose
God intends to love the world?
How do you suppose God will make his love known to this
city?
How will God love firefighters, school teachers, and
business people?How do you suppose God intends to love young
people, retired people, rich people and poor people?
He says the
answer is not to hire someone to do it! He says,
When God wants to share his love
with the firefighters, he takes a full-time, baptized
servant minister, disguises him as a firefighter and sends
him into the fire house.
When God wants to share his love
with school teachers, he takes full-time, baptized servant
ministers and disguises them as teachers and sends them into
the classroom to share his love with students and teachers
alike.
When God wants to share his love
with young people, he takes full-time, baptized servant
ministers and disguises them as teenagers and sends them
onto campus and into the streets to share his love.
(Quoted in the sermon “What Me?
Holy?” by James A. Harnish,
Hyde Park UMC, Tampa, FL, April
24, 2005)
When God wants to make his love
real in the world, he elects unnamed, unheralded, unlikely
candidates like you and me and Matthias, then scatters us
into the world to make it happen.
So
the disciples gathered in the upper room and they had an
election.
Then they were ready. Once they
were gathered, called, named and elected, once they opened
the door to new disciples, then they were ready for
Pentecost.
We may never know if the
election of Matthias was the first great mistake of the
church or if it was exactly what needed to happen before
God’s spirit could move in their midst. But the one thing we
do know is that God’s spirit moved anyway—redeeming their
mistakes, renewing their faith, reviving their courage,
revolutionizing their witness—for the sake of the name of
Jesus Christ.
Frances Havergal was born in
Worcestershire, England in 1836. She only lived to be 43, a
fairly unremarkable life, but she wrote many poems and hymns
which became popular, even though, as one critic says, her
poetry has a “lack of concentration and a tendency toward
meaningless repetition of phrase.” Unlikely as it seemed,
they became some of the best-loved hymns of the church. One
of her hymns could be the prayer of St. Matthias and all the
unlikely saints who follow in his spirit:
Lord, speak to me, that I may
speak
in living echoes of thy tone;
as thou hast sought, so let me seek
thine erring children lost and lone.
O use me, Lord, use even me,
just as thou wilt, and when, and where,
until thy blessed face I see,
thy rest, thy joy, thy glory share.
(U.M.
Hymnal, page 463)
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