This sermon was preached by Oliver Yangi, a theological student in our Parish
In our
passage in Acts verse 15: “In those days Peter stood up among the believers
(together the crowd numbered about 120 people).
And, as we might expect, there is something significant in the fact that
there were 120 people present because, in Jewish Law at that time, 120 men
gathered together was the requisite number to form and formalise a new
community with its own council and leadership structures. So there’s something
very intentional about Peter’s actions
here: he recognises the need for order and structure amongst the people of God
and he waits until the time is right and then begins to formalise the community
of the church.
Peter’s opening word is “Friends” but
actually, the correct translation is “Brothers”. And I think this is a
significant point because the word ‘Brothers’ conveys a significant truth to us; that if we
are all brothers together we can only hold that relationship because we are
children of the same Father. It is our
relationship with God that binds us together as a church: and it is that which
differentiates us from a social club or any other organisation and if we lose a
sense of that, we will definitely lose a sense of our purpose as a community of
God.
“Brothers (and
sisters), it was necessary for the Scripture to be fulfilled as was told beforehand
by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of
David concerning Judas…” So what had David prophesied concerning this event. The reading omits verses 18 and 19, which give
us quotes from second is from Psalm 109:8, which suggests that, for those who
have opposed God, “let someone else take over his office”. It is sometimes thought that Judas was
replaced purely because he had died but that is not really the case. When the apostle James was martyred in Acts
12:2, he wasn’t replaced, so it was not about filling a vacancy caused by death
that was important. Instead, Judas was replaced because he had fallen away from
the ways of God and it was important that all the leaders were known for their
faithfulness to the cause of Christ.
And so, in
the light of that, Peter proposes a qualification for finding a new apostle in
verses 21 and 22: “So one of the men who have accompanied us throughout the
time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism
of John until the day when he was taken from us – one of these must become a
witness with us to his resurrection.”
The
qualification was that the new apostle must have spent time with Jesus and been
a personal witness to his glory. When we
think about the great heroes of the faith, we might think about those people
whose names are written large in the history books: the Wesley brothers, Martin
Luther, Mother Teresa, Richard Baxter and so on – people who had an
extraordinary call on their lives and achieved extraordinary things.
But if we
thought a little more personally about that question, we should ask ourselves who
are the heroes of the faith to us. We
may come up with a very different answer. For me, the heroes are those people
who nurtured me in the faith when I was an arrogant and annoying teenager:
local church people who never gave up on me. The heroes of the faith are some
elderly people I have known in my life; people who have had a quiet faith but
been faithful churchgoers, faithful lovers of Jesus for 40, 50, 60, 70 even 80
years, faithfully praying for the work of the local church.
These, to
me, are the true heroes of the faith. Ordinary people, living ordinary lives,
doing ordinary things and yet, in their ordinariness, there was exhibited to me
an extraordinary faith. And the reason for their extraordinary witness was
because they had met with Jesus in the ordinariness of life and had found him
in the mundane of daily living: they had spent time with Jesus and were
witnesses to his glory. And this seems to me to be what lays behind the call of
the replacement apostle: someone who had found the extraordinary God in the
ordinary of life.
Two names
were recommended: Matthias and Joseph called Barsabbas, also known as Justus.
So the disciples prayed together: “Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which one of these two you have chosen to take
the place in this ministry and apostleship…” And, knowing the tradition of
Scripture, we might have expected a calling on God to perform a supernatural
miracle, to show everyone who the next Apostle to be chosen. Writing on the
wall or a thunderstorm or a voice from heaven: anything like that would have happened.
Both had been with Jesus since his baptism in the Jordan. But they needed some
way to find out which one God wanted to serve. To do this they did two things,
they prayed and they consulted scripture.
But what
happens? This reading says: “They cast lots for them, and the lot fell on
Matthias; and he was added to the eleven apostles”. How ordinary can you get?
The apostles cast lots – a bit like flipping a coin - and that was that. We
might have expected something more dramatic! But I think there is something for
us to learn in the ordinariness of how Matthias was chosen.
Matthias was
an ordinary man. We don’t hear
anything extraordinary he ever did, before or after his call. Matthias was an
ordinary man, chosen to be an apostle in a most ordinary way. Casting lots – a
roll of the dice. An ordinary man, ordinary apostles, using an ordinary system
of decision-making to bear witness to an extraordinary God.
And that,
fundamentally, is what the church is all about. Here we are, ordinary people
living in church community in an ordinary way. And yet, by doing so, we are
bearing witness to the power of an extraordinary God. Because the qualification
of discipleship, as we mentioned earlier is that we ordinary people spend time
in the presence of an extraordinary God.
You and I
have spent years living in the presence of God.
You and I
have spent years knowing what it is to have Jesus as our Lord and Saviour.
You and I – ordinary
people - know what it is to love and be loved by an extraordinary God.
And so the
beautiful things about this story from Acts, the calling of Matthias, is that,
actually, it is a story about our calling. Ordinary people being called by an
extraordinary God. And that is why Paul was able to write in his letters that
he could never boast in himself and his own achievements but that he could
always boast in the awesome power of God. And so it is with us: we don’t boast in ourselves but we can boast in the extraordinary love
and the extraordinary power of God whom we have had the privilege to call our
Lord for so many years.
No comments:
Post a Comment