Mission: Imaginable
NW MN Synod
Assembly
May 17, 2015
Acts 1:15-17,
21-26
"How
do I figure out God's will for my life?" is one of the questions people
ask most often.[1]
“How
do I figure out God’s will for my life….for my family….for our church?”
Where
is God taking us—and how might we best become aligned with God’s direction?
Questions
like these point us to the faith practice of discernment….imagining
the contours of God’s promised future and how that future affects the ways God
is calling us to step forth right now.
When you think
about discerning God’s guiding will—where does that best happen for you and your
congregation?
· Discernment
sometimes happens in a retreat setting,
with balloons bouncing around, post-it notes plastered over a wall, sheets of
butcher paper covered with chicken-scratched notes from brainstorming exercises,
as leaders of a church try to puzzle out goals and how to pursue them.
· Discernment
sometimes takes place in contemplation—in
silence, in darkness pierced only by candlelight, in centering ourselves, in
praying--new insights emerge…
· Discernment
sometimes happens in meetings of
chosen church leaders who’ve been reading good books, working with consultants,
studying demographic trends, interviewing church members, conversing with
neighbors, trying to distill the finest honey from all that rich “pollen.”
· And then discernment
sometimes happens in the midst of chaos. Discernment can bubble up in clutch moments,
when a crisis suddenly emerges and action must be taken. Even in times of chaos –when everyone’s
asking “what do we do now, for heaven’s
sake?”….discernment happens, albeit by the seat of our pants!
This
peculiar narrative in Acts 1 was a discernment moment—the first time members of
what would become the first church engaged in communal discernment together.
And
the eleven apostles seem to have employed various pathways to discernment…in
the midst of a crisis, with a wing and a prayer, in the confidence that God can
and will work through just about any means.
This
story--truly a discernment story!--has a shape that starts to sound familiar as
we listen to the story with care:
First, there
was an elephant in the room--the “elephant” being the absence of one
of the Twelve. One of them had disappeared,
not by accident, but by treachery, betrayal and a gruesome death (described
here in Acts 1 with more graphic detail than most of us prefer!)
The
reason why Judas’s death posed a problem to the remaining eleven disciples is
that Jesus had very intentionally chosen Twelve (not eleven nor thirteen)
disciples to symbolize the twelve tribes of Israel, the whole people of God,
whom Jesus was reconstituting through his self-emptying life, saving death, and surprising resurrection.
The
defection of one of the Twelve, Judas Iscariot, the Betrayer, diminished the
potency of that symbol of the Twelve constituting a New Israel, the vanguard of
the whole people of God. So what should
be done about that?
Discernment
of God’s will for people and faith communities often begins with the reality of
“elephants in the room”—uncomfortable truths that aren’t being talked about
openly, honestly.
So I ask you, dear friends: what “elephants” lurk in the shadows of your church building? What uncomfortable truths do you tend to dance around? What hard realities tempt you to look away and whistle in the dark, hoping no one will notice? Pause.
Back
to our text….
Aware of the
“elephant in the room” here in Acts 1, the second thing that happens is that someone
breaks the silence.
A
pastor-friend of mine says: “When you realize there’s an elephant in the
room, please introduce it to everyone else!”[2]
In
this story it’s Peter who names the elephant in the room. And that’s noteworthy for two reasons:
1.
It’s the first time after Jesus’ Ascension
that one of his followers stands up and starts exercising servant-leadership in
the emerging church; and
2.
It’s
the first time here in Acts that Jesus’ followers start looking forward, not
backward!
Exercising
servant-leadership isn’t for
sissies! When you’re in a discussion at
church, it takes gumption to speak up—and even more guts to join a leadership
team, not to mention serve its convener.
But
the church of Jesus Christ needs such brave, willing, imaginative
servant-leaders….now more than ever!
Peter
stepped out and invited the early church to dance with the Risen Lord in his
ongoing mission of reclaiming the whole creation, starting with the Cross and
the Empty Tomb, moving not backward but forward, into God’s promised future in
Christ.
So I ask you, dear friends: how does your faith community form and call forth servant leaders? How do you support the leaders you
have? What obstacles are sometimes put
in the way of such leadership? And which direction is your church facing—backward, or forward? Pause
Back
to our story in Acts 1…
There’s
an elephant in this room filled with about 120 followers of Jesus. Peter gets up the gumption to name this
elephant and propose that they do something.
In so doing Peter points the fledgling church forward, not
backward.
Judas
Iscariot’s gory death has diminished the apostolic ranks by one. Somehow that must be addressed, so that when
the Holy Spirit falls upon them they are poised, ready to move out into the
world at full strength.
The third thing
that happens here is that the disciples generate possibilities for a successor
to Judas. They had no
succession plan, no governing documents to rely on, no workshop on leadership
replacement they could all go attend, no “apostolic head-hunter” they could
hire to conduct a nation-wide search.
Instead,
the eleven relied on their sanctified
common sense, focusing on just one
criterion for replacing the 12th disciple: “one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the
Lord Jesus went in and out among us…—one of these must become a witness with us
to his resurrection.”
Thus
was convened the first nominating committee in the history of the church! The group soon surfaces two candidates for
the open seat in the apostolic circle: “Joseph
called Barsabbas, who was also known as Justus, and Matthias.”
So I ask you, dear friends: how does your congregation invest imagination in generating possibilities
for serving God’s mission in this
time, this place? How do you give yourselves the gifts of time and prayer
and reflection on the things that matter
most? Pause
Back
to our text…
Fourth and
finally, the disciples acted. There’s no
record of them conducting a Minnesota Statute 604.2 background check on Joseph or
Matthias. The eleven didn’t declare 40
days of fasting…didn’t spend time second-guessing themselves.
Instead
they decided, by praying and casting lots.
St
Augustine, a fourth century bishop in northern Africa, said: “Pray
as if everything depends on God, work as if everything depends on you.”[3] The eleven disciples seemingly anticipated Augustine’s
approach—putting themselves in God’s hands through prayer; then doing the
“work” of casting lots.
The
result was that Matthias was chosen to assume the position of 12th
disciple, restoring the “apostolic strike force” to full strength.
And once
Matthias was elected—he was never heard from again, at least in the pages of
the holy scriptures!
It’s
as if Matthias’s only job was to “be there,” to be chosen, to transform the
eleven survivors of Good Friday….into the Twelve missionary-witnesses to the
Resurrection. That was enough!
If
that seems a little anticlimactic to you, just remember that the Book of Acts
itself concludes its 28 chapters in sort of an inconclusive manner. As books go, Acts is something of a cliff-hanger…
….and I think that’s exactly what the Holy
Spirit intended! Some books aren’t supposed
to tie up all the loose ends.
God, you see, is
still writing the ending to the Acts of the Apostles through the likes of you
and me,
latter-day successors to the apostles, whom God is still calling and sending forth
as witnesses to the Resurrection, people who point unceasingly toward God’s
promised future in Christ.
As
God crafts the conclusion to God’s great story, we take our places, play our
parts, in ways that may wind up seeming as obscure as the rest of the story of
St Matthias, the blessed replacement.
And
that’s OK. It is enough, more than
enough, simply to be swept into this Story of how God is making all things new
in Jesus Christ.
It
is enough that we get to repeat and stake our whole lives on the greatest “lines” in our episode of God’s
Mission Imaginable: Christ
has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again!
Amen.
[1]
Richard Jensen, Working Preacher (2009), accessed April 5, 2015 at https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=315
[2]
Pastor Paul Rohde, campus pastor at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, said this
in a sermon I heard several years ago.
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