From the Acts of the Apostles: “Then they prayed and said, ‘Lord, you know everyone’s heart.’”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
I got to spend a lot of time in airports this week. In my experience, going through an airport is a perfect example of the phenomenon of “hurry up and wait.” No matter how early I arrive, I have this unconquerable urge to get through security as fast as I possibly can, and then, on the other side… the waiting begins. I don’t know about you, but again, no matter how much time I have in the airport, I get anxious about straying too far from my departure gate—what if I don’t get back in time? I always feel like I ought to do something, even if I can’t quite figure out what that something is.
Waiting at an airport can feel like a liminal time, an in-between time—after the frantic rush of packing and getting to the airport and making it through security, but before the actual event—getting on the plane. And everyone who has flown enough in their lives probably has a story about how that wait can grow longer and longer as the scheduled departure time passes and delays make the in-between time not only longer but open-ended, indeterminate.
Waiting can be hard—even in, maybe especially in, those in-between times. Especially when our emotions are heightened, when we’re not really sure what’s coming, waiting, the in-between time, can be fraught with anxieties.
Think about the time between, say, the end of finals and graduation—the excitement of an accomplishment coupled with excitement—and maybe trepidation—about what comes next.
Or the hard waiting, the blend of fear and hope, that comes between learning about a serious diagnosis and waiting for treatment to begin.
Or the long in-between time we collectively waited through during the pandemic, as rumors gave way to news stories, as lockdowns stretched through weeks and months…
It’s in one of those in-between times of enforced waiting—the anxious time of knowing something will happen, but not knowing exactly what, not knowing exactly when—that the apostles find themselves in in our story from Acts this morning.
Our Lord has ascended into heaven—a glorious event, certainly—Jesus returning to the Father, assuming his throne of glory in heaven, taking with him our human nature in its resurrected form—the joining of earth to heaven complementing and completing the joining of heaven to earth accomplished in the Incarnation.
A glorious event, but surely for the apostles a little bit troubling, a little bit anxiety-provoking—after all the drama, the whiplash, of the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the inexorable slide into the tragedy of the Crucifixion, the bewildered joy of Eater Day and the strangeness of Christ’s appearance in the Resurrected Body—after all that, their Lord and Teacher, their Rabbi and Friend, is gone again, at least physically, and they are left to ask themselves, “Now what?”
On one level, they know the answer to this question. Now what? Now go out and share the Good News of the Kingdom of God, making disciples of all nations and baptizing in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. They’ve been given their marching orders. Jesus has promised to send them a Comforter, an Advocate—the gift of the Holy Spirit… but they don’t know yet when this will happen, or how.
In these few days between the Ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the apostles have, it would seem, been left to their own devices.
And in that anxiety of waiting, in that space of “Now what?” Peter does the best he can—he finds something to do. “In those days,” Luke tells us in the book of Acts, “Peter stood up among the believers (together the crowd numbered about one hundred twenty persons).” Peter gathers together the entire believing community, the entire church—in a time and place where virtually all of the followers of Jesus could fit in a room about the size of this one. It’s a good reminder that already the Church, the Body of Christ, was so much more than that band of 12 disciples.
And like any good manager calling a meeting, Peter has a plan—he wants to replace Judas, the disciple who had betrayed Jesus, so that the number of apostles will be twelve again. Twelve isn’t a magic number—in a community of 120 there’s no intrinsic reason to have 12 apostles—but it’s a number with deep symbolic resonance—12 tribes of Israel.
This strikes me as a deeply human solution—in the midst of uncertainty and change, stick to what you know—do what you can to put things back as they were. Peter doesn’t know yet how, just a few days later, how God will again defy and explode all expectations as the Holy Spirit descends upon the community at Pentecost—for now, it seems that replacing Judas is the best way to go.
Peter asks for someone who has been with Jesus and the other disciples all along, throughout their years together—“beginning from the baptism of John,” Peter says, “until the day when Jesus was taken up from us—one of these must become a witness with us to his resurrection.” Two candidates are put forward, Justus and Matthias. And the community prays together: “Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which one of these two you have chosen…”. Lord, you know everyone’s heart.
And then they cast lots. There are no speeches or debates, there’s no review of resumés or questionnaires, there’s no vote. They elect Matthias, essentially, by flipping a coin.
Can you imagine what it would be like to choose our leaders like that?
It may seem like folly—but think about the deep trust this community has, the deep faith they have that God will raise up the leader they need, that God will make sure that the leader—and by extension, the whole community—is equipped for the ministries they are all called to—and the faith that God will show them, will communicate with them, about how they are to proceed.
We don’t know anything, really, about Justus and Matthias. If the pattern holds, they are, like the other apostles, faithful followers of Jesus, faithful—but ordinary. They’re called by virtue of what they have seen, what they’ve experienced—what they knew about Jesus from their own journeys with him.
This is why I think this story isn’t really about who wins or loses an election for a position as a new apostle. This story isn’t really about Justus or Matthias—neither of whom, by the way, we hear about after this! This story is about trust—about how, even in times of uncertainty or anxiety, even in the times of waiting, we can trust that God will be right there with us.
Just like Justus or Matthias, we can trust God to equip us—to take us for who and where we are, to put us where we need to be to advance the God’s Kingdom—to empower us to share God’s love with our families and friends and neighbors—to care for one another and for the needy, the hungry, the vulnerable, the mourning, the anxious among us. And just like Justus and Matthias, we are qualified for this not because of our accomplishments or our achievements but because of our own encounters with Jesus, the experiences we have of receiving God’s love, of knowing God’s forgiveness—because, like Justus and Matthias, we are witnesses of Christ’s resurrection.
Just like those early apostles gathered together, we are, you and I, all of us, still in an in-between time—between the already of God’s Kingdom breaking into this world and the not yet of the New Heaven and New Earth when we and all of creation will be given fulfillment and consummation. It can certainly feel like we live in uncertain times—you probably don’t me to tell you that—and our individual and corporate lives may be marked by anxious waiting in any number of ways. May we cling fast to what we know, to what we have known: the abundant love of God, the gift of new life in Jesus Christ, the good news—the hope of everlasting life—that we are called to bear witness to in an anxious, waiting world.