The way we decide

 Acts 1:1-17, 21-26

Things have been a little weird and intense for the disciples since Jesus was murdered by the state and came back from the dead. Judas has died by suicide.  The community has been pretty much in hiding.  Then the risen Lord started popping up places.  He’s kind of the same but different, both unrecognizable and completely familiar, both available and not. For a little over a month, he’s been showing up here and there, walking along with some of them down a road, coming through locked doors and eating fish, hanging out with them day after day and teaching again like before. And now, he has just literally vanished into the sky before their eyes.  
 
This weekend we celebrate the Ascension – the day Jesus disappears into the clouds and leaves the disciples staring up into the sky with their mouths hanging open. They can feel his absence where his presence once was. And yet he promises he will be there with them in a different way, guiding them nonetheless.
  
So now a new adjustment, a new assignment: Jesus said to Stay Put and Wait for the Holy Spirit, whatever that means.  That’s their job.  So that’s what they are doing. Constantly devoting themselves to prayer, it says, coming together, helping each other learn to trust that God is here now, and God will lead them into what is next. 
 
And then we are given a bizarre and delightful illustration of this trust in action. They are trying to decide who should replace Judas in their leadership.  And they have two good options before them, Justus, and Matthias, both followers of Jesus, who knew Jesus in the flesh, both men of integrity, both willing to serve. Whom should they choose?  
 
Do they make pros and cons list? Debate with Robert’s Rules of Order?  Launch campaigns and take a vote, the 120 or so of them?
 
No! They draw straws! They flip a coin, roll the dice, “cast lots.” They use a game of chance to take things out of human hands.  
 
There is nothing intrinsically spiritual or holy about this.  We don’t think flipping a coin at the beginning of a football game is asking God to choose which team should start. We don’t think God is involved when we play paper, rock scissors over who has to put the kids to bed.  Casting lots was just used by the soldiers two months before to divide up Jesus’ clothes among themselves while he hung dying on the cross, so it’s not like lot casting is some inherently God-seeking process.  But when it comes time for the followers of Jesus to pick a leader in witnessing to Christ’s resurrection, they roll the dice.
 
They don’t ask themselves WWJD – What would Jesus do if he were here?  Because Jesus is here!  He’s as real among them, among us, as when he walked the earth in the flesh. They’re learning to trust that this is so.  So why not ask Christ to pick and then flip a coin? 
 
The Ascension means that Jesus can’t be captured and boxed up, marketed, claimed, or relegated to the past as a venerated historical figure we make reference to but never address directly.  Jesus is risen and ascended.  Now the community has to learn how to live in the paradox of our faith: that Christ is not here but is HERE. They have to look for Christ, learn to be present to the presence of Christ, listen for the voice of Christ, in and through, and alongside one another. We can’t see him, we can’t touch him, and yet, when we are present with each other, acting with and for one another, Jesus Christ is right here in that space, energy, connection between us.  We are the body of Christ.
 
How do we hear God?  Sometimes it feels like a quiet little nudge that leads us just the little next step, or the wisdom that sinks into our soul when something in us says, “Yes. That is right.” But mostly, we hear God by listening together. By surrendering together.  Waiting for the Spirit to direct us. And then acting.  
And then surrendering and waiting again.
 
This way of discernment is brazenly different than the world’s way – which is fast and decisive.  Wayne Muller reminds us (in his book Sabbath), 
 
"The theology of progress forces us to act before we are ready. We speak before we know what to say. We respond before we feel the truth of what we know. In the process, we inadvertently create suffering, heaping imprecision upon inaccuracy, until we are all buried under a mountain of misperception. But Sabbath says, Be still. Stop. There is no rush to get to the end, because we are never finished. Take time to rest, and eat, and drink, and be refreshed. And in the gentle rhythm of that refreshment, listen to the sound the heart makes as it speaks the quiet truth of what is needed." 
 
We talked this week in catechesis class about trust – how trust is the core of it all. Our security in life or status with the divine not about cracking a code, earning a prize, or figuring out the rules. To be in relationship with a living God must begin with trust—that God is real, and that God wants to lead us all toward love, toward healing, toward forgiveness, toward righting wrongs, and bringing justice, and birthing hope right in the places of utter despair.  
 
So maybe God makes the coin flip one way and not the other.  God is certainly capable of that.  May we too have such trust in God.  
 
Or maybe God thinks it is cute that they are so intent on replacing Judas, as though having 12 disciples like Jesus had originally chosen when his ministry began, a reflection of the 12 tribes of Israel, is essential for what is to come. As though their structures and containers are vital. Of course they have no idea that just days from now that wild Holy Spirit is about to bust the gospel out of its confines and jumpstart it’s spread to the ends of the earth through witnesses who have never seen the human Jesus with their own two eyes, nor heard his voice speaking in a language they wouldn't understand anyway, but who will definitely hear the message their hearts recognize beyond all else, and see the risen Lord transform their very souls.  And they don't know it yet, but the 12 are actually the 120 of them, and about to become 3,000 in one day, and Matthias is never mentioned again in the bible.  
 
So perhaps when they cast lots God chooses for them.  Or maybe it doesn’t matter one way or another to God, but God appreciates their intention just the same.  God is with them even now, as they faithfully seek to do God’s will, and that in itself is beautiful and holy. Whether their decision has any effect on things or not, that they would surrender and seek is shaping them all the same.  
 
Their imaginations can’t begin to grasp what is to come, and so they faithfully make their decision, and then suddenly the whole landscape shifts, and then they will seek God’s direction for the next thing. What more faithful way to live is there than that?
 
We are not building a movement, standing up for values, or shoring up an institution. We are joining in the Kingdom of God. We are witnesses to resurrection, learning to recognize and share in the healing work of the living Christ that is happening right now.
 
Yesterday the youth cleaned out the sanctuary, or got started, at least. After 14 months of emptiness and clutter, regular dust and construction dust, and spiders gleefully given free reign, it was a big, big job, and the youth made a big dent in it. When they peeled down the images of the bible characters we began journeying with in Advent 2019, and unpinned the Psalm river hanging on the back wall from not last summer but the summer before that, I was struck by the ways we’ve grown in our own faithfulness and discernment.  There are things we thought mattered a great deal that turned out not to be important at all. And there are things we had no idea would be significant that have turned out to shape us considerably. 
 
We are not the same congregation we were when we last sang and prayed together in that space. Case in point, when we left the building we had only just discerned, after a year of prayer and listening, that our building was indeed part of our mission, and we would say Yes to the preschool.  Now we will return to their presence already among us.  And we ourselves are different. We have lost beloved members and gained beloved members.  Our ways of feeling connected have changed and, in many ways, even deepened.  
 
When the whole landscape shifted we never, ever could have imagined what was to come, so we had to seek God’s direction, surrender and wait for the Holy Spirit, and then act. And here we are again, on the cusp of another huge shift, a new adjustment.  And our imaginations can’t begin to foresee what is coming.  But as witnesses to resurrection, who know the power of the risen Lord to bring new life into our lives and our world, we will keep helping each other learn to trust that God is here now, and God will lead us into what is next.  And we will keep learning to recognize and share in the work of the living Christ that is happening right now. 

And what more faithful way is there to live than that?
 
Amen.
 

Learning to Listen in the Liminal

Acts 1

Sometimes when we don’t know what to do, when we’re face to face with mystery, or something unknown, vast, greater than ourselves, we clean.  When we’re expecting a baby, we nest, when the Titanic is going down, we rearrange the deck chairs, when that dissertation or thesis is looming, we refinish the basement. 

Turning to details, to tasks and duties gives us comfort.  

Creating societies and structures, being effective and logical, gives a kind of security and order to our worlds.

The whole book of Acts is a hilarious back and forth between wild Holy Spirit encounters of pulling people out of their security and comfort to things they’ve never done before in ways they’ve never done them, things that might involve fire and strange languages, prophecy, miracles, public speaking and touching strangers, and then tidying up, figuring out logistics and details, creating order and structure, assigning KP duty.

In fact, most of Paul’s letters throughout the rest of the New Testament are people figuring out the nitty-gritty of how to be church, with the piddly details of messy human beings seeking order, and Paul continually calling them back to this cosmic, big-picture mystery that has transformed the entire earth and claimed them individually for a life that transcends death. And also, quit fighting at dinner, you guys.

But I love this story because of that. Before anything else starts to happen, they must replace Judas to round out the 12 apostles. It only makes sense. Getting a 12^th Apostle nailed down feels like the pressing job at the moment. Very imperative.

So they pick between these two people, Joseph, aka, Barsabbas, aka Justus, on the one hand, and Matthias on the other. It’s down to these two because both of them have been around from the beginning, and they want someone who can witness to the resurrection with them.

Jesus didn’t tell them to replace Judas; they came up with that one all on their own. Because what else should they do after they see dead and risen Jesus float off into heaven right after telling them to wait for some kind of “baptism of the Holy Spirit?”

There is a move coming here, Pentecost is around the corner, when they will, as biblical scholars like to say, go from being disciples to being apostles. In other words, they will are in the midst of shifting their identity from followers to sent ones.

But right now they are in the in-between.  The not yet. The liminal space. 

And oh, how God loves liminility! It’s the 9-month pregnancy of the thing!  It’s the Sabbath shift! This pocket of space in-between is so important that God likes to use it a lot.  The Israelites in the wilderness, Jesus in the wilderness, for that matter, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Ruth, Esther, Moses’ stint as a shepherd, the Apostle Paul – knocked down, his sight taken from him, at the mercy of those he came to kill while he waits to find out what God will do next…

Liminal space - on the threshold of change becomes a kind of waiting, like Advent or Lent, or being engaged or in hospice, or unemployed, widowed, or released from prison, adjusting to some new reality that is coming but you haven’t figured out what it will mean or how to live in it yet -

these times are God’s rich soil in us where something dies and something new is born, when most of what you knew before gets taken away, and what is coming has not yet come, when you are stuck in the awkward middle, trying to figure out how to stay still and move at the same time. 

In these times we are redefined, life is redefined. 

Tectonic plates are shifting, and we feel suspended – what can we expect? 

Or do, Or hope for? 

How do we just be?

And now imagine this - not since the garden, as in, the very beginning of it all, or since Noah, perhaps, has there ever been a time in all the human living and God-following throughout countless centuries, when the people did not have a flesh and blood mouthpiece for the divine – someone right there in front of them telling them what to do, what to believe, how to act.  God had a representative, a priest or prophet or judge or king. Rabbis and teachers interpreted scripture – talked to God on the people’s behalf, and to the people on God’s behalf. They made sense of things, told the people what it all meant. 

And Jesus had fit into this model for these disciples.  

When God came and walked among them in the flesh, they followed him as students to a rabbi, disciples of a beloved teacher.

But when the teacher is killed everything crumbles. 

And then it all crumbles again in an even bigger and more impossible way when he doesn’t stay dead.  Now they are disciples of a resurrected God-with-us who has thrown the definitions of life and death up in the air; now heaven and earth are kind of mixed up, and all bets are completely off. So they have about 40 days of getting used to that, except now he’s leaving again. So, now, they are followers of… what, exactly? 

So they stand, stunned and staring up into heaven after Jesus, and what are we supposed to do again?

So God gives them a gentle nudge in the form of two figures in white.

“Hey, you, men of Galilee? What do you think you’re looking at, standing there with your mouths open? Go back where you came from and wait like he told you to…”

So they do. 

Only now, there is no one between them and God. 

No rabbi to follow, no teacher to listen to, no mouthpiece or ambassador. 

Nobody is telling them how this is supposed to go, what they are supposed to do, or believe, or do.

They are on their own, but also clearly not, somehow.

They are witnesses, they remind themselves: we are witnesses now. This is the only thing they know so far – we are called to tell each other and whoever else will listen, about what we’ve experienced. And beyond that, they’ve got no idea what else is next.

So they tidy! They organize. Fix a problem; mend a structure. We’ve got to fill the empty session seat! 

But since Jesus had picked the rest of them, how would they know how to pick Judas’ replacement? 

So they do it in a really unique way. 

They don’t take resumes or ask the two to make campaign speeches. They don’t vote or argue for their favorite candidate.  There are no Roberts Rules of Order here. They figured out a way to let God choose. 

Here we see the very first, baby steps into trusting God in a new way that comes to be called Church, or Christianity:  Jesus is between us and God, breaking down that barrier and opening up that relationship, drawing us right into connection to God. We can’t see Jesus, but he’s there, somehow bringing us right up close to God. So we are going to try to listen to God. All by ourselves without someone doing it for us; we are going to ask God to lead us.

So they choose the 12^th apostle by saying, Lord, you know everyone’s hearts. You know who would be best for this. Show us who it should be.

And then they draw straws. They literally cut a piece of hay or break a stick shorter than another, pray to God to guide them, and then draw straws. 

The Lord will show us, they trust, and then they go with it. 

Matthais it is, then!

Because of this story, today there are some traditions that do this when they choose leaders- for example, I’ve heard of a Mennonite practice of placing certificates in a few hymnals, shuffling them, and then those who select the hymnals with the the certificates in them are appointed to leadership.  It isn’t meant to be a game of chance, a random gamble; it is meant to take human error out of it and leave the decision up to God.  

It’s a way of listening to God.

There are lots of ways of listening to God – maybe as many as there are people in the world- and as the church became the church, and spread throughout the world, more and more ways of listening to God as Christians come to be practiced.  But right here at the beginning, in this in-between time, before the Holy Spirit has come and the preaching has started, but after Jesus has died and risen and left them, these people took their job as witnesses seriously.  They sought, even in the midst of a lot of unknown, they sought as faithfully as possible, to follow this God who was calling them, Them! Ordinary, regular old them! – to lead, to witness, to tell others what they’ve experienced of Jesus, to speak for God to the people and to the people for God. 

And they sought, as faithfully as they could figure out how, to live in this new, unknown, upside down reality they find themselves in, where God’s voice really speaks, and God’s hand really acts, and life and death and limits and boundaries do not hinder God’s plans, and you  - you! - are part of this great big thing you are just barely starting to get your mind around.

We believe we are in a liminal state right now, like, humanity is, all of us, suspended in an already, but not yet. Christ has come, Christ has died and risen; Christ will come again. 

We wait for the day when the promises of all things returned to God and life as it was meant to be – the triumph of love and life over destruction and death – when that is fully realized.  We wait in this time when we know it is coming, because Christ has broken the bonds of death, but we often stand gazing up into heaven with our mouths open, not quite sure what we’re supposed to do in the meantime.

The space between. Where life leaks in from the future, and hope is hidden but real, when the Kingdom of God has come and is here, but we miss it so much of the time because it is not all in all yet.

And in this in-between time, where we are not face to face with God, we still say God’s hand really acts and God’s voice really speaks and our lives really are part of God’s plans that cannot be stopped or hindered by life and death and limits and boundaries. So how, then, do we listen?

This summer we are going to practice some ways of listening to God.  In our worship we are going to gather and try out different ways of praying, of listening to God, of connecting to God, ways that someone thought up and tried out a long time ago and generations of Jesus-followers have been doing ever since.  And we are also going to talk about how, in our own lives, we find ways of listening to God that make sense for us – things that help us hear from God, see Jesus in the world, share in ministry with others, draw us closer to God, in the transcendent things and the practical, ordinary things.

Sometimes I think we tell ourselves we should have this down, somehow; or that church or faith should go a certain way and we are messing up if it doesn’t look that way for us.

But remember, these first witnesses began “in joy, still doubting and disbelieving.” 

They let themselves be in the awkwardness and the newness, in the bumbling and the trying. 

They told each other when they saw Jesus. 

They sat in the discomfort of waiting for God, embracing the liminal and all its mysterious promptings and newness. 

And they trusted God to lead – even in the very practical tasks and details, even more than they trusted themselves.

We aren’t supposed to do faith right or perfectly; Jesus already brings us right up close to God.  We are supposed to live right where we are, in whatever in-betweens we may find ourselves, to seek God’s direction and to listen, in whatever ways we might learn, or try out for the first time, or fall back on again and again. 

And in the midst of both the great spiritual mysteries, the life-changing encounters that draw us up and out of ourselves, and the everyday, organizing tasks, structures and details that ground us, together we get to practice trusting God, however that might look for us today, and tomorrow, this moment and the next.  

And if in doubt about how, we’ll do like they did, and try to get out of the way.