Acts 1:12-26
Introduction
I want to be careful in what I predict, but I want to say that I hope that this is my final congregation of my pastoral career. I realize that I still have a lot of time before I retire, but the thought of going through the process again is not appealing. I have friends who are in a time of pastoral transition and I don’t envy them.
I will admit that the search committee for this congregation was very good and it was relatively painless. But I had one church I had applied for that both myself and friend of mine were in the running. I went for my interviews and had multiple conversations. Eventually the chair of the search committee called me and told me he didn’t that it would work with me. I was disappointed. But then a few weeks later, I was talking to my friend who had also applied, I was about to congratulate him when he congratulated me. He told me that they had just told him they were going with me. A week later they called me and invited me to preach for a call. It was all a bit stressful.
I am sure that it is stressful for a church to call a pastor. They nominate the best search committee they can. They look at resumes, talk to candidates and call references. Then based on one sermon, the congregation is supposed to vote on whether to call the pastor.
I can only speak from my perspective by saying that it is an anxious experience to preach that sermon and then wait for the congregation to vote. Can you imagine doing something similar in whatever career you have been involved in?
Why do I bring this up? Because we are looking at a passage very much related to this. The eleven apostles are looking to replace Judas and they need to choose who the twelfth apostle will be. There are two candidates, who will get it? And what does that mean for the one who doesn’t get the position?
Who Will It Be?
If we go back to the Gospels, we will see that Jesus chose twelve disciples or apostles. There was a larger group of disciples, but he gathered a special group of twelve. Why twelve? It wasn’t just for practical reasons. Yes twelve is big enough to share responsibility but small enough for Jesus to mentor. But that is not what was going on. Jesus was in a sense, reconstituting the twelve tribes of Israel. Not that each of these disciples was from each of those tribes but the twelve was meant to remind us of what God had done in the Old Testament.
Now one of those twelve apostles was Judas Iscariot. Judas betrayed Jesus by handing him over to the authorities. Of course Peter denied Jesus, which was serious as well. But Peter was reconciled to Jesus. Could Judas have been reconciled? Perhaps but Judas died before that could happen. This left the twelve as the eleven. It seemed important to get back up to the proper number, again not for having enough help but for the symbolic importance. But who could take the place?
There was no job posting requesting resumed from all interested parties. There was a very specific requirement. The person had to have been with them from the time of John the Baptist right until the resurrection. This was a limited number. To be clear, even if Paul had become a Christian by this point, he wouldn’t have been eligible for this position. That’s how strict it would be.
Based on this, two people were nominated as candidates for the twelfth apostle. There was Matthias and Joseph called Barsabbas also known as Justus. This second person is one of three people in the New Testament named Justus. Joseph would have been his birth name. He was then given the second name Barsabbas, meaning son of the Sabbath. He also had a Roman name, Justus. It was not uncommon for a Jew to also have a Greek or Roman name. Saul of Tarsus’s Roman name was Paul.
However, they needed twelve apostles and not thirteen. So they made the final decision by casting lots. That may seem like a strange way to choose someone for ministry. First, remember that they bathed this in prayer and trusted God was in this. Even so, the casting of lots was not between two random people but between two qualified people. Either person could have fulfilled the role well. In the end, it was Matthias who became the twelfth apostle.
I have often wondered about this Justus, and not just because one of my son’s is named after him. What was it like for him to get so close to becoming the twelfth apostle and to just miss it? Was he devastated they way we see contestants in modern reality show talent contests?
We don’t know exactly what happened to Justus. There are some later traditions about him, include his drinking poison and not being harmed, but we can’t know how accurate that is.
But we can know that Justus had a choice to make. Things may have not turned out the way he wanted but life still had to go on. He could have given up on serving Jesus out of disappointment or he could seek to serve Jesus in whatever situation he was in. The same choice is given to us.
When Life Happens
Have you ever had something that you really wanted to happen? Perhaps it was admission into a school or an application for a job. It may have been an audition for a musical group. If only you could get this opportunity, everything would be all right.
But life happens. Sometimes you get what you want and sometimes you don’t. The question we have to ask is what do we do when we don’t get what we want.
We can get upset and decide to give up. If it’s not the way we want it, it can’t be any way. But truthfully, that is the way we expect children to behave. “I’m gathering my toys and going home!”
Another way is decide to thrive in the circumstance we are in. It is like driving down a road and coming to a fork. We want to take the left way but that road is closed. We can park our car at the fork and grieve that the way we want is closed or we can take the road that is open.
This is true for us as individuals but it can be true for us as a church as well. The path of ministry should not be according to our personal desires but according to the circumstances we find ourselves in. I was once pastoring a small church that every year did a VBS. One year we found ourselves with all the children who normally participated having aged out. There was grieving because VBS was an annual tradition. But I pointed out that those children were now teenagers and of youth group age. We eventually got a youth group going that was close to the size of our Sunday morning worship attendance. The key was not spend our time grieving at the opportunity lost but taking advantage of the opportunity that arrived.
Conclusion
What did Justus do when he got the news that he hadn’t been chosen to be the twelfth apostle? I don’t really know. He may have went home and felt like giving up. I’m sure that he was disappointed. But I hope that he continues to follow and share Jesus according to the opportunities still available to him.
We face similar circumstances. We have hopes and dreams, both as individuals and as a congregation. Things may not work out the way we expect or even want. We can give up or we can embrace the new opportunities that come our way. The choice is ours.
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