May 12, 2024

Acts 1:15-17, 21-26

Then they prayed and said, “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 from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.”

The disciples of Jesus were trying to determine who would replace Judas Iscariot as one of the twelve apostles. All apostles were disciples but not all disciples were apostles. The gathering chose two of their number as candidates. One was Matthias. And one was Joseph also called Barsabbas, also called Justus. What happened?

And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias; and he was added to the eleven apostles.

Matthias became an apostle while Joseph of the many names did not. There is not much known about Matthias, other than legend that he spread the faith in the country of Georgia.

Now Jospeh did not win in the selection process, but his many names make him interesting. Interesting because of all the speculation about his identity. One theory is that he had still another name, James. Sometimes known as James the Just, sometimes James the Lesser. James the Greater was already an apostle and there were apparently too few first names to go around. So, we end up with many nicknames and titles.

If this person was James the Lesser, it was an interesting election because this particular James went by yet another name: James brother of Jesus. Or technically, his half-brother. In some Christian traditions, Jesus did not have any blood siblings, and James is thought to have been a cousin or even a stepbrother through his worldly father Joseph. This was obviously a complicated family.

I found this connection between Jesus and James of the many names interesting because it suggests that it was not automatically assumed that Jesus’ brother would be given the title of apostle. Why not add another apostle? Because there had to be twelve, and only twelve, because there were Twelve tribes of Israel.

“Apostle” was a title of high regard in the early church, the closest of Jesus’ followers. But closeness was not the only measure of an apostle. If it had been, then Mary Magdelene might have been in the running. Certainly, James, if he was Jesus’ brother, would also have been closer than most.

But an apostle was more than a close disciple. An apostle literally means someone who was sent forth. The Greek word apóstolos, can mean messenger but it is generally a larger role, more like delegate. Even being a messenger was no small matter in the Jewish tradition—the word for messenger in Hebrew was malachi, which can mean messenger, or it can mean angel. Ancient Hebrew is complicated because a word can take on different meanings in different contexts, making it a difficult language to interpret and open to many subjective readings.

The purpose of an apostle was to go forth and to spread the gospel, the Good News. These twelve were the primary missionaries of Jesus’ teachings. That interestingly does not include Paul who may have been the most successful of the early missionaries, but he was not added to the original twelve. Why? Probably because he was ruthlessly persecuting Jesus’ followers at the time. Paul had his conversion experience years later. He did not even encounter the leaders of the church in Jerusalem, Peter and James, until years after he began proselytizing.

And just to keep things straight, the James I just mentioned was not the apostle James the Greater but James the Lesser. James who was not sent forth in the literal sense because he remained in Jerusalem tending to the mother church. James did not make the cut to be an apostle, which was determined by casting lots, but he was then placed in charge of the larger church.

Which made me wonder about what matters. What qualities mattered in selecting the leaders of the early church and what that might mean for us now.

Much of what we know about the followers of Jesus comes from the Bible and traditional sources. Many of these alternate sources are hagiography, stories about the lives of the saints. These are stories, these are legends, these are perhaps even myths.

If you look over at one of our stained-glass windows, you will see a depiction of Saint Christopher. A well-loved saint whose role was to protect travelers on the road. You would pray to him when you were travelling or when someone you loved was away from home. One modern problem with Saint Christopher is that the Catholic church demoted him at one point, not because he was not doing a good job, but because it was unclear if he had ever existed. He might have been entirely a legend.

I was recently at a gathering at the Harvard Divinity School and the topic of conversation was the current state of ministry. While there are still a good number of people seeking their Masters of Divinity from the seminary, fewer and fewer of them are going into traditional ministry, into parish ministry, my day job.

More are going into academia, into hospital chaplaincy, into nonprofit work. Why might this be? I think first and foremost it is because there is a sense that working in a church has become a less secure life plan than it has been in the past. Fewer churches are hiring full-time ministers and many of those are paying less than a living wage. A living wage for the high-cost areas in which those churches exist, like right around here in the Boston area.

People still feel a calling to ministry but not a calling into parish ministry. What does that mean?

Think about the different roles in the early church. The apostles were those being sent forth, not those staying put. They were to travel around the known world spreading the gospel of Jesus. That is not the same as staying in Jerusalem like James and holding down the fort as it were.

Other than casting lots, we have no way of understanding why Matthias was a better candidate for apostle than James the Lesser. What would that job application look like? Willing to travel? Having good people skills?

And conversely, who gets to run the church? Was James the Lesser also James the Bookkeeper, James the Administrator, James the Jack of All Trades?

When it comes to the apostles, they seem to have been the early adopters. These were those who had been with Jesus from the very beginning. They were eager and earnest followers, but there is nothing to suggest they had any unique skills that made them qualified. In fact, the Bible suggests they were eminently unqualified for ministry in the modern sense.

They were not especially fine speakers. They were likely entirely illiterate. And when the going got tough, they hid. They hid away from the authorities, unlike Mary Magdelene and the other female disciples—I will give them that title even if tradition does not. Again, why Mary was not an apostle is unclear to me, other than sending forth a woman as a delegate was unlikely to garner much attention in a male dominated world.

Who was the one who actually made the most headway in spreading the word, of getting converts, of building the church in the broader sense? It wasn’t the apostles. It wasn’t James the brother of Jesus. It was Paul.

Paul arguably is the one who made Christianity possible. And yes, I realize that someone else is the candidate for that title, Jesus the brother of James. But without Paul, and after Jesus, the church of James and Peter would have been a rather different institution. James and Peter wanted the followers of Jesus to follow the rules of the Torah, the dietary rules, the rules about not mixing with Gentiles. This would have been a completely different enterprise.

And, I think, a less attractive organization for those seeking to join. The theology and ethics of 1^st century Judaism were compelling and, notably, were also the theology and ethics Jesus taught in most respects. It was the behavioral expectations that changed.

Complex rules about personal purity made life quite difficult and more than occasionally expensive. When Jesus said that he was forgiving people their sins, that was a radical statement because it had been the role of the Temple priest to offer the atonement for sins. Atonement for a price, money for the Temple and sacrifices on the altars. Forgiveness of sins for free was a truly radical step away from that way of thinking.

Paul understood the meaning of this change because he had been a Pharisee, one of the morality police who went around making people follow those religious rules. So, when Paul converted, he also understood the power of that step away from orthodoxy.

Orthodoxy means following the creed of a religion. This is what you must believe. That is different from the accepted practices of a religion. That is called orthopraxis, what you must do.

Jesus was a rebellious figure because he was not clearly advocating for Temple practices. His theology and ethics were familiar in that time period, minus the part about him being the messiah, so it was no surprise that many of his Jewish contemporaries understood what he was trying to teach. The big change was to behavior. What you could do on the sabbath, meaning a lot more than before. Who you could eat with, meaning absolutely everyone.

When I think about choosing between Matthias and James for the role of apostle, it makes me wonder what one needs to be right now. What ones needs to be in order to lead the church in some way. Sometimes that leadership seems like what I do as preacher and teacher, as administrator and such. I am certainly not Mark the Bookkeeper; in case you were wondering.

What does it mean to be a leader now? And is leader the right word? Should it be follower rather than leader? Should it be disciple or even proselytizer? Should it be soldier as in “Onward Christian Soldiers” marching as to war?

We do not know the job description for apostle or disciple in the time of Jesus. We do know what Jesus asked of them in terms of going forth and spreading the word. And I think implicit in that role of being sent forth was to live the life described by Jesus. Essentially walking the walk as they were talking the talk. That is so fundamental to the role of delegate and representative because people will quickly sense hypocrisy.

Yes, you should sell everything you have and give it to the poor, or better yet the church. Yes, I need to represent the church as being the source of blessings from God and that clearly means I need a nice suit and a spiffy new watch. Yes, a nice car and even a private jet would be great to spread the word around just a bit faster. Obviously, that looks more like selfishness than piety.

When I think about those students in seminary choosing different paths into ministry, I can understand some of the shift. They want to be able to make ends meet while also serving the needs of people and God. Serving the needs of the church has become more remote from the people and, in many respects, from God. Like the Temple priests who became fixated on rules about purity, churches have become fixated on other rules. And I say this as an observation about both ends of the spectrum, left and right.

From the right, I think the behavioral expectations that people have for other people are misplaced. The Bible says lots of things that we no longer follow—why chose a handful of passages from the Book of Leviticus to criticize who people love thousands of years later. Why chose a few lines from the letters of Paul when he was also telling everyone they needed to follow lifelong celibacy? Jesus made it a point to sweep away all those old rules, so why are we picking them out of the dust?

This is where I can be accused of being a Jesus essentialist. Mark, if you keep saying you only need to follow Jesus, what about all the rest? Indeed, what about all the rest?

And from the left, there is also a growing trend toward purity—purity of language, purity of thinking. Now I personally agree with much of this language and much of this thinking, but that is not the same as taking a puritanical approach.

Here’s an example. A few years ago, I wrote a book. I presented the book draft to the editor, who reviewed it and made changes. And when I reviewed the comments, there were some unexpected ones. For example, the word “African-American” had been removed in most cases and replaced by the word “Black” with a capital “B.” This is the more acceptable academic term currently. I must confess that I was entirely unaware of this shift, but I had no particular objection to the change.

But now what? Knowing that this is the preferred term, am I now obligated to correct people when they say African-American? Which would have been particularly strange because some of the people I would have been correcting are people of color themselves. Does a 50 something year old white guy from Boston get to tell Black people not to call themselves African-Americans? Awkward.

I do not think the church should be about strictly policing the behavioral purity of its members, from either corner of the patch. Yes, I can preach and teach about what I think is good and right and true in the Bible. But that is not the same as getting up here and shaking my finger at you all about how you are imperiling your immortal souls.

Again, no one likes a hypocrite and I cannot proclaim that I am perfect by any means. And like the apostles being sent forth, it has to be more about walking the walk. It has to be more about walking the walk in order for people to bother to listen to me talking the talk. And churches and their congregants need to consider that as well.

A church is a community that someone can choose to join. Within that community, there will be behavioral expectations. If people within the community say one thing but do another, there is no sense of credibility. If people harp on behavioral minutia but ignore glaring interpersonal abuses, there is no sense of proportion.

I have repeatedly focused on the simple messages of Jesus. Love God and love each other. Be a peacemaker. Be humble. Take care of those in need. And if you do not do another thing, I think you are doing fine. Better than fine.

The reason we need to gather together to do this is not because we should be looking down our noses at one another. We should be joining together because sometimes, often times, life is confusing and it would be great to have others around us to help navigate the confusion or to have some company amidst all the confusion.

The apostles were those who were sent forth. Not because they were perfect. Not because they were the best speakers or the best scholars or the best anything. They were sent forth because they believed. They believed and they were willing to explain that belief to others.

We are not typically out there proselytizing in any traditional sense. But that is where walking the walk comes in handy. When someone sees someone out in the world caring for others, serving the community, and in other ways living out the lessons of Jesus, it is a far better presentation of the Gospel than anything I have to say. Because all the pretty words in the world do not feed a hungry child or comfort someone ill or injured. All the high-minded Christian moralizing means nothing when the person in question is self-centered or greedy or unkind.

Being sent forth today is less about teaching the New Testament than it is being a testament to what Jesus wanted us to be. Loving people filling the world with kindness and decency. That is the job that we really need to do. That is the job at the heart of ministry and that is the task followers of Jesus have chosen. So, my friends, go forth and be kind. Be kind to each other and be kind to yourselves.  Amen.