Reading Luke/Acts Together #51
Acts 1:15-26 weaves together the sorry story of a tragic death and the tidying up of some early church business. It’s always this way in the life of the Church, and in your life. Big, sad, joyful, unforgettable moments, and then just the drab getting done what you have to get done.
I felt a little jolt when Luke offhandedly tells us that 120 people gathered. We had a dozen disciples and some women – but then 120? Mind you, Paul tells us (1 Corinthians 15) that Jesus appeared to around 500 people, so I can’t decide if I should be disappointed only 120 came or impressed.
120 is a multiple of 12, as Luke always seems to play on numbers, especially with the meaningful symbolism of 12 representing the tribes of Israel. For Luke, Christianity is the culmination of all Israel was about all those centuries. We need to be delicate in talking about this, affirming it while still affirming the ongoing existence of and our friendship with the Jewish community.
The business is to fill the vacancy in “the twelve” in the wake of Judas’s death. How did he die? Matthew 27:5 tell us he hanged himself. Luke – and I picture him walking around Jerusalem, interviewing people who’d remember – reports that Judas had bought a field, fell, and he body somehow burst open… Maybe you can make that fit with the results of hanging, or maybe (like so much in Scripture) we simply have 2 differing recollections of what unfolded. Judas acted to secure a field, but didn’t live to see the fruit of his action – as in his betrayal: Judas acted to hand Jesus over, but didn’t live to see the fruit of that action, namely the salvation of the world!
Luke quotes from Psalm 109, which mentions taking over someone else’s responsibility. What was Judas’s? The treasurer? Somehow they narrow down the possibilities to 2: Joseph Barsabbas (known as Justus) and Matthias. Their qualifications? Only one: to be a witness to the resurrection of Jesus.
And that word “witness”? The Greek is martus, which means not merely having seen something (“I witnessed what happened”), but bearing witness, as in speaking up in court – and in those days, speaking up for Jesus and his resurrection could cost you plenty. Hence, the second nuance of martus - from which we derive the word “martyr.” Stephen and James (whose deaths as martyrs are reported in Acts 7:59 and 12:2) are the first of many martyrs to come. Their courage and commitment remind me of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words: “If you haven’t discovered something you’re willing to die for, then you aren’t fit to live.”
The church chose, not by voting after interviewing them, but by casting lots – resorting to an Old Testament custom that would baffle us. From texts like Exodus 28:30 and Leviticus 27:21, we learn of precious stones called Urim and Thummim, which could be cast to the ground and, depending on how they turned up (maybe like a coin flip before a ballgame?) could divine truth, or render a decision. Were they resorting to chance, like rolling dice? Their sense would have been that God controlled how the lots fell, so they were seeking a discernment higher than their own. What if we chose our church leaders, or our pastors this way?
Of course, if we’ve tracked the whole story of Luke/Acts thus far, we get the sense that they had no need to wring their hands and worry about who got chosen. God uses any and everybody, especially the unlikely, the untrained and unskilled. It’s God. It’s God work. Matthias? He’ll do just fine. We never hear from him again in the story – so even among the early apostles, he must have been fairly undistinguished.