14 May 2024 Acts 1:15-26
“The lot fell on Matthias; and he was added to the eleven apostles.”
Acts 1:23
After Jesus ascended into heaven, the disciples appointed a successor to Judas. There was some urgency, it appears, because it was the very first thing they did. Like a true committee, they couldn’t make up their minds, but came up with two nominees – Barsabbas Justus and Matthias. Then, after the apostolic version of Rock-Paper-Scissors, they chose Matthias.
Then Matthias disappeared from the Bible. He is never mentioned again.
It isn’t clear what the Twelve expected after that, but they were several years that were full of very rapid change. At first they clearly expected that their movement would attract Jews, which explains the urgency they felt to return the number of Apostles to twelve – it was a number that all Jews would understand and find meaningful. But then there was a dispute about food. They were living in something like a commune and some felt that Aramaic-speaking members were getting a greater share of food than Greek-speaking members. So the Apostles decided to do something brand new – the created a new office, Deacons, who would oversee the food distribution, and all the Deacons were Greeks. One of the Deacons, Stephen, who is never portrayed supervising food but was always about picking fights with the Jewish authorities, preached a very inflammatory sermon which incited a persecution of the infant church, and they were scattered.
So they improvised again. Some believers fled into Samaria, and started a new mission there. Jews had an ancient beef with the Samaritans, so this outreach was viewed as radical in the extreme. Then, their worst enemy, Saul of Tarsus, had a conversion experience on the Damascus Road and became a believer. Nobody knew what to do with him, so they persuaded him to return to his boyhood home in Asia Minor. Not for long, however, because some Greeks in Antioch were converted to the new faith, and even came up with a new name for their movement – Christians. They needed a leader who spoke Greek, so Saul was called away from his hometown to Antioch, whereupon they got the idea of sending him and his buddy Barnabas on a mission trip to Barnabas’ hometown in Cyprus, all of this without so much as a word to the Apostles in Jerusalem, who said they were in charge, but seemed always to be responding to decisions made by other people who were too impatient to think about the chain of command.
Around this time the Apostle James (brother of the Apostle John) was killed in a persecution, the only Apostle whose death is recorded in the New Testament. There is no indication that anyone was elected to replace him because it was pretty clear by this time that the Christian movement was not completely or even mostly a Jewish thing anymore. Fewer people were around who felt strongly about the number twelve.
Barnabas and Saul (who now used the Greek name Paul because he and Barnabas were spending so much time converting Greeks) came back from their trip full of news about new Greek converts, which so upset the Apostles, who still thought they were in charge, that they had to call a big meeting in Jerusalem, where, to no one’s surprise except perhaps the Apostles, the Gentile mission was officially authorized, just in time for Paul to set out on a new trip to convert more Greeks.
Matthias was certainly around for all this, but events were moving so fast that many new Christians may have forgotten that he was the first change the new Church had made.
The picture of the earliest Church that emerges from the Acts of the Apostles is one that was always ready to make radical changes in the face of rapidly changing events. The Church at its best has always done this. It is how we created the New Testament; survived persecution; founded new religious orders to evangelize new places, and a few old ones; created new institutions like universities and hospitals to meet the needs of a changing world; and made saints enough to inspire people around the globe.
Matthias was the first of those changes, a saint that reminds us that we have to be running hard all the time just to keep up with the Holy Spirit who is always calling us to keep up and not be afraid.
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