Sermon

May 28, 2006

A Sermon Preached at St. Stephen’s on May 28, 2006, by the Rev. Cork Tarplee

I did my field training in parish ministry at the Church of the Resurrection in Alexandria , Virginia . Resurrection was a major church in that large diocese with an unusual claim to fame: the leadership group of the church, the Vestry, were chosen by drawing the names of parishioners out of a hat. Now, in most large congregations there are bitter contests for leadership roles. There are several candidates for each position, and in some places candidates make promises and campaign as if they were in the running for mayor. Not so Resurrection. There, they called all the members of the parish aged 16 and older, asking if they’d be willing to serve, and the name of everyone who said ‘yes’ was put in the hat. At the annual parish meeting a little kid drew out the number of names they needed to fill the positions and the parish elected them unanimously. Around the Diocese of Virginia this system was a matter for much wonderment. “Don’t you get some real duds on the Vestry when you do it that way,” asked a neighboring rector. Nope. The truth is that Resurrection’s Vestry, chosen entirely at random, worked very well.

The inspiration for this quirky way of doing things comes from our first reading this morning: the selection of Matthias to become an apostle. Having lost one apostle and wanting to keep the number up to the traditional 12, the survivors drew the name of the chosen one out of a hat. The record shows that the eligible parties were the ones who’d followed Jesus around watching and listening. Of these, two must have seemed pretty faithful: Joseph and Matthias. Their names went into the hat, and Matthias won. One wonders a bit just how much difference it makes who won. Both of these men are pretty obscure. Apart from speculation, the words we read from Acts this morning are absolutely all we know about these men. Neither, apparently, did anything that moved anyone to write home about them.

And except for inspiring an unusual method of choosing leadership in one Episcopal Church, this passage of scripture might just be a historical footnote—but I happen to think it has an important message for all of us. We get focused on great names and important positions. Our heroes and villains in life tend to be larger than life figures and in comparison, we ourselves, seem pretty unimportant—neither capable of accomplishing anything very good nor of doing much harm. The witness of the Bible suggests otherwise. When it came to picking two of the top leaders of the emerging Church, the available choices were apparently interchangeable. In the end, it didn’t much matter who got the great title and position. In the end, the only thing that mattered about Joseph or Matthias was whether they lived their lives with integrity and love.

Jesus seemed to understand that this was the important thing about all of his followers. In our Gospel this morning, Jesus prays at the end of his life for those whom he would leave behind. He asks God to protect them, of course, but more strikingly he asks God to “sanctify them in the truth.” Scholars explain that the Greek word here translated “sanctify,” means “set them aside to accomplish God’s work in the world.” I’d further paraphrase that to read “make them people who make a difference.” Martin Luther King said, “I believe that the unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.” What this world needs is not great names, but people who live their lives with integrity and unconditional love.

This puts a tremendous burden on all of us. What we do matters a lot--even those of us do who don’t have great titles and influential positions change the world for better or for worse. What we vote for, what we speak out for, how we conduct our lives is important. Like Joseph and Matthias, we’ve all been following Jesus, watching and listening. Like them, titled or not, we are apostles: people who carry the Good News into the world. There are people whom we meet for whom all they will ever know of Christianity will be the way we live our lives.

The story of Joseph and Matthias is also remarkable good news for all of us. Each of us is greater than we know. We are the people Jesus prayed about in the Gospel this morning, the ones he wanted to keep safe, the ones he thought were so wonderful. We may not have great names or titles. We may be ordinary people. But in God’s household there is no way we could ever matter more to God than we do right now. Whether we win contests or elections or ever have our names drawn from hats, we are the chosen ones, God’s beloved. May we have the grace to live our lives in that knowledge.

AMEN