Seventh Sunday of Easter, May 16th, A+D
2021
Our Redeemer and Our Savior’s Lutheran Churches
Custer and Hill City, South Dakota
Conscripted for Jesus: The Christian Adventure
In 1942, as
WWII was just beginning, my 19-year-old father was working in the shipyards in
Portland. He was helping the war effort
as a civilian, all the while he regularly touched based with the folks back
home in Powder River County, Montana, following the draft board process. He wanted to know when his number was about
to come up. When the day came that he
was about to be drafted, he went down to the local Navy recruiter and enlisted,
exchanging the construction of warships for manning the guns on one, a
destroyer, to be precise. Dad wanted to
enlist in his preferred branch of the military, rather than be conscripted and
leave the branch selection to a lottery.
The Apostle
Matthias didn’t get the same choices as my dad.
One minute Matthias is just one of the disciples of Jesus, marveling at
the Resurrection and Ascension of his Lord.
Then Peter gets up and starts talking, and before he knew it, Matthias
was ‘conscripted with the Eleven Apostles,’ declared to be a foundation stone
of the Church of Jesus Christ. Our
translation says Matthias was ‘numbered with’ the Eleven. You could also say ‘enrolled among,’ or
drafted, or conscripted. Not necessarily
against his will, but not by his own choice, either. Matthias was enrolled on the list and put to
work as the latest member of that most special band of brothers, the Apostles
of Christ, who would take the Gospel to the ends of the earth. Matthias was conscripted into the great
Christian Adventure.
What might we
learn from the story of the conscription of Matthias? We should not expect that the ways of worldly
organizations always apply to the Church.
For the Church has its own way, the way of faith and love, motivated and
guided by the Spirit of Christ.
One lesson
would be that we can trust God, even on big things. In fact, the bigger the decision or choice,
the more we should let God lead, even if it seems sketchy, even if it makes us
nervous to give up control. The
conscription of Matthias was an interesting mix of following the rules and
letting the Spirit lead. The Eleven
remaining Apostles knew they should fill Judas’s place, and they knew the
prerequisites to be an Apostle. The man
chosen needed to have been a follower of Jesus since the Baptism of John, and a
witness of His death and resurrection.
But when it came time to choose between the two qualified candidates put
forward by the company of believers, they left the final choice to God, by
casting lots. Which is like flipping a
coin, or drawing straws. Picking a name
out of a hat.
You see, the
Apostles knew that the testimony of God is greater than the testimony and
opinions of men. He who has saved us
through the life, death and resurrection of His Son will certainly not abandon
us in such momentous decisions. We will
never have to choose an Apostle. But
perhaps we can take away from this example the understanding that we don’t have
to control every little detail in the affairs of Christ’s Church. It’s not necessary for us to arrive at the
perfect solution by our own understanding.
Rather we need to follow God’s clear directions, and trust He will also
guide us in less clear matters. Follow
the general principles we know God has given us, and then pray for the Lord to
guide us. And He will.
We don’t know
what Matthias was thinking or feeling during this process. I don’t think it’s unlikely that his prayers
in the moment were that the other guy, Barsabbas, also called Justus, would be
picked instead of him. The history of
the Church is littered with stories of men avoiding various calls to
service. Moses made a bunch of lame
excuses at the Burning Bush. Jonah took
a ship sailing in the opposite direction of the place that God had called him
to go. St. Martin of Tours is said to
have hidden in a barn in a vain effort to avoid being named Bishop, but
cackling geese gave him away. One pastor
I know plugged his ears to numerous suggestions he received to go to seminary,
until God made his job unbearable, and he finally gave up and went. God made all these reluctant men into the
useful preachers and servants He wanted them to be.
But it’s not
just with prophets, apostles and preachers that we see men, and women, avoiding
God’s call to service. We see the same
phenomenon when we try to fill other roles in the local church, don’t we? The perennial struggle to find Sunday School
teachers, fill boards and councils, staff a VBS. Each of us has a responsibility to serve, to
play our part in the life of the congregation.
We all need to help one another.
But this responsibility is also a privilege and source of joy. Playing whatever part, great or small, in the
life of Christ’s Church is the Christian Adventure. Sadly, we too often think and talk about
serving within the congregation with dread, as if it were punishment. And so the requests for volunteers in the
bulletin go unanswered another week.
So, why
should a Christian say yes to a call to serve in the Church? Well, to be clear, service in the Church is
not about gaining fame and popularity.
The Bible never mentions Matthias by name again. In fact, the specific missionary work of most
of the Apostles is unmentioned. The only
Apostles we learn much about are Peter, James, John, and Paul. This doesn’t mean the other Apostles didn’t
do great things. They certainly
did. The Christian Church exploded from
those original 120 believers, and all the Apostles certainly played an
important part.
By the power
of the Holy Spirit working through the Word of the Apostles, Christianity grew
from a tiny break-away group of Jews to becoming the dominant faith in the
world. In the meantime, the Church
changed the world for the better in many ways.
Still today, for all our problems, God continues to work through His
people to snatch souls from the Kingdom of Darkness. God inspired the authors of the New Testament
to focus on just a few of the Apostles.
Which is not a problem. The
reward of the other Apostles was not to have a lot written about them. No, same as for Peter and Paul, their reward
was not fame. The Apostles’ reward was
and is Jesus, to know Him and be part of His Kingdom, and also to have the
privilege to work in God’s mission and bear witness about Christ, until He
called them to Himself. This is the true
reward of every child of God.
Jesus talks
in our Gospel about His joy being fulfilled in the disciples. Being a part of His ongoing mission and
ministry is a big part of how the joy of Jesus is fulfilled in us. Because saving souls is what gives joy to
Jesus and all His angels. Being involved
in the ongoing movement of the Church will give you joy, even in the midst of
evil and suffering. This was God’s will
for Matthias, and all the Apostles, and it is still His will for all
Christians. He wants you to have a share
in the joy of ministry and mission, of being there when God reels in another
one. There is nothing better. God gives us no guarantees that any one of us
will see spectacular results. Sometimes
the work is hard, and the mission goes slowly.
But we’ll never see anything if we aren’t involved.
I’m not
saying we all need to be missionaries or pastors or evangelists. Maybe some of you should. But God works through all His
children, wherever they are, as they live their lives. God works through us as we serve in our
individual vocations, our roles and relationships of life, all the while being
a faithful follower of Jesus. This is
the Christian adventure.
So the
adventure of Christian life is not far away from any of us. Christian adventure doesn’t just happen
across the ocean; it is all around us, in our daily lives. And the source of proper Christian
adventurousness is being first and foremost a well-fed member of His Body, the
Church. A spirit of joyful service
starts in and is sustained by receiving for ourselves God’s ongoing love and
forgiveness from our Resurrected and Ascended Savior.
For God’s
love and forgiveness give us joy, and the freedom and humility to serve. God’s love and forgiveness also keep our
service Christ-focused. Trusting in
Christ Jesus, we have joy, and we have this confidence toward God: if we ask
anything according to his will, He hears us.
Including if we ask Him to show us how we might serve in His
Church.
The joy of
Jesus is why the Psalmist writes, I am happier to be a (lowly) doorkeeper in
the House of the Lord than to sit (in luxury and leisure) in the tents of the
wicked. Psalm 84:10. Or as St. Paul
says, I consider all things to be loss, mere rubbish, compared to the
surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Philippians 3:8.
How did
Matthias, or any of the Apostles, do the tremendous things they were called
to? They did it filled with the joy and
confidence that Jesus Christ is risen today, and that He is the King of the
Universe, ascended to the Father’s right hand, where He rules over all things,
for us, His Church. The Apostles fulfilled
their callings in the unity that the Holy Spirit gives, the unity Jesus prayed
for His Apostles, and for us. The Holy
Spirit creates unity when believers pay close attention to the Word, which
delivers all the gifts of Christ to us, and then sends us out into the world,
to be the Church in motion, loving our neighbors, and ready to give the reason
for the hope that we have.
Like all
congregations, we have needs to fill. We
would benefit from more people accepting roles of service. From intercessory prayer to ushers to taking
care of the building to encouraging each other and greeting visitors, there are
ways for each of us to serve. There are
opportunities for us to care better for each other within the congregation, and
opportunities for us to share the Gospel more effectively in our
community. (We here at OSLC could hardly
ask for a better location for outreach than we have here in Hill City. The question is, how can we best maximize
it?) (So many people visit and then want
to move to Custer S.D. How might we take
advantage of the opportunities God is bringing us at Our Redeemer?)
As we head
into the summer and think about next fall, I think maybe we need a “Matthias
Initiative, Conscripted in the Joy of Jesus.”
What I mean is a joy-based effort to discover how God would use all of
us for His purposes. We won’t use guilt,
that is poisonous. Our salvation doesn’t
depend on our service, we aren’t saved by our works. Rather, our service depends upon and flows from
our salvation, the free gift of new life in Christ. Like Matthias, may the Holy Spirit help us to
marvel at the life, death, resurrection and ascension of our Savior Jesus
Christ, the King of the Universe, who came, not to be served, but to serve, and
to give His life as a ransom for many, including for you.
God grant you joy in knowing Jesus, and joy in serving
in His Name, Amen.
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