God Will You See Yous Through

by the Rev. Sarah Buteux

May 17, 2015,

Rising Sun, Year B

Acts one:15-26

Some passages in the Bible are but and then weird.

Today is Rising Sunday, but I've preached on that before, and then I thought I'd make a go with this other passage in Acts, and notwithstanding I take to say, the more you go over information technology and really think about it, the stranger this little episode gets.

For those of you merely tuning in, "Rise" refers to Jesus' last day here upon the earth.

Co-ordinate to the Book of Acts, Jesus was "taken upwards earlier (the) very optics," of his disciples – presumably to heaven – taken up in a cloud much like Grizabella in the musical CATS… after which the disicples all went back to Jerusalem to wait for the Holy Spirit whose arrival we will celebrate next Sunday with Pentecost.

The passage we only heard today takes place between those two major events, then nosotros are already in a strange space. This is a liminal time, a time in-between. Jesus is gone just the Holy Spirit has not yet come. The disciples are in what y'all might phone call a belongings design.

They are hunkered down in the upper room once again, spending most of their time in prayer together as they wait…and look…and wait – because that is precisely what Jesus told them to exercise – wait…wait…await – until Peter just can't take it anymore and gets information technology into his head that it's time to do something.

It would seem that the whole Judas thing …has really been weighing on him, and he'south decided that not merely do they need to replace Judas – they need to replace Judas now. Why? I don't know.

Maybe Peter simply wanted them to be ready – have a full complement of 12 disciples on hand– and then they can become correct down to business when the Holy Spirit finally comes.

Or, perchance maybe the pigsty Judas had left was too painful a reminder of Peter's own expose.

Maybe they had 12 jerseys, one for each of the disciples, and information technology was weird seeing the one that belonged to Judas just hanging at that place on the wall. I don't know.

Whatever the reason, it's obvious that with nothing ameliorate to practise, Peter has been mulling this over for awhile, worrying the problem with his listen the fashion you might worry a sore molar with your natural language.

And, as so ofttimes happens when you do something like that, not only has the problem grown in his heed, so take some very foreign rationalizations.

Take his apply of the Bible, for example. In his quest to justify making a motility to supercede Judas ASAP, Peter begins by referring to two psalms:

Psalm 69:25 'Allow his homestead go desolate, and let there be no one to live in it'; and

Psalm 109:8 'Permit another take his position of overseer.'

…two verses from ii separate psalms, neither of which, every bit far as I tin can tell, accept annihilation at all to practice with Judas or anything at all to practice with each other for that matter.

Honestly, these verses seem plucked at random to make a bespeak, and not a very strong i at that.

Now Peter is of course not the first person to have scripture completely out of context to pursue his own agenda, but it'southward a weak beginning to say the least.

However, what's really strange is the criteria he then puts along for this new disciple, that he be: "one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among u.s.a., beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us."

Now this is weird because every bit far as we tin tell none of the disciples were with Jesus at his baptism. He just hadn't called any of them all the same.

Well, whether Peter is making whatsoever sense or not it would seem that everyone in that upper room is equally bored every bit he is, so they talk amongst themselves and out of the 120 people present (that upper room is a lot bigger than I thought it was) they selection 2:

Joseph chosen Barsabbas, who was too known every bit Justus and

Mattias, who apparently was only ever known equally Mattias

and then – THEN! – they pray.

Did you catch that?

Very important conclusion to be made here and they plainly want God to weigh in, but they don't trouble God with the decision making until they themselves have whittled the candidates downward from 120 to ii. I remember that's kind of funny.

120-two.

Only then practise they lift up their eyes to sky and say: "Lord, you lot know anybody's heart. Testify usa which i of these ii you have chosen…"

And then … exercise they expect for a sign? Do they lookout man for God? Practise they mind for that still small vocalization?

No, they cast lots, they draw straws, they scroll the die and lo and behold, "the lot fell on Mattias; and he was added to the eleven…"

Problem solved. Case Closed. Thank you exist to God.

Weird. Right?

O.K., at present why did I merely lead you through all that in such corking detail? (Some might even say, "excruciating detail." Well, I'll tell you why.

I highlight all this weirdness because I desire you to run into that fifty-fifty amidst the disciples, there was some pretty deep seated defoliation about:

how God works here in the world,

how God works in us and through united states of america,

how God speaks to united states and guides us,

whether or not God has a program for each and every one of u.s.,

and how precisely we might understand or fit into that plan.

I want you to meet how dislocated they were because I think their defoliation, when it came to matters of discernment, probably mirrors our own more than we'd care to acknowledge.

Every bit people of faith I think many of us are notwithstanding as conflicted about God's office in our lives, as we are confused nearly how to discern God'due south will for our lives.

I know there are plenty of Christians out there who will tell yous that they simply believe in God'south sovereignty, that God's going to do what God's going to do, that God made Judas beguile Jesus just as surely as God made that lot autumn to Mattias, and if that helps them sleep at dark, well, great for them.

Only for the rest of us, I think it's still an open up question, a thing of some consternation, something we do non fully empathise and probably never will.

I recall many of us pray and pray difficult, hoping against hope for a sign. We search the scriptures. Nosotros talk things over with wise, spiritual people whom we trust. We wonder where God'southward will ends and our free will begins.

And not for nothing but we worry. We worry that somehow we might mess things upward. We stress about the choices nosotros make. And nosotros wonder how or if you can e'er really know precisely what it is God wants you to do, if in fact God actually wants you to do annihilation at all.

***

Well, information technology will probably come as no surprise to y'all, that this used to stress me out a smashing deal.

I grew up in a church that believed very strongly in the sovereignty of God. I was told over and over again that God had a plan for my life, that God cared intimately about the choices I made, that the answers to all my questions were out there and I could detect them if I just had enough religion.

And I'll tell you right now, I prayed nearly everything. I prayed well-nigh what I should wear, where I should eat, who I should talk to, what I should say.

(If God really does hear all our prayers than I may well be why the world is in such bad shape right now because all that chatter may well have driven God crazy. Kidding. I think.)

But in that location was one very significant moment for me as a young woman that actually shifted my agreement of how all this works. I was in the midst of choosing which college I should attend – a very big decision when y'all're a teenager – and I was and so tied upward in knots that I went to consult my pastor.

For goodness knows how long I poured out before him the pros and cons of each option, my earnest hopes and my deepest fears and finally, finally, finally he stopped me and he said the most delightfully subversive, radically liberating matter anyone had ever said to me up until that betoken in my young life. My Conservative Baptist pastor leaned across the great wide desk in his book-lined report and said, "Sarah, sometimes God lets us brand our own decisions."

WHAT!?!?!?

The truth of that statement hit me like a ton of bricks fifty-fifty as it slipped the knots of anxiety that had me trussed up like a Christmas goose.

"Sometimes, God lets us make our own decisions?!?!?"

Seriously!?!?!?

"Sometimes, God lets united states of america make our own decisions."

"Well I'll be…"

Thanks to those kind and wise words I accept come to understand that the choices before united states are not e'er a thing of right or wrong, good or evil, God's manner or the highway.

Sometimes they actually are simply choices: choices that need to exist fabricated, choices that will lead us down different paths into the lives of different people in order that we might practice dissimilar things all to the glory of God. Not right or wrong –paths, people, things – but different paths, people, things.

From that moment on I came to empathise that though we might mess things upwardly in the moment and make choices that bear on us for years to come, in the end, it is not possible for us to mess upwards God'southward ultimate plan for us, considering ultimately, in the cease, all God really wants is united states of america.

And I believe God will wait, for all eternity if need exist, before he'll ever requite up on reconciling with whatever one of united states of america. I believe God will wait, forever if necessary, for every last one of her children to come home.

***

So to sum up, you my friends volition make millions of choices in this life. You brand hundreds, maybe even thousands of decisions everyday: decisions that will result you, that will upshot your family unit, your customs, this church. We accept a lot of decisions coming up to make about this church. And although I do believe God volition be with is in the midst of every last one of those decisions, I don't think that God has Her ultimate plan for all of creation staked out on the outcome of any one of them.

The truth is that sometimes you will feel God's presence guiding you and sometimes yous won't. Sometimes God will feel as close as the beating of your heart and at other times will seem as afar as She probably did to the disciples dorsum in those days between the Ascent and Pentecost.

I guess my bulletin for you this forenoon is that you tin relax either way, because God does know your eye, and no matter how badly you lot spiral up any of this or how spectacularly you succeed, God is not going to let you become. God will meet you on the other side of any and every determination you brand with the hope of cartoon you e'er deeper into God'southward love.

God will detect ways where there seems to be no fashion. And if all else fails remember that God has the power to redeem even the stupidest, saddest, nigh sinful things you do, because that is the nature of God.

Yous know, we never hear about Mattias once more. Peter and his accomplice idea they had a pretty air-tight method worked out for picking a new disciple, and perhaps they did. Perhaps Mattias went on to do swell things, and maybe he didn't. Peradventure they were right. Peradventure they were wrong. We don't know.

What I can tell you is that the human in Acts who will go on to do the near to advance the gospel is non even on their radar even so, nor is he someone they ever would accept called.

Non only has he never met or followed Jesus, he is, at that very moment busy preparing to hunt downward and destroy anyone who volition. His proper name is Saul, soon to become Paul, and no ane but God even sees him coming.

The good news is that whether or not the disciples were right or wrong, God remained with them anyhow. The good news is that the Holy Spirit notwithstanding came. And the all-time news of all is that that same Spirit remains fifty-fifty still. Our job is to tap into that Spirit every bit best we can in order to practice the all-time we can, trusting that God alone tin and will brand all things beautiful in his time. Amen? Amen.