Seventh Sunday of Easter
May 12, 2024
Acts 1:15-17, 21-26

This last Thursday, one of our families here at Trinity welcomed the birth of their child. A true gift for all of us on this Mother’s Day. Now every birth, every newborn child, ushers in a whole array of emotions. There is joy, and gratitude, and hopefulness. Even people who have no connection at all with a family that has given birth get happy about babies.

And yet, we have to acknowledge, that with newborns there is a whole other set of emotions. Sleepless nights make us grouchy. We can be nervous, anxious to make sure they are growing healthy and strong. There is sheer exhaustion, when you hear that piercing wail of a newborn in the middle of the night, and the bargaining that takes place between parents, about who is going to get up this time. So many emotions.

Emotions are what make us human. Deeply embedded, hard-wired within us, these emotions help us make connections, help us make meaning. And sometimes, even a single event, can raise up for for us equal and opposite emotions, all at once. Being a human is terribly confusing. 

That’s how I want us to read this lesson from the Acts of the Apostles. For it, too, is laden with a emotion. It’s just a few weeks after Easter, after Jesus was raised from the dead. The followers of Jesus, at that time just about one hundred and twenty people, come together. They have come come together to select a new leader, a new person to take the place of Judas, the one who had betrayed Jesus to death. 

Imagine that scene. Imagine the raw, human emotion flowing through the room. Peter has the boldness to stand up, though everyone in the room knew that Peter had denied Jesus on that night Jesus was handed over to death. Peter had been scared, and had given in to self-preservation. But so had the rest of them. In their own way, most of them had denied Jesus, too. Imagine that shame. Imagine what it would have been like to be that one disciple who had stayed with Jesus all the way to the cross. He’s there in the room with Peter now. Imagine what was going through his mind. He might be thinking, “Can I trust Peter? Can I trust any of them?” Imagine how wary, on edge, he must have been. Imagine what it must have been like for Mary, the mother of Jesus, to be there. Though Jesus had been raised from the dead, imagine the trauma she had experienced watching her own son go through that torturous death. And now, now they are drawing straws, casting lots, to see who will take the place of Judas. Judas, the one who had betrayed all of them? Who would want that job? Can you feel the raw emotion in the room? They are joyful that the Lord has been raised from the dead and they are selecting a new leader to spread this good news; and they are burdened with the memory of why they have to even select a new leader in the first place.

We can create this idealized, sanitized vision of the early church. How they were all of one heart and mind. But put yourself there and imagine the human emotions surging through that place. Worry. Distrust. Embarrassment. Disappointment. Confusion. I imagine the disciples showing up for that gathering carrying baggage, suitcases full of pathos. Just as I see it today. We all walk into this church carrying those same suitcases, the emotional baggage from a lifetime of being human. Both the joy and the pain. The intricacies of human relationships, even church relationships, and everything that can come with it. We must not deceive ourselves. Those feelings are real. This is what it means to be human.

And that is what I appreciate the most from this story about those early disciples. With all that surging through the room, Peter does not deny it. He doesn’t stand up and give a quick sermon with some lame jokes before moving on to the collection. No, Peter utters some of the truest words found in all of holy scripture. In that tense moment, with all that going on in the room, as they pick a replacement for Judas, Peter prays, “Lord, you know everyone’s heart.” Lord, you know everyone’s heart. 

Peter is drawing upon the most ancient stories of scripture here. The Lord God knew Abraham and Sarah’s worry when they could not have a child, but  God also knew their hope that they would pass along their faith. The Lord God knew how Moses felt, when he believed he would fail the Israelites, but God also knew the hope Moses had to lead them out from slavery. The Lord God knew King David’s brokenness and capacity for indulgence, but God also knew David’s faithfulness. Even Jesus, on the night before he died is torn apart with his human emotions. He commits himself to his Father’s will, even though he does not wish to undergo suffering and death. The Lord God knows everyone’s hearts; and the human heart is never one thing.

And so Peter offers all this up to God. Not because the human heart is an easy offering, but because it is the only offering that God asks of us.

So then the disciples draw straws, they cast lots to pick a replacement – Justus or Matthias. Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn’t run church nowadays like this. We say to God, “Lord, you know everything,” and then just roll some dice; committee meetings would go a lot faster. 

Jokes aside, this is a critical statement, an outward and visible sign of their inward and spiritual place. For while they were all dealing with their own stuff, their own pathos, there is also hope. There is always hope. And courage. And confidence that God is not done with the church yet. Peter and the others could have easily walked out that door and never bothered to name a replacement, never bothered to preach the gospel, never bothered to do what Jesus told them to do – to love their neighbors and heal the sick and help the poor and bind the brokenhearted. The simple act of choosing someone to take the place of Judas is proof, proof that they had other things going on in their hearts, too. Resilience. Fortitude. Joy. Fidelity. 

The same things that bring us back, week after week. We offer to God our whole hearts – the baggage from our past and the longing for something better in the future. That is what Matthias represents. And though we never hear about him in the rest of holy scriptures, Matthias is that symbol to the Church for all time. Though they had all witnessed the death of Jesus, they were also committing themselves to a shared future of ministry. The Lord knows everyones’ hearts. 

On this Mother’s Day, we think about that newborn child, and we sense all those human emotions. The joy, and the worry; the gratitude, and the concerns. And that’s how we can look at those disciples as they gathered with Peter to select a new leader. Something new was being born among them; the newborn church of Jesus. The joy that Jesus had risen from the dead; the worry about what they had done to him. The gratitude that they were gathered again, the concerns they had about each other. And that, that grab bag of the human heart, that is what they offer to God because the Lord knows their hearts anyway. And, I pray, that is what we offer to God.

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known,
and from you no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our
hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may
perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy Name;
through Christ our Lord. Amen.