I think this is kind of a silly one, but it was fun to preach. Posted partially for Mamala who was tending to little she-who-is during the sermon today.

The scripture tells the story of the disciples choosing a person to replace Judas among the 12…

Acts 1:15-17, 21-26
In those days Peter stood up among the believers (together the crowd numbered about one hundred twenty persons) and said, “Friends, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit through David foretold concerning Judas, who became a guide for those who arrested Jesus–for he was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry.

So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us–one of these must become a witness with us to his resurrection.”

So they proposed two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also known as Justus, and Matthias. Then they prayed and said, “Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.” And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias; and he was added to the eleven apostles.

I need to say something right off the bat: this is not a sermon about Judas: despite the fact that Judas has been quite the man-about-town lately—what with his very own gospel, a National Geographic special, and countless magazine articles. I haven’t yet read the gospel of Judas in its entirety, but my understanding is that Judas is treated much more sympathetically there than in any of the gospels that made it into the Bible, the idea being that Judas’s betrayal of Jesus was no surprise to Jesus, but something that they had planned all along. In that sense Judas is not a criminal but a bit of a hero.

The adult spiritual growth team is planning to offer a Sunday School class sometime next year that will take up the gospel of Judas, and gnosticism in general, and will look at how and why certain gospels made the cut and others did not. All I want to say about Judas right now is, I think Luke here in the book of Acts presents a balanced view of Judas: Peter says that Judas “turned aside” from his ministry as Jesus’ follower and went his own way. His actions are a betrayal of Jesus, not something that the two of them cooked up together. At the same time, however, Peter acknowledges that God worked through Judas (even through Judas!) to accomplish God’s purposes.

The main reason I’m not particularly interested in Judas today, however, is because I think most of us have more in common with the two candidates to replace him: Joseph, called Barsabbas, and Matthias.

With Judas out of the picture, there is a slot open among the twelve. And after some prayer and the casting of lots, which was an ancient way of discerning the will of God, Matthias is chosen. Thus Matthias goes down in biblical history as one of the inner circle, one of the twelve disciples. By contrast, Barsabbas is so utterly forgotten that when I mentioned the title of the sermon to someone this week he said, “Don’t you mean Barabbas?”