Acts 1:12-26
Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day's journey away. And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room, where they were staying, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James. All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.
In those days Peter stood up among the brothers (the company of persons was in all about 120) and said, “Brothers, the Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus. For he was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry.” (Now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness, and falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out. And it became known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the field was called in their own language Akeldama, that is, Field of Blood.) “For it is written in the Book of Psalms,
“‘May his camp become desolate,
and let there be no one to dwell in it’;
and
“‘Let another take his office.’
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 men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.” And they put forward two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also called Justus, and Matthias. And they prayed and said, “You, Lord, who know the hearts of all, show 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 numbered with the eleven apostles.
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Today in the church year, we're in a bit of an odd place. We're in between the ascension, and Pentecost. On Thursday, Jesus ascended into heaven, and we celebrated that joyous moment, he is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. And yet, in the drama that we go through every year, the Holy Spirit has not yet come to the church. And so we get sort of a bit of weirdness. That's why our Pascall candle is out. And yeah, it's, I'm not wearing red for the day of Pentecost. And what that gives us an opportunity in the church year is to read about that story in between Jesus's Ascension into Heaven and the coming of the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts, and talk about what the church did after Judas left the ministry. It's an interesting question right? Now. Can you imagine being in the apostles place? They are looking around with the other believers number was about 120 At that time, and they go, we only have 12. What do we do with Judas? He's gone now. What is next? And they decide that they need to replace him. Because the number of apostles is supposed to be 12. And we could talk about the process. I kinda like the idea of, of casting lots to see who you who the next pastor he gets to be, can you imagine? But what I'd like to talk about today, is what the apostles did with Judas. Right? The fledgling Christian church just went through one of the greatest scandals amongst their pastors, ever. An apostle, betrayed their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ and sent him to the cross. What do you do with Judas? As a congregation? Maybe about our size? Right? And it raises a question then, for us many 1000 years later. What do you do when a pastor screws up? Right? That's an important question. What do you do when the guy disqualifies himself from the office? Just like Judas? Let's take a look. I think the apostles help us to see. So the first question I think people have when a pastor behaves badly, what do we do with the memory of his ministry? Right? What do we do with all the things that have happened in the past? Well, the apostles give us a clue. When we look at the words that they say about Judas. He says, he shared in our ministry, and he was one of us. The means is they don't cover up his path. They say Judas was one of our number, and we're going to stick to it. They don't ignore the past. They don't cover up history. He was an apostle. And it was true, and they could celebrate his ministry. This reminds me of an controversy in the very early period of the Christian church. Shortly after the Emperor Diocletian came into power. This is around the three hundreds ad Diocletian decided to do an official and large persecution of the church. What happened was the the method was all about going to churches, and asking the pastors and the bishops to give up the Bible, the scriptures. Some people did, and could get off, go free. Some people didn't and were persecuted. And there were a number of pastors who avoided this kind of persecution by giving up their Bibles and others would do other things, just to get out of it. And then when Diocletian was gone, and Christianity was official and legal, they wanted to come back. And there was a group in the Christian church who, unsurprisingly, were not excited about that. They looked and they saw that some men had been killed for the faith. Some men had been hamstrung, pretty serious. And these guys, they were just sort of got out of it, and wanted to come back. But the real question they did was they said, if these pastors abandon the faith, it meant that their entire ministry was invalid. The sacraments that they administered, didn't work. The Word of God that they proclaimed had no power. And we had to go back, baptize their people again, do confession for them again, and erase their entire ministry. Fortunately, they were wrong, the Donatists because, praise God. The efficacy of the ministry does not depend on the holiness of the pastor, for which I am eternally thankful. Amen immense that when pastors who would later on abandon the faith or flee under persecution, when they did their ministry, it wasn't based on them, but on the power of Christ. And so they looked back, and they said, these sacraments that they did, they are based on Christ's promise, and His word, not on the goodness and the faith of the pastor. Which is quite a blessing for you all, isn't that if the ministry of the gospel depended on being a good and holy person, the ministry of the gospel would not go very far. Not even to that first 120 People that gathered around in our reading, because the apostles themselves weren't all that great. During Jesus's lifetime. Each one of them abandoned him, turned away and fled when they faced persecution. And now that they had been restored, the apostolic ministry, they looked back at Judas and said, Yes, he shared in our ministry, when Jesus sent them out, he cast out demons, He healed the sick. He proclaimed the kingdom of God. And you know what? Those demons were still cast out. The sick, were still healed. And the Word of God was still proclaimed, no matter where Judas ended up. And that is the same thing that we can all do. When a pastor screws up, makes a huge mistake and disqualifies himself from the office. It means that we don't need to cover up the ministry that happened before. When a pastor visits, he still did a visit. Communion still bring is Christ's Body and Blood. baptisms are still valid. Weddings are still wedding. On all the good gifts of that ministry still happen, despite the mistakes that might have been made. And for many, I've talked people through some of this, the conflict of having the memory of the mistake, and the good memories is challenging. All we got to do is say yep, there was a mistake. But there were also good. That is exactly what the apostles did. They say the Judas screwed up. He sent our Savior to die. But even more than that, he went off and he He killed himself.
We just need to move on. Remember that he was one of us and in this ministry, and yet, we know that the ministry must go on. One of the other questions that happens, I think, when this situation presents itself is, what do we do with the men himself? They were honest about what Judas did. They didn't try to cover it up, they did not contract with the local PR agency to make sure that the church looked as good as possible. And what they did was they said, brothers and sisters, the Scripture had to be fulfilled, in which the Holy Spirit spoke long ago, through David concerning Judas, who served as a guide for those who arrested Jesus. He was one of our number, and shared in our ministry. You know, in a small group of about 120 or so you can't cover up what happens, no matter how hard you try. You can't hide things because everybody knows everybody. And what they did was they just went out and said, Here's what happened, guys. We got to face it. Was it. Judas did what he did. But they also didn't spend a whole lot of time bashing the guy. Right? There wasn't a committee gathered around to say, the official denunciation of Judas committee. Their little groups didn't get together and pass out letters or anything like that. All they said was, we need someone to take over this apostolic ministry, which Judas left to go to his own place. That's it. You acknowledge the failure. And then you move on to four churches today, the Lutheran church has looked at three different reasons why a pastor should be removed from the office of the ministry with cause these are the kinds of things that like Judas is to disqualify a person from that office. The first one is persistent, false teaching. What that means is that he has bad doctrine, and he can't be corrected. Because you know, all of us every once in a while, say something a little weird. If we're corrected, that's then we move on. But if it's persistent, false teaching, number two is a refusal to do his duties. That is, he's super lazy. And he wants that. And the last one is the one that I think happens more often. And immoral lifestyle is something that he does that gets him kicked out of the office. These are the three things that the church has identified as valid reasons to remove a pastor from his call. But whatever happens, and however it works out, we say, Yep, it happened. And now we move on. The final question I want to ask is, what do you do with the ministry? The church in the community, after a pastor disqualifies himself? Well, very simply, the ministry goes on. Why? That's because the ministry of the gospel is not dependent on an individual. It is not about a man. It is not about his style or his leadership, or his vision or his purpose or any of those things. It is very simply about Jesus. When a controversy arises in the Christian church, we remember very simply, our loyalty is not to the pastor or to the congregation, but to Christ. And it's his power and promise that our that gather us here. Jesus Christ died on a cross for you. He rose from the grave for you. He ascended into Haven't for you. And he promises to return from there for you. Pastor didn't do any of those things, in case you're wondering. And when controversy or difficulty arise, we have to remember that our loyalty isn't to a man. But to Christ is his word and Sacraments work whether the pastor is a great guy or a bad guy, whether he is a visionary leader, or somewhat inept, because the power is not from him, but from Christ. We have to remember that the ministry is about our Savior. And the power comes from him. And I think the perhaps the best example of this is the scandal that has happened in the Catholic church over the last many years, right. I was in Chicago when all the news broke out about the priests and how they would cover it up. And I met a lot of Catholics who said, I left the Catholic Church because of this. And what I would do is I would ask them, if you think the church was right before the scandal, they would be right after the scandal. They're just bad, bad at doing their job. Because the ministry isn't about whether the pastors or the hierarchy or anything is good are good people. The ministry is about the proclamation of the gospel. Now, I think Catholics should leave the Catholic Church because they're wrong about that. Come join us Lutherans because we got it.
But not because of a failure of the priests. And that's what we always have to remember, like the apostles did, is that it's about Christ and His work in the church, which is why they could just move on and elect a new pastor. Matthias, via roll of the dice are casting of lots to replace Judas in the apostolic ministry. Because the ministry of Jesus goes on, no matter what the pastor has done. The divine call continues as a new person goes into the office of the ministry. The scandal fades into the past. This is what happens in churches. And this is how we treat these things. Because the ministry isn't about a man. It's about Christ. In his name, amen.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai