Come Down, Holy Spirit

 

St. Matthias   - May 18, 2013

The Rev. Kenneth R. Elkin

 

Let's begin by considering two different situations.

The first situation:

Let's say that there are two pieces of art on easels side by side.

One is judged to be a worthless scribble.

To the untrained eye, the other one looks much the same, but has the name Picasso on it, so it is worth $ millions.

Have you ever wondered about this?

 

The second situation:

Now let's say that we walk into the west portal of the cathedral in Autun in France and marvel at the sculptures which we know were designed and carved by Giselbertus in the 12^th century; and then walk out a different portal and appreciate just as much the sculptures done by various unnamed artists as  the ones done by Giselbertus.

 

How are these two situations different?

Is it that the paintings are much more about themselves and their artists, and thus one is valuable and the other one is not;

but on the other hand, our appreciation of the cathedral does not depend upon knowing the names of those who crafted its various parts, but rather on how effectively the sculptures and the entire building point to and aid the proclamation of the Gospel?

 

In the case of Matthias, we do have a name but almost nothing else about his life.

There is no biographical material available to us.

Does that make him a zero, a nonentity? Certainly not!

We do know the crucial things about Matthias:

that he brought the number of the inner circle back to 12 before the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost,

 that he was witness (martyr) for the resurrection,

that he took on the role of sent-out one (apostle).

We might wish for more, but that is enough.

We can imagine Matthias entering a small town, gathering a crowd around himself, and speaking of the cross and resurrection, telling them  the whole story as he had lived through it with Jesus and his followers.

Evangelists are never “zeros.”

 

Here is a situation which has happened a number of times over the years, but I especially remember the time it happened in my first parish.

A dear elderly lady had lost a leg to diabetes, and never could quite get the hang of a prosthesis.

She lived with her daughter, managed with a wheelchair, and still my visits with her were pleasant enough and faith-filled.

But then the disease claimed the other leg, and she was confined to bed.

Her world closed in, her mood darkened, she began to feel useless, a zero.

“No, that's not true,” I told her.

“Your body may be stuck in bed, but your mind is clear and can roam free, so here is your new job.

Too many of us are running around thoughtlessly, not thinking about our proper thankfulness to God and our connections with God and each other.

Here is the congregational directory to get you started in upholding persons by naming them in prayer.

And then I'm going to be giving you specific names also, in order that when I visit a particular person or family in crisis I will be able to say that they are being held in prayer today by a person who has taken that as her specific gospel mission responsibility.”

And my bed-fast nonagenarian beamed; she was not a zero but an evangelist of a special sort.

 

Most of us know quite a bit about our birth-parents.

Many of us may know something of grandparents.

But go further back than that, unless the family was unusually given to diary-writing or was unusually prominent in the community, all that most of us will have, if anything, is a list of names and dates with few details attached.

At home there was a volume with fragile pages that laid out a constitution for a new congregation.

In John Hancock style, my 3-great grandfather and others of the clan were among the first signers in 1867, to make sure that the Gospel was proclaimed in that community.

The book is gone now.

After our family had kept it safe at home for a hundred years, a well-intentioned pastor put it in a basement where it was subject to water damage.

There are only a couple of people in the congregation now who even know the name Sharretts Sprankle, and probably because they have seen the headstone in the cemetery, but it was due to the determination of Sharretts and others in that handful of people, urged on by the Holy Spirit, that Mt. Zion Church was organized and continues to use its original building today.

He would be a zero in most current members' minds, but certainly not  in the proclamation of the Gospel!

 

There is a curious anomaly in the four lists of the 12 apostles as they are given in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Acts.

The names are not exactly the same, nor are they in exactly the same order.

Even between Luke and Acts with the same author there are several differences in the list.

Why is that?

If these are such important persons, why would that list not have been standardized and memorized and disseminated in exactly the same way?

 

Could it be that, when it finally came time to write down the Gospels, the Twelve and those who came after them had learned several things:

 that trying to make a name for oneself was unnecessary behavior in the kingdom of God,

that the Spirit would take care of whatever was needed in that regard,

and that what was truly important was that the promises of Jesus be spoken in each new day.

 They're not zeros, these ordinary people called to be evangelists, just people who know that their role is to point to Jesus, not to themselves.

 

And I suspect that each of us can think of persons who have served in that way in our lives.

Perhaps a relative, a teacher, a late-night conversationalist, a spouse.

And also, how is it that each of us is serving in that way for someone else these days?

By the grace and call of God none of us can say that we are zeros, nobodies.

Each in our own way have been enrolled with the eleven.

We might say that we have in effect added another middle name to our own.

Just call us ...Matthias.  Amen.