A sermon for BBC Radio 4 – 7 July 2024

We were asked to produce a service to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 7 July 2024 a few weeks before the General Election was called. The service had to be recorded in advance as the date for the broadcast fell within choir holidays. Once the election was called, I soon realised that the service would be broadcast amidst all the Sunday morning chatter about the election result. So, that meant trying to think about how to speak into that situation without actually knowing the result of the election. That’s not an easy thing to do but I soon realised that we have skin in the game here. People from St Mary’s have been involved in the election as candidates, activists, tellers, agents and pundits. This is part of what we do here. I wrote most of the script for the service, which can be found here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0020xkw but the reality is, these things are a team effort and some of the wording needed to be very carefully chosen for this one. I was the preacher for this service, and this is what I had to say:

The thing that I remember most is crawling around on the floor. That and the feeling in my stomach. People refer to stomach churning moments. I never knew what that felt like until that moment.

I asked people to pick up all their bags and coats and shuffle their chairs. And I got down on my hands and knees just to check one more time that nothing had gone missing.

I was looking for a bundle of votes that might, just might,  have fallen off the counting table onto the floor.

20 years or so ago, that bundle of votes meant the difference between victory for me and victory for a political opponent.

The imagined bundle of votes on the floor never existed. Victory wasn’t mine that day and I soon had to concede that someone else had won. Less than 20 votes were between us after weeks of frantic campaigning.

There is something incredibly moving to see votes being counted and stacked up in your favour. And it is gut wrenching – there’s no other word for it, to miss out by just a few votes.

Our procedures for choosing leaders, using stubby pencils to mark slips of paper seem a long way away from David being chosen as King of Israel by the acclaim of the people. But there’s things to learn even from that account.

David and the people entered into a covenant with one another. And that word, Covenant is laden with meaning as it echoes the various times that the bible speaks of a covenant being made between God and the people.

Speaking of the relationship between leaders and those looking for leadership as a covenant relationship is to speak of the trust between them as being nothing other than sacred.

A covenant sets boundaries on what someone can do. Sacred boundaries.

I’m not involved in party politics now. But when election times come around and I get to cast my own vote, I have a strong sense of the deep, deep significance in casting a vote in a land where everyone gets to be involved if they choose. That does feel sacred to me. Who I vote for is my business. The act of voting feels like an immense responsibility – an act of faith in a common desire for our land to be governed well.

And as I vote, there’s one thing that I long for, for all who stand in elections. And that’s also a deeply biblical notion – I long for all those seeking to make decisions on behalf of others, to be blessed with wisdom.

ANTHEM:  CALL OF WISDOM  – Will Todd

Lord of wisdom, lord of truth, lord of justice, lord of mercy.  Walk beside us down the years, ’till we see you in your glory …

I’ve stood in quite a few elections. Elections to public office and elections within the church. And looking back, I started doing it by standing in student elections whilst I was in college.

More often than not, things have not gone my way. Losing elections seems to be one of my hobbies.

And I’ve learned you get better at losing elections as time goes on.

I’ve also learned that having wisdom and having a win are not the same thing.

Indeed, many of the biblical writers are, at best, ambivalent about the powerful, but passionate in proclaiming that God’s love is particularly poured out on the powerless and the weak.

In one of the readings that we heard this morning and which will be read in many churches today, we hear of Jesus feeling powerless himself and then starting to send out his disciples to proclaim his message – a message of repentance, a manifesto for changing everything.

Repentance means nothing other than changing everything and turning yourself around to face a new direction.

But those disciples who were sent out with this message were far from being the powerful of their day. They were mixed up, muddled up and much of the time they didn’t seem particularly bright. They were argumentative and squabbled about who was the most important. They got themselves into factions and when Jesus really needed to depend on their loyalty they all ended up running away.

And yet, these were the ones who carried a message of love from God to the world. These were the ones who brought good news to the world. These were the ones who did indeed turn the whole world around with the stories that they spread about the Saviour whom they each knew intimately.

As they carried that message, somehow they knew that God was with them wherever they went. Somehow they knew they were cared for and nourished and beloved. The love they knew, was the grace of God that they had seen in Jesus and which Christians still see and proclaim with confidence and love for the world today.

When everything seems mixed up and muddled up. God still loves us. When there is fighting and division, God still loves us. When we need to know love most. God’s love is right there.

Worship and prayer often connect people with that love. And prayer connects us with all who are in need. My colleagues Oliver and Maggie now lead our prayers for the world.

And the lot fell upon Matthias – a sermon

This sermon was preached in St Mary’s Cathedral, Glasgow on 12 May 2024

You don’t get many stained glass windows depicting Joseph Barsabbas – also known as Justus, do you?

You get plenty of windows depicting Matthias. We’ve got one here in St Mary’s – over by the tea and coffee table. There he is with the fateful words – “And the lot fell upon Matthias”.

But if you want to exercise a devotion to Justus, you’re out of luck.

Or maybe he was out of luck in not being chosen.

Or maybe he was the lucky one in not being chosen.

But there’s no stained glass windows of him anywhere I know. There’s no statues of him. No icons of him. No holy pictures of him either.

And yet he was just as worthy as Matthias. He’d been a witness to the things that Jesus had done. They both had.

But the lot fell upon Matthias.

Isn’t it an extraordinary thought that the casting of lots two thousand years or so ago led directly to which of two men from the Holy Land would be depicted in stained glass here in Glasgow.

But the lot fell upon Matthias. Not on Justus.  And so Matthias is who we have.

The problem for the disciples was that there seemed to be some significance for them in being 12 in number. (This significance is lost to us, by the way). However, they felt the need to find someone to fill the gap that was left by Judas, who had betrayed the Lord and then taken his own life.

The solution that they came up with was to find a couple of people who were worthy enough to step into the sandals of an apostle and then they prayed and then they cast lots to decide who should get the job.

One of the most fascinating things about this is how seldom Christians have wanted to replicate what they did in order to choose a new apostle.

It isn’t completely unknown for people to be chosen for posts in the church by lot but it is unusual. The Coptic Church in Egypt selects a few likely candidates when they are choosing a pope and then a choirboy is chosen at random to pick a name out of a mitre.

And those with long memories going back about 20 years might remember that the bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church chose our Primus by casting lots, when the votes kept being tied in every vote for weeks.

But it isn’t often done.

But pretty much the first time the early Christians needed to choose a new leader that’s what they did. They picked two worthy candidates and drew lots – allowing fate, or God, or chance or – well we’ll come back to that in a minute, to choose.

And the lot fell upon Matthias.

But I have to admit. I have a sneaky devotion to Justus, the one on whom the lot didn’t fall.

Maybe the next time I find someone who paints icons, I’ll get them to paint me an icon of Justus.

You see, life hasn’t always turned out as I expected it to do. Or even as I might have hoped it would do.

Justus represents the road the church didn’t travel. The apostle never picked. The disciple unpreferred.

I find him really rather fascinating.

I’ve stood in quite a few elections for things – for parliament, for the diocese, for a council seat, for being the rector of a university and one or two things whilst I was at university. And I have more often had the experience of Justus than of Matthias.

Losing elections is one of my best skills.

It is one of those hobbies you get better and better at the more you do it. And I find the one unchosen rather fascinating.

But less about me, what is it that the early Christians are up to and is there anything to learn from it.

I think there’s a few things I think I have to say about this little incident.

  • Firstly they didn’t trust God with the choice completely. And that’s really important and we should learn from it.
  • And secondly, vocation is something for everyone and is about letting the gifts and skills that God has given us respond fully to the place in which we find ourselves.
  • And thirdly, providence, if it works at all, works better when you look backwards rather than forwards and maybe for this last week of Eastertide, we should try doing that.

Let us just run through those. Firstly, it is clear that the disciples thought that God needed some help in making this decision. They only allowed two names to go forward and it is clear that both of them were regarded as eminently suitable candidates. I take from this that common sense is God’s greatest gift in trying to practice discernment. Far more important than spooky revelations or even tossing a coin. Common sense did most of the work here and common sense should be seen as God’s greatest spiritual gift. Holy Wisdom you can call it if you like. But it mattered to the disciples and it should matter to us, whatever decisions we are trying to make.

Secondly, I do think that vocation is about thinking about the gifts and skills that we have and then allowing them to be used as fully as possible in the situation that we find ourselves in. The community seemed to have discerned that both Matthias and Justus were wise enough and sensible enough. They had been present enough. And they were trusted enough.

That’s the stuff of vocation. Often much more so than mystical callings in the night.

These were people with great gifts and they were in the business of trying to recognise them as gifted people.

This congregation is a gifted group of people. I often think about that. And it is God’s business not only to have gathered us here to encourage one another and egg one another on but also it is God’s business to have placed us each in a world which needs the love of God preaching from Monday to Sunday.

 

As I think about my own gifts and skills and the extraordinary ways my life has turned unexpectedly, I am pretty sure that I don’t believe that there is just one path that God has laid out for me to follow and somehow have to try to get right all the time.

I can only really make sense of the providence of God when I look back at my life and think about where my gifts and skills have been used and where they have been recognised. I can see places where I may have been nudged and cajoled by God and by God’s people that have ended up with me being here, fully present in the now.

We’ve just got one more glorious week of Eastertide left. And in it, I invite you to look backwards at the providence of God. Maybe think about what you’ve seen of new life since we heard the news on Easter day. (Or maybe even since you heard the news of new life for the first time). In what ways has that new life been glimpsed?

For it is all still true you know? For if Christ had not been risen from the dead, the disciples would not have been gathered there. And if Christ is not risen from the dead, we would not be gathered here now. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.