Notes on a homily
Matthias the Apostle, Tuesday, 14 May 2019
Parcevall Hall
Collect
Almighty God,
who in the place of the traitor Judas
chose your faithful servant Matthias
to be of the number of the Twelve:
preserve your Church from false apostles
and, by the ministry of faithful pastors and teachers,
keep us steadfast in your truth;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Matthias - the only apostle not chosen directly by Jesus, but by lot - and therefore (as scripture and tradition has it) by God rather than humans.
His story is intertwined forever with the story of Judas.
Both graced by God to serve Christ.
Their relationship formed through the disgrace of Judas, his fall from grace.
Our Collect for today contrasts as it says, ‘the traitorJudas’ with ‘your faithful servant Matthias’.
Which language I admit to feeling uncomfortable using, knowing how Christians have conflated Judas over the centuries with every Jew, and how Christians’ judgment on each of our Judasses has led us inevitably to create countless other fields of blood.
Better, I feel, to focus on how even Judas was graced by God to serve him - and served him well. Maybe too well, his zealousness for the kingdom maybe being his downfall.
Better, I feel, to contemplate how Matthias, was more an ordinary disciple, graced, like you and me, to serve - and probably (though we’re never told) not always ‘steadfast in the truth’, as liable as we are to stray, to try to get God to act in our way.
For we all carry something of the mark of Judas in us, being human. For what is Christian Zionism but our attempt to get God to act a certain way in history? And aren’t we ourselves, from time to time, prone to trying to manipulate situations, circumstances, others, even through prayer, we who are like Matthias and Judas, graced for service but human in our weakness.
So, remembering Matthias today in the shadow of Judas, let us give thanks to God for his grace on us, and ask afresh for that grace to fill our hearts and form our actions as we seek to serve faithfully, our Lord.
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