An Ordinary Life

Matthew 4:12-23

 

Do you remember singing the Sunday school song “I will make you fishers of men if you follow me”? Anyone prepared to sing a verse? No?  That’s ok. Has anyone really thought about the song and its relationship to the passage it refers to?

 

Today’s gospel verse takes us into a key moment in the life of Jesus and those who first served with him. Jesus has relocated his life to Capernaum. We are not sure when he went there, just that it was after John the Baptist was arrested. We do not know how long he had been there, just that he had been there long enough to make a home there.

 

Understanding this is not an impulse action on the top of the baptism, the period in the desert or John’s arrest putting this story into the realm of an ordinary every day activity is valuable. He simply didn’t turn the page of his “This Is Your Life’ script and read, “John’s arrested, go to Capernaum and recruit some disciples.” It happened in the midst of an ordinary life in a small village of around 1000 people on 25 acres. It happened to people known to each other, recognised as part of the ongoing life of a small fishing village.

 

It happened as Jesus did what seems to have been a regular activity for him – “As he walked by the Sea of Galilee”. It seems walking by the Sea of Galilee was not an unusual activity for Jesus. It probably was something he did as a daily routine, whether for exercise, as a spiritual practice or just to get some quiet while he took in the scenery and the people he lived amongst. It does appear he was fully present to the natural and human environment, observing people and nature to inform his practice, memory and understanding of others and people.

 

It is not hard to imagine Peter and Andrew were known to him or he had, at least, made a careful study of these two men as they went about their fishing business. In a village of 1000, there would have been few strangers and as he made his home there we can assume they visited the same space for prayer and teaching, passed each other in the centre of town and had mutual friends.

 

It seems that their contact had been sufficient for mutual respect and positive relationships. The encounter on the side of the lake is not one of negotiation or a dialogue in which one had to put their case to the other nor was it unexpected and therefore an instantaneous response. It was a simple ask receiving an eager yes. One can’t help thinking this conversation had a backstory and the invite was not unexpected. And neither was the response. Jesus, Peter and Andrews’ reputation and knowledge of each other ensured both the ask and the answer were positive.

 

Jesus gives the invitation to people who were going about their life. None of the four disciples in this story sought Jesus out or asked to go with him. They did not approach Jesus openly or seek to be his disciples. He broke into their ordinary lives and they responded. While they did not seek the call they responded based on their relationship with Jesus forged in the everyday life of the village.

There is an insight here for us. We can be so keen to have a spiritual experience, to experience a mystical event or to be a spiritual person that we miss the value of simply getting on with life open to the possibility of encountering God. God breaks into our lives when we are deemed ready, and not before. God comes to us and opens up our lives when we are working quietly on being human, ignoring our pretensions and ambitions to be something else. God sets us for his work when we are already fully occupied with being present as ourselves with others. It is the faithfulness to our humanity God enhances through an encounter with Jesus.

 

It is interesting only two of the four who are called are actually identified as ones who will be made fishers of people. Andrew and Peter, not James and John, receive that call. It is not a universal call for all. “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people” is personal and directed, it is contextual and prophetic, and it is their call and their call only.

 

We can so often appropriate for ourselves the lives of others and forget the truth that their life is their life and our life is our life and that is the way it is. We look at others success, others wealth, others experiences and become jealous, desiring to share in a life like theirs. For Peter and Andrew they receive a specific call and promise and would be held accountable for that throughout their lives. It was specific to them. It is not for James and John, and it is not necessarily for us.

 

Now this may sound counter to what we have been taught yet it is important. We are all tasked with being open to the breaking in of God as we journey to wholeness, we are not all tasked to fish for people. Interestingly this is the only positive use of this idea in the Old and New Testaments. Elsewhere it refers to capturing others who oppose you or are your enemies.

 

This returns us to a consistent thought throughout humanity’s engagement with God: our relationship with God is not static but ever evolving and renewing just as Gods relationship with all creation is ever evolving and ever new. In this way it is mystical or based on a real experience of the Christ both specific (it is our experience personally) and universal (it is the experience of and for all people).

 

Jesus’ call to Peter and Andrew differs in specifics but remains in its essence same as that of Jesus’ call to James and John and to us: to follow the way into wholeness and justice for the whole world. The specifics are relevant to the individuals involved and will go on to structure and influence the direction ones life takes.

 

We are not all called to be fishers of people, and if we are, not in the same way as others. We live out our life in this world according to the circumstances, opportunities and understanding specifically ours. Jesus calls us to follow his way: life giving, life affirming and life releasing all the way to the cross in willing self-sacrifice.

 

Jesus call to these four men affirms the material world and our experience of it. A man on his daily walk offers an invitation to men going about their daily business in a small insignificant village where they shared community life and had made their home. This affirmation of the created world by one incarnate and ordinary should give us pause to contemplate the incredible nature and potentiality of our engagement with the everyday.

 

It is pregnant, full of life and hope. Let us be open to the voices we hear and respond to the call to be alive with wholeness and love in the midst of each noisy moment.

 

 

 

 

 

  

Peter - Exposed & Free.

John 21:1-19

 

One has to feel for Peter in today’s gospel reading. What with all h has been through in the last few days, the  betrayal of Jesus, his failures to live up to his promise to standby Jesus, the empty tomb and the great disappointment  at the seeming failure of a great and powerful dream, he is now out on the boat and his nets are coming up empty.

 

Can’t even do what he has always done, catch fish.

 

Everything has fallen apart. No thing remains as it was and his life is all out of shape and there is no inkling that it will improve. The way the fishing is going, he is going to starve to death any way, so why worry about the Jews or the Romans?

 

The little aside John gives us, when Peter and the disciples recognise the presence of Jesus is very revealing; “When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea.”

 

‘For he was naked” -  why was he naked? Was it the preferred practice of the fisherman? What is it about boys and water that they want to take their clothes off and jump in? Were they all naked? It seems it was only Peter, as there is no reference to anybody else getting dressed and diving in?

 

And anyhow, isn’t this backwards? Wouldn’t you take your clothes off to dive in, not put them back on? I mean, it seems way more sensible to me, not to get your clothes wet early in the morning when there is little sun to dry you out.

 

When they get to the shore, a charcoal fire, Jesus standing near it organising a meal, confronts Peter. Jesus breaks into people’s lives around the disarming practice of sharing a meal. Throughout the gospels time and again Jesus breaks in, confronts, reveals himself and exposes others for who they are around a meal. The last supper, the feeding of the five thousand, the disciples on the road to Emmaus, the various meals for the disciples, Mary and Martha and the leaders of the synagogue and more. The meal is central to Jesus self revelation and it is no wonder the Eucharist sits front and centre in our Eucharist, for it is here we are examined and transformed into the people available to the Spirit of God.

 

Peter was naked because he had been exposed by the events of the last week. All his talking big, super confidence and his knowledge of Jesus had been exposed by his failing to stand when it counted most. We find ourselves stripped and exposed for all the world to see when what we say and profess to know and be is confronted by the brutality of life. We may know all the formulas, understand all the terminology, know the truth of the scriptures, but is worthless if, when faced by life, we slip into the culture and practice of those who have no faith.

 

Peter was exposed to those around him in a way that left no doubt as to his ordinariness, his sameness with everyone else. He was no better or worse than those he was with, but He was no better than them. And they knew it and went fishing with him all the same.

 

Mateship, friendship, companionship can be the most powerful indicator of who we are. We are identified by those who see our faults and remain faithful to us. These are the people who don’t point the finger, pick out our faults, remind us of our failures. They simply go fishing with us. 

 

It is interesting that in the encounter with Jesus when Jesus asks him if he loves him, the final term for love Jesus uses is philios. Frank L. Crouch writes: "When Jesus himself clarifies the highest form of agapē, he does so in terms of philios. Love for friends is no second class love here."

 

Love of friends, the love which remains despite one failure after another, is the love Jesus calls Peter back to around a charcoal fire, just like the one around which he denied Jesus the third time. This is no deep and mystical spiritual love, just the love of one human being for another. A love without limits, without expectations, a love that simply asks to be replicated in our relationships with others. Peter was given no great mission. All he was asked to do was to love others in a way that would feed them in the midst of personal doubt, pain, oppression, doubt and fear.

 

“Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbours worthy.”  More from Merton: “The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them”.

 

Peter may have been hurt because Jesus confronts him and forces him to be realistic, not to over promise and to remain always true to himself and to others. He may have been hurt because no-one likes to be reminded of their failures, yet Jesus is not reminding him to shame him, only recasting that moment in the light of a new day so Peter can move forward in friendship with both Jesus and those around him. 

The conversation finishes, in between mouthfuls of fish, with the simple call to “Follow me”. When we come to the meal with Jesus, we are not brought to our knees by our failures, but are welcomed and encouraged hear the call to follow. Not to be perfect, not to be punished, not to be failure free but to simply follow. To go out into the world showing friendship to self and others in a way which validates life in the midst of death. Yes, we may find ourselves naked and undone as Peter did, it was in that state he was met by Jesus, welcomed in deep friendship and encouraged to go forward into the world as a friend.

 

As we come today to this Eucharist let us do so confident in the love of Christ, our Eternal brother and our friend, taking up the challenge to ‘follow’. Amen 

Cold Hands, Warm Heart, Dirty Feet (Water):

Cold Hands, Warm Heart, Dirty Feet (Water):

It was a nursing home like most nursing homes. People had gathered in the recreation room as someone special was coming to entertain them. Wheel chairs, walkers, beds on wheels and even some in ordinary chairs! Everybody was excited waiting for the special guest.

Suddenly, he was there. A clown dressed in funny clothes, a red rubber ball on his nose and big floppy shoes! After a jittery start, dropping the juggle balls, losing one of the balloon animals shot off across the room landing on the face of a sleeping lady, he began to meet and greet.

He shook hands with the lady in the front row. She looked at him and said, “Oooh, you have cold hands”. He replied, “Cold hands, warm heart” with all the appropriate gestures. She smiled and said, “And dirty feet.” She went on to say it is what her mother said when she and siblings rushed through the gauze door after a day exploring the bush around their farm house.

Cold hands, warm heart, dirty feet. Dirty feet. The product of active feet, or as in the penguin movie, Happy Feet, feet that are out exploring the world, venturing to new places, engaging with life and different faces. Dirty feet are the result of being fully engaged in life.

Kids get dirty feet playing in the mud, kicking up leaves or footballs, cooking up scams and crazy ideas with friends., and they bring them back into the house. Wipe your feet!, a common cry of Mums from days gone by. Shoes were a luxury. Bare feet the go.

Not only kids, Dad’s boots, garden shoes, garage boots all brought in mud, grease, oil and stuff. Wipe your feet! Or better still, leave those boots outside!

Jesus washes dirty feet. Feet that have been contaminated by the dust of everyday life, that have picked up additives and bits of stuff not normally there. Dirty feet could be a metaphor for the stuff we pick up in our lives, cultural ideas and practices, current fads and fetishes, little compromises and shortcuts diminishing our living as disciples of Christ.

The disciples aren’t dirty. Not really. They have bathed and follow the normal rules of ritual cleanliness. They don’t need as impetuous Peter asks to be washed all over. 

⁸Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” ⁹Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” ¹⁰Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean.”

The idea of Peter allowing Jesus to wash him is a little further than most of us want to go! Jesus says no, this not about the ordinary acts of cleanliness. This is about the reminder that we if we engage fully with life in this world we will find ourselves picking up dust from the road. Take time to wipe the dust from your feet.

Jesus undertakes this task on behalf of the disciples as:

• A leader – sets the example
• A companion – cares for those whom he shares life with
• A servant – be prepared to do for others what they may not wish to do for themselves.

In doing so he calls them to be:

• Mindful of the dust they collect and to take the time to reflect and let go of those things that become attached to us.
• Mindful of the dust others collect and to take the time to reflect and help them let go of those things that become attached to them.
• And respond with compassion and humility to both their (our) need and the needs of others.

As we come to night to participate in this act together, let us remember it is a community act of compassion and humility we all need and may we be mindful of our responsibility to serve Christ by serving others without question. Whose feet do we wash? Christ's ! Amen 

Critical Thinking & Faith

Have you ever had a light bulb moment, an epiphany, that moment when you see something clearly for the first time and go ‘aha’! After a time of ecstatic joy we often pose the question, ‘What does this mean for me?’ Great moments come with more work to do.

Peter has one of those moments. Jesus asks the disciples who he is (Mark 8:27-30). They reply what they have heard from others. When you speak to people about who God is they often reply with other peoples answers. Rarely do you hear what they think.

Peter gives his own answer. The Messiah. Jesus doesn’t applaud him. No gold star for Peter. The other disciples are told not to talk about who Peter thinks Jesus is. This is a light bulb moment, which is going to take an eternity to unpack. Don’t go off with undigested ideas.

Critical thinking is vital to our understanding of Jesus and faith. We need the skills of questioning, recognition, articulation and reflection to allow us to fully discover who He is. Under the questioning of Jesus, Peter achieves recognition. This questioning had been going on for sometime, always leading back to the ‘Who do you say I am?’ Peter articulates what he has arrived at.

Jesus says don’t say anything to anyone. They were not yet ready to articulate what they had discovered. They didn’t have the language, knowledge or the lived experience to.

But when Peter gets it right on the day of Pentecost he is powerful and persuasive, fully possessed of the knowledge he only now glimpses. Jesus is right to allow them time to observe, reflect and experience the truth they discovered before letting them take into the rest of the world.

This Easter we only glimpse the possibilities invested in Jesus, yet as we observe, reflect and experience Him may we become empowered as Peter and the Disciples did.

Peter the Reluctant Learner Comes Alive!

Acts 2:1-21

Today is Pentecost Sunday, often referred to as the church's birthday, the day when God poured out the Spirit on the early church gathered in Jerusalem. It was an amazing spectacle and it is this spectacle we often get caught up in. And it would have been so easy to have been swayed by tongues of fire, roaring winds and otherwise mono-linguistic people speaking in foreign languages. This story of God breaking in on, not just the disciples though they were there, but devout Jews and people from every part of the known world is a story too good to ignore, yet we often drain it of it's power and relevance for us today.

This story is an example of experiential learning, the type of learning we search for in our teaching, parenting and living. We are called to become involved in this event which is being experienced by us and by people all throughout the world at this very moment. Jesus promised to send the Spirit to teach, to breakdown, to unify and to celebrate the creative and redeeming wonder of God, and Pentecost is that day.

The wonder of teaching is surprise, and as teachers, if we lose the capacity to be surprised by our material, our students and our selves, our teaching becomes static, lifeless and dead.  Each day we are surprised by students, students who respond with amazing insights, attention and participation  we were not expecting, not at least from 'that' particular student.  Marking Religious Education assignments I have been surprised by the students who have surprised me with the quality of their work and their insights into the world around them.  These haven't been the brightest and the best, just ordinary students who have given of themselves in a way that says, 'I am listening and I am capable of catching you off guard.'  When we are not looking something amazing happens. That is Pentecost in action, that is the Spirit of God continuing to create wonder and blessing in places we consider dead, not alive, barren and unproductive.

Peter gets up to speak, Peter the petulant, the impulsive, the one who speaks before thinking, the one who cut off the soldiers ear with his sword, the one who denied Jesus three times, gets up to speak in the midst of this amazing moment. Peter speaks without hesitation, plainly and powerfully, no impulsive sayings, no over the top rhetoric - just good plain speaking knowledge - he speaks what he learnt when Jesus was with them. Peter becomes the archetypal student, the student we hope we teach. He gives us hope that those in our classes who mimic the 'old' Peter - Peter the student -  will become Peter, the learner who now acts on what he was taught:

• He is aware - of what is happening, of who is there, and of the importance of the occasion;
  
• He applies reason - 'These men are not drunk' - and asks those listening to take this situation seriously,
• He is contextual - he remember's the prophets words and quotes them as the reference for this moment in history.

Peters speech in it's entirety reflects the power of experiential learning.  While Peter had spent 3 years with Jesus, he had also spent a lifetime with the Torah and the Jewish traditions as well as in the world as a business, fishermen, son, husband and parent. Peter gathers together all the learning which had come his way and uses it here to teach those who were gathered from all over the known world and who had, many of them, a similar understanding of the Jewish scriptures as he.

Peter would have recognised in the diversity of languages and peoples the image of the Tower of Babel where God brought into being individual languages so that people could not communicate as before.  Now they, despite their diversity through the primacy of language, are brought together to experience the unity that comes from Spirit.  Note that no language is discarded, no difference is erased, they still have their languages and their ethnic and cultural differences, but they are united through the power of the Spirit. They are one, but different. Diversity becomes a strength not a weakness, and they are challenged to engage and learn from each other in the glow of Pentecost.

Luke has Peter dismantling the arguments of those watching, the devout Jews, who accuse the crowd of being drunk.  When the Spirit surprises, our natural reaction is to find an excuse, a way of rationalising what we have seen so that we can avoid embracing what is there.  The challenge to the conformity of the devout Jews to an ethnic Jewish religion, to the idea that they and they alone are Gods' people, and that that God only speaks to and through them, was powerfully experienced by them at this moment.  All of a sudden centuries of accepted teaching, learning and expectations have been challenged to the brink of collapse, how do we respond? Let's find reasons and excuses to trivialise and dismiss it out of hand.  That way we can go on doing what we have always done and not have to learn something new.

Students and children (even ours) do that to us each day.  We have preconceived ideas what teaching and learning looks like, what particular students or children are like and what we can expect from them and, even when they surprise us, we often simply dismiss that as a one off and fail to embrace the learning in that moment for ourselves.

Students and children (and people in general) learn and process their learning in ways that are particular to them.  They often only learn when those who teach them are no longer in the room. Peter is forced to recall his teaching, to process what he has learnt and to get up and present it without notes, powerpoint slides or a rehearsal.  He speaks off the cuff and has to rely on what is with in him, much of which he was still processing, yet here he is giving the speech which set the church up for the future and him as the leader of that church.

In my RE classes I have a number of Peter's and at least one by that name. I have been driven to distraction by these young boys and girls wondering when their disruptive, some times disrespectful, sometimes oppositional behaviour will stop and they will begin to learn. I said to a fellow teacher on Thursday after a particular difficult year class, 'Tell me again, why do we do this?"

One student hadn't submitted his assignment, and when challenged said he would do it sometime, I said 'sometime isn't good enough, tonight is'. I marked some of the others work and was surprised at both the quality and the insights into contemporary issues and the thinking of the Apostle Paul.  I met 2 boys on the stairs and told them they had done good and asked permission to publish their work for others to see. One said yes straight away, the other said no, until I told him it was for other schools and not students at our school, then he was very happy.  I learnt something about that young man right there, how he sees himself and how he wants to be seen. He was proud of his work but he didn't want to stand out amongst his peers.  Later on that night, at 6.30, an excellent assignment came through from the boy who said he would do it sometime!

As teachers we, just as Jesus did and God before him, become frustrated at the lack of obvious and visible response from the students in front of us.  The Peter, James and John's in our classrooms disrupt, interrupt and are abrupt, but they are learning and will activate and implement that learning as and when they and the moment is right. Our disappointment is just that, our disappointment, not theirs. Jesus knew Peter had it in him, that's why he told him he would be the Rock on which he would build the church. Even Peter didn't believe him!

Here at Pentecost, Peter comes of age and his learning matures and bubble forth like a new wine, empowered by the surprising breaking in of God's moment and Spirit. Pentecost is the promise of the hidden, the unseen, the previously unknown to break forth in diversity and surprise.

Our task? To stay awake and not resort to our preconceptions, ancient practices and accepted wisdom. The Spirit will surprise us, but we have to be awake to be surprised!

Leadership is for Everyone

Over the last couple of weeks the media focus on certain high profile sportsmen and their behaviour may have proved Groucho Marx right when he said,  ‘Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men -- the other 999 follow women’.  The truth in his humour may give us pause to think about how we treat others, for our treatment of others defines whether we are in fact leaders or followers, whether we make a difference, whether we are the difference we want to make, or whether we cause collateral damage because we choose the wrong leaders.  If, as sociologists say, each of us influence somewhere around 10,000 people over our lives then the choice between leadership and tagging along for the ride becomes one we need to give serious thought to.

In today’s reading from Acts (Acts 1:15-17,21-26) we have an example of leadership being exercised right at the beginning of the Christian community.  It is only a few short weeks since Jesus was crucified and left the disciples and his followers alone.  Judas, one of the twelve chosen to represent the twelve tribes of Israel has committed suicide and something needs to be done to put the order in balance.  He needed to be replaced to maintain the groups integrity.

Up steps Peter, Peter, considering his impetuous displays and his failure in the heat of the cold Good Friday morning seems the most unlikely to be the one anyone would follow.  But leadership is not a right but a gift and they all knew that it was Peter whom Jesus had gifted with the role of leadership. 

They had all heard Jesus in conversation with Peter and knew what his role would be.  They accepted it, although as time went on that didn’t mean Peter the leader wasn’t challenged by others including Paul about some of his management decisions.  Leadership is about taking people with you to places they perhaps would not have gone, management is the skill to support that journey.  Peter had the first because of his charisma and passion and because he was gifted the leadership by Jesus. The other he should have left to those with the gift.

Peter was surprising as a leader, showing attributes that on a first read of his character appeared not to be there.  As a fisherman he would have no doubt run a tight ship aware that if it’s not done right we don’t eat.  In that scenario he was the boss, the one making the decisions.  But here, at the very beginning of the Christian church Peter exhibits the benefit of at least three years in the best leadership school available, the presence of Jesus.

And here we see one of the key truths about leadership and that is people only learn what you have taught them in your absence – in your absence people learn, remember, act on what they learnt while you were with them.  While Jesus was there he was the leader and Peter and the others weren’t aware of what they had learnt because they had no need to practice it. 

Now, now was different.  They were alone, fearful of both the present and the future, unsure of how the authorities and the synagogue was going to deal with them and needing to act decisively and quickly to regain control of those who were looking at them for direction and hope. Walter Lippman puts it this way:

The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.

This is a lesson society needs to revisit in terms of leading children into adulthood.  Parents are pivotal leaders whose presence teaches their children how to be in the world. The modeling of right thinking and subsequently right behaviour is more powerful than any education program, which can be instituted by any government, educational system or body.

You may have seen the story about the boy in an American college school who was refused his graduation certificate because he went to another schools formal where dancing would occur.  Apparently some years earlier, I presume on enrolment at this college, he signed a contract which explicitly banned such activity.  Now in the last year of school he wanted to go and have fun with a girl at a dance.  The school outlined the implications, but he went and then he and his family complained.  While the rule may have been verging on the ridiculous is not the issue.  He had made a commitment which he followed while it suited him.  When it didn’t he complained.  My concern was the response of the parents – they failed to lead.  Why didn’t they remind the young man that a commitment is just that and until that commitment no longer applies i.e. when he leaves school, then he needs to be a man of his word and abide by what he agreed to.  They didn’t and he will be the loser because of it.

One of the best ads on tv makes this point in terms of alcohol and binge drinking. It’s the one where subsequent generations of men at a barbecue ask the pre-teen son to get another beer from the fridge.  The boy becomes the man and perpetuates the problem.  As parents and community leaders our behaviour is our leadership – we aren’t meant to be perfect, for like Peter we stuff up but we, like him, need to keep stepping up aware of our failures but remaining always the leader.

Peter and the ten disciples stand up and speak, not as those taking leadership but as ones seeking leadership.  Note that the issue at hand, the replacement of Judas, is discussed in and by the community. US Senator and one time Presidential aspirant, ELIZABETH DOLE, comments that

What you always do before you make a decision is consult. The best public policy is made when you are listening to people who are going to be impacted. Then, once policy is determined, you call on them to help you sell it. (oh if only!!!!)

 

That is just what Peter does – he draws around him the community and lays out the problem.  He does not impose a solution but seeks direction.  Modern day leaders always seem more intent on imposing decisions or consulting only to justify their decisions as the appropriate one.

Leadership is not imposing, it is seeking direction by the community you represent.

It was discussed and two nominees agreed upon.  We are not privy to how that occurred but I am sure it was full and frank and had its political overtones, but no-one was imposed, and to ensure that was the case they made the decision by a lottery, drawing of the name out of the hat, by lot.  This practice was an accepted method for accepting God’s will.  Note, I said accepting, not choosing God’s will.

Today Christians spend much time discerning God’s will, and often it is an individual decision much like that of the politicians decision making process, if it suits me then it must be God’s will, if it suits me it must be good for the country.  This ploy of attaching God’s will, the will of the creator, sustainer and redeemer of the world with our personal need to be fulfilled and valued is at the very least misdirected and at the worst simply wrong.  Hebraic theology, as found throughout the Psalms has little to say about personal wellbeing for its sake alone, it is only ever achieved through complete and unflinching faith in God, particularly when God seems to be absent, silent and simply not available as in times of national danger, sickness, injustice, poverty and the normal travails of life and often over a very long period of one’s life.  Jesus never deviated from this and we find him on the cross, quoting Psalm 22 but still remaining faithful when his personal wellbeing was being ravaged by injustice.

70 times in the Old and New Testaments casting lots is referred to, albeit this is the last time it is mentioned in the New Testament, but the practice did not necessarily cease.  It was used because there could be no manipulation by the people involved, it was deemed that God, who is sovereign overall watches over and supervises the process so that whatever the outcome is it is his outcome, there can be no dissatisfaction because there was no-one–else involved but God himself.

And there was no grumbling recorded at the outcome.  Peter had demonstrated leadership well learnt and well implemented, he had accepted the role Jesus had groomed him for and remembered much more than he thought he had learnt.  The community also stepped up and participated in discerning God’s will and Matthais became a member of the leadership group. But he already was – leadership isn’t individual, it is communal – the community leads and endorses those who lead and he was apart of that community.  The danger in our age is that we do in fact get the leaders, and the society we deserve, because we fail to see and fulfill our leadership role.

Peter and that first Christian community reminds us that if we want a different world we must lead in the one we see around us today. As Gandhi said, ‘Be (or lead) the change you want see in the world’. It is up to you.