Acts 1: 15-17, 21-26

Many of you might know that I have suffered from insomnia lately. I have bouts of this from time to time. It usually manifests itself in this way: I go to bed tired and sleepy, fall asleep fairly easily, then wake up between 3:00 and 3:30 am. Now, what happens at that point determines how my next day will be. If I toss and turn for less than 45 minutes and finally go back to sleep, I’m home free. If I get up and do some work, I will be up for the duration. I will be exhausted and bleary the whole next day, but I will have crossed something off my to-do list. That makes me feel somewhat virtuous, and fools me into thinking that insomnia is a good thing. If I get up and watch infomercials or read a boring book in my attempts to go back to sleep, it seldom works.

The absolute worst thing I can do is to go back to bed at about 5:00 am and sleep for a couple of more hours. That leaves me feeling the worst of all. I am worthless the next day—or at least my brain is.

Someone who is knowledgeable about insomnia and sleep disturbances—a doctor—suggested a way for me to try to unload some of the mental baggage that was waking me up at night. This doctor is a former parish priest, so he understands some of the particulars of what it is like for a pastor to have an overloaded brain that is difficult to shut down at night. He and I both agree that medication is not a good first route for me, so he advised a couple of non-medical strategies. One of his suggestions was this: spend at least 15 minutes a day in listening prayer. Now, you might think that for someone like me, someone who prays for a living, fifteen minutes of listening prayer would be a cakewalk. “Why didn’t she think of it sooner?” You might be asking yourself. "Doesn’t she spend at least that amount of time praying each day???"

Well, like for most of you, my prayer life is often a non-quantifiable thing. I pray in the car, in my office, at home. I pray while I am cooking dinner, while I am gathering up the family's laundry, and while I am reading. But those prayers are of the asking variety; what I’m usually doing is asking God for something, or asking a question of God, or invoking the Holy Spirit’s wisdom into a situation. What my doctor is prescribing for me is prayer of the listening variety. I’m being asked to sit/lie/stand/kneel each day in a relatively quiet, distraction free place and listen to God. For fifteen minutes. Just fifteen minutes.

The truth is that sitting (or standing, or kneeling or even lying down) and waiting upon God to talk to us is harder than it sounds. The first thing that has to happen is an emptying of one’s brain of the kind of noise that distracts us. Even if that noise is rational thought or reasonable curiosity (as opposed to meaningless static) it is difficult to turn it off. I have a feeling that this is what my doctor is hoping I will notice first about this rather unorthodox prescription. But I’m wondering—in a hopeful and optimistic way—what will happen for me in my life when I finally am able to do this consistently and well. I have a feeling that it will be something even better than readjusting my sleep patterns. I’ll keep you posted.

In this unusual little story in Acts, the faithful eleven are gathered with 100 or so of their closest friends, and also with the women, with Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers. Judas was, of course noticeably missing, having betrayed Jesus and having died, either by hanging himself or by falling headlong in to a field with his bowels gushing out—depending on who you believe, Matthew or Luke. Eleven is a troublesome number for the apostles. Most scholars believe that the need for twelve apostles reflects the representation of the twelve tribes of Israel. That makes pretty good sense, but it seems to me that maybe they also just wanted to somehow erase that whole nasty business with Judas as well. Perhaps somehow replacing him with someone better, more faithful, would help to ease the pain of the reality of what he had done. Eleven was perhaps s trouble some and painful because of the reality it represented. They had traveled for three years with a traitor amongst them. Eleven must have reminded them every day of that. It must have been almost as painful as missing Jesus.

It was important therefor that the one who was chosen was a true apostle—the test for that is that the person must have been with Jesus from his baptism to his ascension, must have been an eye-witness to the whole drama. Just like any good nominating committee would do, two names were put forth, Justus and Matthias. We don’t know anything else about these two men, just that they are qualified in the eyes of he eleven. And then they prayed.

What they prayed for was a prayer similar to what any PNC would pray—“Lord, show us which one is right for this position. You know what is in the heart of each of them. Help us to make the right choice.”

When I read this, I looked for the verse that told me that they went away and each spent fifteen minutes in listening prayer, each day for two weeks, and then they regrouped and made their decision. But it doesn’t say that. It doesn’t even imply that. What it says is that they said their prayer, asked for God’s guidance, then they threw dice—or the ancient equivalent. They chose the twelfth apostle in the same manner that the soldiers divided up Jesus’ clothing at his crucifixion. Astonishing! It’s like choosing a pastor by “Rock, Paper, Scissors.”

Or is it? The subject of discernment, or faithful and wise decision making, has been on my mind lately. Mainly because I’ve had occasion to make some decisions myself, and because I was just at a Presbytery meeting where discernment in our way of electing officers became a point of discussion.

A few weeks ago I was asked by the nominating committee to consider their putting my name forward for the moderator of the committee I’ve been serving for a year and half. When I have a decision to make like that, I go into discernment mode, asking questions of those who have done the job before, and talking it over with people I trust who know me, know my threshold for time and stress management. I ask pointed questions of the persons making the suggestion in the first place, I talk to Session about it, and of course I pray. I like to think that my prayer is of the listening variety.

And every bit of that is completely helpful— it is all-necessary for me to come to some sort of decision. But in the end, it is out of my hands because of the type of church that we are. The decision is made, in the end, through the voice of the people. I didn’t see any dice thrown Tuesday night, but maybe that’s because I was the only person nominated for the job. Maybe I was the only nominee because all the others said no. I don’t know. What I do know is that it feels right. But I wonder if that is even necessary.

Could it be that my feeling satisfied with the decision of the Presbytery benefits me, but doesn’t really make a big dent in how God’s kingdom becomes a reality? Could it be that God has an over-arching story of God’s creation that is so big, so marvelous, so wondrous that the tiny little coin-flip decisions of eleven apostles, or of one small church pastor cannot derail it? Could it be that all God asks is that we come along and follow Christ on the journey, listening as best we can, and acting as faithfully as we can?

Maybe the lesson in the call of Matthias is this: Listening is good. It is very, very good. Action is good too. Sometimes when we are too busy, too worried, too preoccupied to actively listen, God acts anyway. God acts out of love for us, out of a generosity of grace, out of an omnipotence and sovereignty that has at the core, God’s best hope for us and God’s plan for us. Who are we to believe that God is too busy for a little game of dice?

Thanks be to God.