Prayerful Discernment

Acts 1: 15-26

John 17: 6-19

The verses we read in the first chapter of Act tell the story of the Church’s first big decision: After Jesus was crucified and resurrected and returned to heaven, the early Christians returned to Jerusalem, went to the upper room where they were staying, and began to pray “What do we do now?” Peter pointed out that they had always been twelve disciples doing ministry together, and since Judas’ betrayal and death, they really ought to identify someone else from among the 120 believers who were there, to take up the role of apostle. Peter proposed a model that is worth our attention, since we also have decisions to make on behalf of the church.

First, they referred to Scripture. They found in the Bible some precedent for their own experience and circumstances. It wasn’t exact, of course. You can’t use the Bible for fortune-telling like a crystal ball. But you can find in the Bible something like a smokey mirror in which we can see dimly. It’s a good place to start. It tells us that we are not alone in our problems. It suggests some ways to proceed, if we are wise enough to interpret them. The apostles read their Bible and found in Psalm 69:25 a curse which David made against his enemies: “May their camp be a desolation. Let no one dwell in their tents.” And Peter and the other disciples said, “We know what he was talking about. That’s just how we feel.” And then they read Psalm 109:8, another of David’s curses in the context of crying to God for help: “May his days be few. May another seize his goods!” And the church said, “Amen!” They made David’s psalms their own way of understanding and interpreting what had happened to them.

Then, Peter said, in effect, “Instead of cursing the dark, let’s light a candle.” He didn’t say that in so many words, but that is the effect of what he said. He said, “Let’s identify another person who can finish the job that Judas left undone.” Now you notice that there is no Scriptural chapter and verse that exactly says, “Church, this is what you must do.” But in the context of Scripture, Peter found an idea that he was able to interpret in a way that was helpful to the church’s present predicament. He said, “There are a lot of people here who were with us the whole time that Jesus was. They have been with us from the beginning when John baptized Jesus; they accompanied us when we went around with Jesus; they were here when he was taken up from us.” Peter thought about their personal experience, and concluded, “We can trust these guys; we respect these guys.” Experience and your own judgment can be helpful in discerning what is the right thing to do.

I think the most significant thing is what Peter said next: he said, “One of these men (who have shared our experience of Jesus all along) must become with us a witness to his resurrection.” Notice: he did not say, “One of these who shared our experience of Jesus’ resurrection must witness with us,” but “he must become a witness” – because being a witness is not a matter of what you happen to have experienced in the past, but instead is a decision people make about the way they will live from this time forward.

Then, having identified Joseph “Barsabbas” Justus and Matthias, as candidates – men who had the appropriate experience and who would become witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection – the church prayed. Acts records only a very brief summary of what they prayed. It surely seems that it would have been helpful to know more. So many times when we pray, we don’t really know how or what to pray for. We pray timidly: “Lord, please heal so-and-so, if that is your will” – as if there remains the distinct possibility that God actually wills someone we love to suffer and be sick! What kind of prayer is that?! We pray complacently, like David Head’s tongue-in-cheek prayer offered with some satire in the bulletin as Words for Reflection. Instead of praying “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth,” we sometimes pray as if our personal comfort and maintaining the status quo were really God’s overriding priorities! We pray lazy and selfish prayers, like this prayer (also by David Head, He Sent Leanness: A Book of Prayers for the Natural Man): “We pray that our statesmen may do everything they can to promote peace, so long as our own national history and honour and pride and prosperity and superiority and sovereignty are maintained; You can do all things, O God. A prayer like that must be an offense to God, as it is to those who actually put themselves on the line for peace or in service of our nation. Sometimes we pray as if we have no more responsibility than Dudley Moore’s Arthur, with God playing John Gielgud’s role as the valet Hobson. If you don’t remember the movie, Arthur is a likeable and immature millionaire who relies on Hobson not only for every little thing he needs done, but also as his conscience and superego. Wouldn’t we all, at times, like to have an omniscient and omnipotent personal butler? True, effective, discerning prayer is a difficult thing to do.

After having read Scripture, considered their own experience, committed themselves to being witnesses of the resurrection, and praying, the church made its decision. What we would have done at that point would be to call a congregational meeting and vote; that’s how we typically make decisions. We are democratic by temperament and experience, so we hope to find God’s will for us by voting. And sometimes it works very well, and we do discern God’s will that way. Of course, that doesn’t mean that any time enough people agree with you, you are right . . . or that truth can be determined by polls . . . or that God is bound by what we decide. It is certainly possible for a vote to be unanimous and wrong. But voting is one way we go about making decisions and in general it’s not a bad one. Sir Winston Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried.”

Peter and the early Christians didn’t vote, they cast lots. I think we would be a little uncomfortable making decisions that way. It seems to us a very arbitrary method, maybe a bit superstitious, maybe too much like gambling. But it is not all that different from the way we vote. Both methods assume that there are alternative possible outcomes which God will be able to work with. We could not determine right and wrong by popular vote. Voting in the context of discerning God’s will or God’s leading only has validity if you believe that there are at least two more-or-less-acceptable choices. The advantage of casting lots over casting votes is that it is more clear that God is at work, rather than just us. To cast lots as the church in Acts did, and as the Moravian church sometimes still does, makes explicit a basic assumption that all Christians share: that God is actively at work in our activities.

We believe that. All Christians do. When we worship, we are not just enjoying music and learning something interesting and making ourselves feel better; we are in the presence of God, participating in God’s purposes for Creation. When we feed someone who is hungry or clothe someone who is poor or visit someone in prison, we are not only helping them, we are doing God’s work and we are helping God. When we baptize someone, we not only make the person wet, we offer that person the grace of God for salvation. When we gather at the Lord’s Supper, we not only eat bread and drink wine or grape juice, we eat and drink the body and blood of Christ which makes us the Body of Christ for the world. God is at work in and through and by and under and because of the things we do.

The danger inherent in that belief is that sometimes we too easily equate what we do with God. We claim God’s sanction for our own purpose. We readily confuse what we want with God’s will. Then we end up saying foolish things, like that God is on our side in this war, because we are good and the other side is evil. Or that God does not hear the prayer of Jews. Or, God is likely to strike your town with disaster because your school board made a decision I wouldn’t have made. Or that God roots for your football team. You’ve all heard Christians make these kind of embarrassing claims that have nothing to do with God’s will and everything to do with the speaker’s perspective and prejudice. That is the danger of believing in an immanent and active God who is creating and renewing the Church, loving and redeeming the world, drawing all people and all power to the eschatological ends of divine promise. We risk losing sight of the Truth, and identifying God with ourselves instead of ourselves with Jesus Christ.

When Jesus prayed for his disciples – in the prayer from which we read, in John 17 – he prayed, “Sanctify them in the truth . . . your word.” He said, “Holy Father, your people, the people you have given me, are in the world but they aren’t of the world -- just as I am in the world, but not of the world. Just as you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. They see things as we see things, so the world treats them the way they world treated me. They know the truth; they know who I am. So guard them, keep them from evil.” Jesus prayed for the disciples because he knew how difficult and dangerous a job it is to be one with the Father and to go about in the world as God’s messenger. It is very risky business and takes great discernment to be consecrated to truth. Jesus prayed for those who believed in him, knowing that faith often makes life in this world more complicated, more confusing, more complex, and less comfortable, rather than easier.

I will offer you a warning that my professor and advisor Dr. Luke Johnson has taught me: “The obedience of faith offers no certainties. . . . We cannot know if the decisions we make here and now are correct. We only know that they are the best we are able to make, and that in the future we might both regret them and need to change them.” (Luke T. Johnson, Scripture & Discernment: Decision Making in the Church) We must be humble enough to recognize that we might be wrong, since we are not God, even when we really think that we are right about something. But also, my friend points out, our “faith has to do with the Living God, who always moves ahead of us in surprising and sometimes shocking ways.” In the United Church of Christ, we say: “Never put a period where God has placed a comma. God is still speaking.”

The best we are able to do is to be informed by Scripture, learn from experience, witness to Jesus Christ’s resurrection, pray, and then . . . do something, trusting that God is at work in unforeseen ways, and expecting that now or later we will have to change. “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.” (1 Corinthians 13:12) Amen.