Pastor's Ponderings: Monday Bible Study on Acts of the Apostles 1:21-26 (July 28, 2025)

Good morning my dear friends.

I think that it’s time to pray for our thirsty desert. While the rest of the country seems to be getting flooded out, even our neighbors to the east in New Mexico are battling floods in their mountain communities, while my trees and flowers in the yard seem to be wilting away. We keep holding off with the watering, hoping that nice heavy monsoon rain will come in our part of town. Today we continue in an interesting first step for the Apostle's, which is the choice of someone to replace Judas as a member of their group. I must admit, I am unsure of why they thought this was necessary, but I suspect that they were working hard to maintain the size of the group which Christ found most helpful. So now we are moving into today's reading.

In this passage we have a window into the process which the disciples used, seeking guidance from God, as the choice was made. In many ways it holds many similarities in how a congregation selects a new pastor when their previous pastor, note that I did not say OLD pastor, leaves of their own volition for a new call, retires,  is asked to leave, or is removed from the roster of ordained clergy for some inappropriate act during the time of their ordained ministry.  While we have oversight by our Bishop of the synod when these changes take place, the disciples were the lead/head group in the new Christian church in Israel. It is they who set the tone for the many calls that will occur during the 2000 + years of the Church, praying for the Spirit's help as the process unfolds before them. In this case there were two possible candidates for this "open” position, which may have included managing the money of the Apostles, just as Judas had been doing. One would think that job would have naturally gone to Matthew, the tax collector. He had all kinds of experience dealing the money and transactions which would have been needed to manage the finances of the Apostle's. Moving on, the disciples’ action, guided through prayer by the Spirit, was to select Matthias, who would be included in the original group. This must certainly mean that Matthias had been with them, and around the ministry of Jesus for quite some time, personally knew Jesus, and had been a witness to the Resurrection of Christ. Our obvious first thought here is why didn't we hear of him before now? The door that opens for LORD and that now we get to know that there were certainly others, in addition to the 12 disciples, who were also close to the inner circle of the LORD, and shared in much of what we read about in the Gospels.  We must always remember that the living Christ is in, with, and around us all the time. He resides in our hearts and minds constantly, calling us to pray, encouraging our holy actions and words, and that He is not just with us during that hour we spend at church on Sunday morning, but present in our lives in every one of even what we consider to be the most insignificant details of our living.  Is it any wonder that you and I are called to daily confession? I am certain that your life is just like mine, I slip every day, and, even if it is for only a brief time, I move away from His Presence frequently and must be called to confess the times I can identify, and even the ones that I can't, as those "fall aways" took place.  But here is the wonderful and amazing thing, Christ is always prepared to hear our confessions, and by the Spirit, to call us back into the fold with loving forgiveness. Remember, the promise of Jesus is that He is with us until the end of time! Always with us, never departing from us, so we should not be treating Him as some character we read about, some historic figure who set the Church in motion, and then left it to make its own way in the world. Jesus is Real, He is Now, He is always with us every moment of this life, and on into the next life in eternity with Him!

The presence of the Holy Spirit, this wondrous gift from Christ, sent to guide all who love the Savior, is here to guide us and gives us the gift of faith itself. So, Pentecost, which kind of loses its place in the celebrations of the Church, unlike His Birth, and His Resurrection, is a truly important celebration in the life of the faithful. The book of the Acts of the Apostles is literally filled with the action of the Holy Spirit. She is the One who makes it all possible, and She is both fully God and fully Spirit, all at the same time. We confess Her in the Apostle's Creed every Sunday and understand that She even brings us to worship and the celebration of the Sacrament every week. She is the voice in our head and heart on Sunday morning when we thought we might forego worship and church on a Sunday morning, who calls us to know that the worship and praise of God, the Father, God, the Son, and God, the Holy Spirit is really where we need to be,  and that other stuff we had in mind can wait.  When we don't go to church and worship, that is the time when we have rejected Her appeal to Her Higher Knowledge and gone our own way. Here we are at confession once again. We must always remember that She has been present in creation itself, where She is the Breath of God creating all things. In the Hebrew, She is God's Ruach. (feminine for God's breath) When Christ gifts the Holy Spirit to the disciples, it is She who comes to always be present in faith, works, and words that carry God's Truth in them. In the first 14 chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, She is mentioned 40 times! It is by Her Presence that everything needed for the Church to move forward is with the faithful in Jerusalem and in those communities in Asia Minor where the Christ of God took hold of so many with its Love, Grace, Forgiveness, Hope, and, even more, its promise.

Thanks for being with me today as we are now prepared to move on to see the result of the Work of the Holy Spirit in the lives and ministries of the disciples in Jerusalem, and through Paul in Asia Minor.

With the Love of Christ, Pastor Kim