Text: Acts 1:15-26
There seem to be some verses missing in the reading today from the Book of Acts.
Here’s how that could be. There is a committee that chooses the readings for each Sunday. On the committee are people from lots of Christian denominations. Sometimes they leave out some verses in the middle of the reading. As they did today. Sometimes they do that because the middle verses are distracting, or include some verses that seem out of place. But I’m convinced that sometimes they do that because the left-out verses give them the creeps.
Here is what they left out today. In the story in Acts that we just heard, the disciples are picking a new leader. That’s because one of the old disciples is missing. He’s missing because he is Judas, the disciple who gave Jesus up to the authorities to be executed. He’s not missing because the remaining disciples were upset with him and didn’t want him around, though that might make sense. He’s missing because he is dead. And the verses that are missing tell us what happened:
[vv 18-20] Now this man bought a field with the reward of his wickedness; and falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out. This became known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the field was called in their language Hakel'dama, that is, Field of Blood. For it is written in the book of Psalms, ‘Let his homestead become desolate, and let there be no one to live in it’; and ‘His office let another take.’
This is a little gruesome. A little violent. A little creepy. But it is germane, for it explains both what happened to Judas and why they were anxious to replace him. Because it was written in scripture that they should. The scripture had to be fulfilled, it says.
Since it was written in scripture, we might ask how and how much God was involved with Judas’s explosive death. Did God cause it? Or did God allow it? Or did God just observe it? To what extent and in what manner does God interfere in the actions of humans—Judas in this case?
You might answer that God extracts justice here. Judas did a bad thing, God punished him. In the psalm for today, we sang that the life of righteous persons is wonderful. Happy are they. They take delight in things. They are like fruit trees that are planted by streams of water. Everything they do will prosper. They are not like the wicked, for whom nothing is wonderful. The wicked are chaff, blown about here and there. The wicked cannot stand in the face of judgment. The wicked are doomed. The good get the goods and the bad get punished. It all works out.
Except that that’s not how it seems to work out in real life. People who do bad things can get off scott free, live prosperous lives and are delighted. People who do good things can suffer, get jerked around, and bear sour fruit.
Is this God’s will? Or is this God’s doing? Or is this God’s nonchalance? Is it God’s anything?
We, the people of the Book, the people whose religion comes from the Bible, hold that God is active in the world and in our lives. The Bible is a collection of stories of that activity. God knows what is going on and God has a hand in what is going on. God interferes in the daily lives of people, or if not daily then at least from time to time. Time measured on the short scale of people’s lifetimes. God does not always approve what is going on. Which means that God does not interfere in everything. Sometimes God is sad about what is going on, sometimes happy, sometimes annoyed. Which means that there is a certain intimacy between God and people.
On a case by case basis, though, it is hard to tell exactly how God is working. We have to interpret it. Luke, the author of the Book of Acts, interprets the death of Judas as a fulfillment of a prophecy of great King David and a fitting punishment for bad Judas. But some have interpreted the actions of Judas not to be wicked but instead to be an example of obedience to the directions of Jesus. Judas was the one whom Jesus could trust to advance the plot that leads to the crucifixion and thus to the resurrection of Jesus. Judas was the brave and obedient soldier. I’m not sure whether this is a good interpretation or not, but it does show that we humans don’t always know what God is doing at the moment.
What is God doing when Judas dies so horribly? Does God allow this? Does God watch curiously? Does God make it happen? And if God does make it happen, does God orchestrate the whole thing, or just nudge things a little this way or that on the margin? Where is God’s motivating power? Does God make Judas do something against Judas’s will, or does God make Judas will something—change his will—to take his own life? And did Judas pray to be delivered from his death or did he pray to be led to it?
When we pray, these questions are relevant. What do we hope for when we pray to God? Our prayers are often petitions, requests from God. We pray for ourselves. For our health and happiness. For blessings that we hope to appreciate, for success in an endeavor. My sister prays for a good parking spaces. My colleague prays for home-team victories.
Or we pray for others whom we love or worry about. We pray that someone will get better, that a friend will find a companion, that our neighbor will have safe travels, that a relative will not die just yet. We pray for the world, for an end to war, for an end to abusive relationships.
We pray that all we hope for will happen and that nothing we fear will happen. Chances are, in the particular we will be disappointed. Not necessarily, but based on experience, probably.
That does not mean that we pray only to hear ourselves talk. Prayer is not just some coping thing we do in the face of limits and uncertainty. We don’t pray just to make ourselves feel better. And though I’ve spoken here about prayer also being about listening, I’m not saying we shouldn’t speak up. The same Bible that tells us God likes to hang around with people tells us that God also likes to talk to and listen to people. What God does with what God hears, that’s hard to say.
Prayer is like a pathway. Praying keeps us on the path when we drift off into the brush and the weeds and the rocks. But the path is not one that someone, not even God, has laid down for us. It is not like a railroad track, with a fixed start and a fixed destination. Prayer not only keeps us on the path, it creates the path. It makes the path.
Prayer is motion toward God. God’s revealed interest in us keeps us moving. Our experience of God’s interest in humans convinces us that walking toward God is not a fruitless or aimless waste of time and hope. The path is not random, though it may seem twisty. It is a result of a complicated mix of all the things that are part of our prayers.
When we pray, we rightly expect something to happen. But who knows what? We pray over and over, and we come to worship over and over, because this is all a work in progress. In prayer, in worship, in whatever kind of faith life we have, there is the possibility—even the expectation—of a new future. The pathway goes somewhere. We pray that God will interfere in our lives. That something will be different. That we will be transformed.
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