Psalm 15
Acts 1:15-26 or Phil 3:13-21
John 15:1, 6-16
Today is the Feast of St. Matthias. Matthias was the first person elected by the Church to apostolic ministry. The twelve apostles had been appointed by Jesus himself, but the twelfth, Judas Iscariot, had shown by his actions that he was not a fit apostle, and at any rate he had died. To use the allegory from John’s gospel, Judas was a branch that had to be trimmed off to allow the whole vine to flourish, and Matthias was a shoot that the Vinedresser trained to become integral to the whole plant.
How Judas died is actually a bit of a mystery. All four gospels record that he was a betrayer, of course, though only Matthew and Luke record his death. Matthew’s gospel records that, feeling guilty about his role in Jesus’ death, he returned the bribe money, throwing it down in the temple precincts, and then went and hanged himself. In Matthew’s account, it was the priests who bought the potter’s field to be used as a cemetery. In Luke’s telling, though, it was Judas who bought the field and then fell there, apparently by accident, disemboweling himself.
In any case, the death of Judas means that the Twelve apostles now lack one person, because the number twelve is not a random number but a symbolic one connecting the Church to the twelve tribes of Israel. The candidates were two disciples who had been following Jesus since His baptism, a certain Joseph and today’s saint, Matthias. Lots were cast to choose which of them would be Judas Iscariot’s successor. This is the beginning of the apostolic succession, which is apparently Matthias’ claim to fame; apart from that literally nothing is known about Saint Matthias.
The collect for the feast of St. Matthias makes the point:
Almighty God, who in the place of Judas chose your faithful servant Matthias to be numbered among the Twelve: Grant that your Church, being delivered from false apostles, may always be guided and governed by faithful and true pastors…To me, there’s a natural contrast between the perfidy of Judas Iscariot and the quiet faithfulness of Matthias. Judas gained notoriety by his act of betrayal; and indeed he is almost unknown in the gospels apart from that act of betrayal, yet he’s one of the most recognized characters in the story because of what he did. Matthias disappears after this point from the Bible’s narrative, which probably means that he just quietly went about serving the Church as a pastor.
That’s in fact where almost all of us are, who live out our calling faithfully. Like the hymn says, “One was a doctor, and one was a queen, and one was a shepherdess on the green.” Ordinary people leading lives of extraordinary sanctity, not because of who we are, but because of who our Lord is. Christ is the Vine and we are branches. While it’s true that living vines always find expression in branches, to lose a branch does not kill the vine and can even help it; we branches can only live and be who we are on account of the Vine. The Vinedresser cuts off some branches out of concern for the whole plant, but the healthy branches — the ones nourished by the rich sap that flows from the vine into the branches, the sap of love and joy and God’s commandments — God prunes those healthy branches so that the whole plant is still healthier.
So let us eat and drink that sap this morning. Let us be nourished by the living Christ entering our bodies in this feast and filling us with His Spirit. Let us submit to the Vinedresser who, through that same Spirit, through Scripture, and through the faithful ministrations of the Apostles and their successors, prunes us and makes us branches that will bear much fruit. Amen.
