May 24, 2009
(Seventh Sunday of Easter)
Urim and Thummim
by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer
Acts 1:15-17, 21-26 •
Psalm 1 • 1
John 5:9-13 • John
17:6-19
(From The
Lectionary Page)
The running joke on Tuesday afternoons at Women’s Bible Study is that we are taking nearly as long to get through the Book of Exodus as it took the Israelites to get to the Promised Land. None in the group has complained about the pace in these last eight months. Still, as we approached chapter 25, I gave the women the option of skipping quickly through it and the following 6 chapters. This particular section of Exodus describes in excruciating detail God’s particular plans for the tabernacle, the Ark of the Covenant, the various altars, the priestly vestments, and so on. We could just hit the highlights, I suggested, rather than risk getting bogged down in the minutiae. But the women, to their very great credit, were having none of my proposed Readers’ Digest/ Twitter version. And all I can say is thank God they held their ground against my suggestion.
Turns out, we spent one whole session talking about a particular piece of priestly paraphernalia known as the urim and thummim. In Exodus 28, God instructs Moses that the high priest is to keep these tools of divination in a pouch under the breastplate of his vestments. God gives the instructions to Moses and summarizes it all with the words, Thus (the high priest) shall bear the judgment of the Israelites’ on his heart before the Lord continually. (Ex. 28:30)
We’re not told what the urim and thummim looked like or how exactly they were used. But the commentaries tell us that when the high priest or kings needed to consult the will of God over an important matter, they used the urim and thummim to cast lots. They were the means by which faithful decisions were made.
So when we hear in our reading from Acts this morning, about the disciples casting lots to choose between Justus and Matthias, this is the ancient reference.
As Luke tells the story in the first chapter of Acts, Judas Iscariot has died a particularly grisly death. Luke presupposes that just as there were 12 tribes of Israel in the first Covenant, so there must be 12 apostles in the new Covenant. Judas died, someone must take his place – someone who knew Jesus from the time of his baptism until his death. In other words, someone was needed to fill the apostolic ranks, someone who had immediate, personal knowledge of Jesus who would therefore be fit to testify to the Good News. Two people fit these requirements – Justus and Matthias.
So one of them had to be chosen. In the eyes of the world, Peter and the disciples were a bunch of yahoos from up north somewhere in Galilee. But to the Church for whom Luke writes his account, they were the apostles, the ones who would be anointed by the Holy Spirit to be sent forth. And so of course they used the tools of divination used for centuries by the high priests and kings. They cast lots. And the lot fell upon Matthias.
It is easy for us modern folk to fall into the fallacy of
believing that our forebears were theologically unsophisticated.
That they somehow invested the tools of divination with magical
properties. Or that faith in God meant for the ancient Jews and
early Christians that future events were already fated by God who
mapped out an unchangeable course of history from the very beginning
of time itself. Conversely, it is also easy for us to fall into the
fallacy of believing that what God wants most from us is for us to
figure out God’s inscrutable will, and that there will be divine
repercussions if we somehow manage to do it wrong. It would be easy
to assume that Peter and the other disciples were quaking in their
sandals, fearful that all would be lost if God intended one of the
guys and they got it wrong and chose the other.
The women of the Bible Study group, I am pleased to report, did not
fall into any of those fallacies. In fact, some very thoughtful
discussion emerged about how bodies of faithful people make
decisions and seek God’s will. They identified – correctly, to my
way of thinking – that trust is ultimately what undergirds any
process of faithful discernment, or decision-making. It wasn’t that
the casting of lots is seen, or ever was seen, as objectively
revelatory of God’s desire. Rather, casting lots was a tool for the
human side of the equation – symbols to be used in the engaging of
one’s faithful relationship with God. To cast lots relativized the
content of the decision and placed all of the emphasis on the
process. The apostolic work of the church would proceed not because
Matthias was chosen over Justus, but because the apostles were wise
enough and courageous enough to set aside whatever agendas they
brought to the table and to trust that God would bless their
ministry if they first placed their trust in God.
Ironically, the selection of Matthias in today’s reading is the first and the last time that he appears in Scripture. Turns out that the work of an apostle who wasn’t even on the radar screen yet ultimately will figure far more prominently into the early days of the Christian witness – Saul of Tarsus, better known as the Apostle Paul. Who knows? Maybe the work of the Early Church progressed as it did because precious energy was not wasted in squabbling over personnel decisions.
It is no small thing to engage in the kind of radical trust that makes us willing to relativize content in decision-making and to place the emphasis instead on process. In fact, it is so counterintuitive that we can probably count on one hand the number of times the Church in her 2000 year history has made decisions this way. Still, we have this Scriptural memory of a moment when the leaders of the Church quite intentionally and absolutely counterintuitively left an apostolic decision up to the throwing of dice, the casting of lots, because they trusted that God was with them come what may, cost what will. Frankly, given what the Church faces – locally and nationally -- it may well be worth it for us to wrestle a bit with this notion of radical trust. The late Thomas Merton composed a prayer that moves us in that direction. I pray it frequently. Let me share it with you now:
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, And the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death, I will not fear, for you are ever with me and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. Amen.
