May 20, 2012 | 8:00 a.m.

Casting Lots

Matt Helms
Pastoral Resident, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 139:1−12
John 17:6−11
Acts 1:12−17, 21−26

This story of Matthias pushes us to ask questions about how we discern the will of God and the confidence we place in the systems we employ . . . to what extent do the methods we employ in discernment get tangled up in our own need to control circumstances and outcomes?

Jeffrey Peterson-Davis

First off, I’d like to say that I’m thrilled to see people here this morning, and I’m impressed with your dedication in getting here, particularly those of you who came up from the South Side of Chicago. Everything has been peaceful so far, knock on pulpit, but the logistics of getting to Fourth Church today added a wrinkle that many would rather avoid. So I’m glad you’re here to worship. This has been one of those weeks when a preacher tries to wait until the last possible moment to write a sermon—not out of fear that no one would show up (although that did cross my mind), but because of the potential that late-breaking news from the NATO summit would demand our attention. As you know, Chicago is playing host to leaders from around the globe both today and tomorrow, as well as thousands of protesters who are critical of the purpose and performance of NATO over the last several years. The discussions and decisions that come out of this summit will have a great impact on global policy and politics, and, even with the media saturation this past week, its importance cannot be overstated.

Our second lesson today from Acts also deals with an important decision—one that was made in the early days of the church. The disciples have gathered following Jesus’ resurrection but there is a vacant place amongst the twelve disciples because of Judas Iscariot’s betrayal. They propose two individuals to take Judas’s place and cast lots to decide between the two.

Earlier this week, I sent an email to the Pastor Nominating Committee asking if they would consider casting lots, the ancient equivalent of rolling dice or flipping a coin, to help them decide who the new Pastor of Fourth Church will be. For some reason, I did not get a response. It seemed like a helpful suggestion to me; after all it would significantly cut down on our search time, is very clear and definitive, and, as we just read, it’s biblical! Alas, something about this type of decision making doesn’t really appeal to us, probably because coin flips are the ultimate cop-out in decision making. Can’t decide on a movie? Flip a coin. Who’s going to take the dog out? Flip a coin. Where are we going to eat tonight? Apparently my wife has a coin with two heads that she saves for that question. But at the end of the day, flipping a coin or casting lots is so utterly random.

So when we look back on this account from Acts, it seems unthinkable that this would have been the method by which God’s will was sought in that crowded upper room. This position was far more important than Pastor of Fourth Church; this was a decision about someone becoming one of the twelve disciples. The church itself desperately needed good leaders if it was to survive in these early years. If we were running the show, this decision process would have required several interviews, a thorough vetting of all candidates, and an apostolic test-run before anyone could be named among the disciples. But there wasn’t any of this.

Instead, there was a handful of bones cast upon a mat to point to the one who would become one of the twelve disciples. How are we supposed to understand this theology of chance, this assumption that God speaks through coin flips? To our ears, it sounds ridiculous and is no more than a primitive form of divination. It sounds like something roughly akin to “letting fate decide,” a phrase that evokes ambivalence or even nihilism.

Perhaps the most gripping representation in recent memory of a theology of chance can be found in the Coen Brothers’ Oscar-winning film No Country for Old Men. In the film, Javier Bardem plays a mysterious and ruthless stranger dressed entirely in black who descends upon a southwestern town. His hallmark is a quarter that he carries with him, a coin that he flips in order to decide whether or not those he encounters will live or die. The movie itself is visually striking, with wide shots of stark and barren landscape, and the soundtrack is equally barren: the only noises we get are manmade. It is within the barrenness of that landscape, this vast expanse of desert and desertion, that the full significance of this coin-flipping comes into focus. For the stranger in black, this coin is his moral compass in a morally blank world. Rather than accept the weight of difficult choices onto himself, he can attribute his actions instead to fate and chance—his own sort of divination, if you will.

But if this type of thinking can be described as nihilism, is that what we’re seeing in this passage from Acts? I don’t think so. Instead, we are seeing the flip side of the same coin: on one side, you have the absolute trust in randomness that we see in No Country for Old Men, and on the other side, you have the absolute trust in God by those gathered in the upper room. The practical realities of either belief often look similar; that’s why they are a part of the same coin. But within these beliefs is a key difference: absolute trust in God holds an ingrained optimism that all things are working towards a larger purpose, while absolute trust in randomness holds an ingrained pessimism that all things are ultimately inconsequential.

Now this is a heavy topic for a Sunday morning, so I want to respect that. However, I think this idea of holding trust in the midst of trying circumstances is vital in order to unpack what is going on in this account from Acts and, to push the envelope a little further, is vital to understanding the climate of our world today. Many things in life seem frustratingly out of our hands these days: an economy that has dipped and can’t quite seem to recover, a war against an opponent that we can’t quite seem to grasp, natural disasters that leave areas devastated. It is within this environment that a story like the casting of lots sounds utterly ridiculous. We want to have all the information, understand the situation, decide on solutions, and be able to have a direct effect. We want to be in control.

I believe that what the thousands of protesters who have come to Chicago for NATO are most angry about is their lack of control over the decisions that are being made this weekend. Although the protestors gather and march and shout, the global representatives will almost certainly be insulated from those ideas and hopes. Free speech is protected in this country, but listening is not required, and nothing hurts worse than speaking your mind only to feel as though it falls on deaf ears. This lack of control and influence has had a devastating effect on the protestors’ lives or the lives of people they have known, and so they want someone to hear their experience.

On the other side of this NATO coin are those in positions of authority and leadership, people who have been suffering from a different kind of problem with control. For them, the problem is not feeling as though they have a lack of control; instead, the problem is the allusion that they can ultimately be in control. I believe that the leaders of this summit genuinely want peace and security in the world, but those things cannot be forced into existence. The fragility of peace is often likened to the growing of a plant: overwork the ground or overwater the soil and the plant can die. Peace, security, and human flourishing cannot be forced into existence. Yet, as gardeners know, there are times when intervention is needed in the growing of plants, water or fertilizer to help cultivate growth. There are times when the world will need to intervene in humanitarian crises—in the words of the prophet Joel, a time when plowshares will need to become swords just as Micah and Amos prophesied a time when swords will be beaten into plowshares. How do we find the balance, particularly in a global context that is far more complex than this simple plant analogy? How do we suppress our desire to be in control of chaotic situations, particularly when that control devastates the very people we are trying to help?

Our country’s current rate of military spending suggests that balance might be out of order, that we may currently have more swords for war than plowshares cultivating life and growth both at home and abroad. In 2011, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute determined that the United States spent approximately $687 billion for military purposes, a stunning 44 percent of global military spending for a country that has only 4.5 percent of the global population. Those numbers speak to a desire to be in control, to have answers for every problem, to be involved in all situations, to make sense and order out of a world that seems far too random. Those numbers speak to a desire to be God or, at the very least, a lack of trust in God’s presence in the world.

Our psalm today, Psalm 139, offers a powerful response to this lack of trust: “O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” Rather than being absent or aloof, God is, says Psalm 139, intimately familiar with creation, and this understanding of God is one of our foundational Reformed theological beliefs. The idea of God’s sovereignty means that for all the seeming randomness in this life, God is nonetheless there, guiding and shaping us in our lives. We have to be willing to trust, to cede ultimate control to God, and to instead focus on the small things in front of us that we can control. Rather than trying to control the growth of seeds into full-grown plants, we need to plant seeds and trust that God will be there to shepherd growth, bringing us back only when necessary.

One of the most famous prayers from the past century is Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Serenity Prayer”: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” It’s a prayer that speaks to this idea of God’s sovereignty and tries to relieve us of our need to control, and its popularity has been well earned. However, I have always loved a lesser-known prayer written by Oscar Romero, a former archbishop of El Salvador, that also captures this idea of God’s sovereignty. He writes, “It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us. For we are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.”

Perhaps that’s what all those gathered in the upper room almost 2,000 years ago realized: they were only apostles, not the Messiah; disciples, not God. They had done their due diligence in gathering two individuals who had been with Jesus since the beginning. Their resumes were impeccable; they both seemed like they’d be great disciples. But in the end, those making the decision were able to let control go, to put the decision out of their hands in the casting of lots, and to trust that whoever was called would be exactly who was needed at that moment. They learned to be comfortable not having ultimate control, instead holding optimism that the small work that they did was leading to something better.

It is in that vision that we better understand what it means to be one of Christ’s disciples. It means trusting in Psalm 139’s vision of a God who is intimately and actively involved in creation. It means trusting that there is more than randomness in this life and that in the stark landscapes of this world—the harsh world depicted by No Country for Old Men—we are called to plant seeds and trust that they will grow and change that landscape. There are plenty of seeds to be sown: PIFs for the Pastor Nominating Committee to read, decisions for the leaders of the NATO summit to make, ideas and criticisms to be voiced by protesters. Some of these seeds may need nurturing—for example, those protesting war would truly help spread peace by volunteering for CeaseFire or other organizations dedicated to nonviolence. But ultimately, we know that all of our work is just a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. We are prophets of a future not our own, called as disciples to be witnesses to God’s love. We are not ultimately in control nor do we need to be in control. Instead we plant whatever seeds we have been called to sow, trusting that God will do the rest. Amen.