Coping with disappointment is never easy. Once we’ve set our heart on something to be
dashed at the final moment takes a bit of time to recover from. Anyone who has been for a job interview and
not been appointed knows this and the more we invest in thinking ourselves into
the post, which at some levels we have to do otherwise we are not taken
seriously, the further we have to fall.
On Friday I was involved in interviewing for a new Rector for a vacant
parish and clearly only one candidate could be appointed. This week we learnt that the Crown Nominations Commission has not been able to agree on a candidate to present as
the next Bishop of Oxford. That means
that a number of clergy have been interviewed and no one has been invited to
take it on. Various politicians are
having to come to terms with their name not being the top of the ballot last
week. So disappointment is in the air.
Our first reading (Acts 1:15-17, 21-end) gave us
the selection of Matthias to replace Judas as an apostle in the church. Judas was one of the disciples closest to
Jesus but betrayed him. The apostles, as
some of them came to be known after the resurrection, decide they have to fill
the vacancy and the lot falls on Matthias.
Justus is not selected. We don’t know
anything else about Matthias after this.
We don’t hear anything of Justus either, he’s not even given a day in
the calendar, but he is still interesting, in fact I find him more interesting
than Matthias. He’d be a good candidate
for patron saint of the disappointed.
Both candidates were well qualified. They had both accompanied the other disciples
as Jesus had ‘gone in and out among them, beginning from the baptism of John
until the day when he was taken up from them’.
One of these is to be a witness with them of the resurrection. So they had a choice and had to come up with
an open and transparent appointment process, in this case drawing lots, which
it has to be said does save time. We now
have job descriptions, person specifications based on the vision and direction
the particular vacancy has identified, and candidates are assessed on how they
present against this criteria.
What we are aiming at is finding someone who will be the
right person for a particular vacancy at this time to lead it in the direction
it needs to go in. We don’t know of
course whether Justus was disappointed, or actually relieved not to be
chosen. After all, the top jobs only
look attractive from the outside. From
the inside they can look very different.
And this is the key to evaluating how we deal with disappointment. Somewhere in all of the processes there is a
faith and trust that God’s providence holds us.
Sometimes the appointment panel sees things we might not have seen and
save us from what would become a very serious mistake for us and everyone
else. Sometimes they just get it
wrong. We’ve all seen that at
times. There is the joke of the bishop
who calls on a priest and one of the young children in the house asks the
bishop if he can explain something to him.
The bishop is keen to encourage the youngster, so agrees. The child asks, my mum can’t understand how a
fool like you became a bishop! Of course
that would never have been said by my children not least because we had a clear
rule, what was said at the kitchen table stayed at the kitchen table! Even when the selection process does not go
well, we have to trust that with God all things can work for good and be a
moment of grace, of gift, rather than doom and despair.
The first Christian writers, which include the gospel
writers, were writing to churches that were facing persecution and significant
trials. This is no less the case with John’s
gospel. They were under Roman occupation
and justice could be summarily executed, so life was precarious. So when our gospel reading refers to the
world hating them and asks for protection from evil (John 17:14), it is
not merely a figure of speech. Christian
hope is not just for when things go well.
It is also for when things do not go straight. After a disastrous uprising by Jewish freedom
fighters in AD70, and the subsequent destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple
when it was brutally and decisively crushed by the Romans, hopes and dreams of
liberation lay shattered along with the bodies.
But, God can and does circumvent our mistakes. I find there is a punch line to the
appointment of Matthias. He is chosen as
an apostle, but we hear nothing of him.
He may have done his job, been an effective witness of the resurrection. Meanwhile, though, a young Pharisee called
Saul was getting angry at the church’s rise and the spread of the gospel. He was inspired to persecute them but in so
doing something of their message worked inside his mind. So on a journey to Damascus to round up more
of their number he was struck down by a blinding light and as a result became
the champion of the faith. In one of his
letters he described himself as an apostle, though he matched none of the
criteria set out in the person specification in our first reading. He is second generation, not first
generation, because he was not a witness to the actual events. Yet he becomes the champion of the faith and
is responsible for its spread along the Mediterranean coast. He may not have been the official choice, but
that did not put him beyond the grace, the gift, the choosing of God.
We have to organize our life, we have to plan. As we set up structures to achieve certain
ends, we place boundaries around what we expect to see happen. These days between the Ascension on Thursday and
Pentecost next Sunday are days we look to the coming Holy Spirit. We look for God’s surprises and punch lines
to give the story a twist and send it off in a new direction, where we may not
have expected it to go. God has a
wonderful sense of humour and we see this not least in whom he calls to be his
witnesses and to lead, to inspire and to navigate the new course. Each of us has a role to play because each of
us is called to be a witness to this hope, revealed in the resurrection of
Jesus Christ and in his Ascension, where his contact details are also revealed. Even if not selected, for whatever purpose,
each of us is still held in the purpose of God and we can receive this purpose as
a sign of grace, a gift too. In that
gift we grow, flourish and celebrate the purpose of God’s love which holds and
moves us. There are surprises, but God’s
providence can be relied on and be trusted.
Even when it doesn’t go straight for us God’s loving purpose holds us
and the Holy Spirit brings surprises to revitalize and refresh hope.
So today we remember Justus who wasn’t chosen and all who experience
disappointment but nonetheless know they are held by the grace, the gift of
God’s love and purpose.
No comments:
Post a Comment