A Discerning Faith

Written by Alissa Bender

Associate Pastor Alissa Bender
Calgary First Mennonite Church
April 11, 2010

A Discerning Faith
Acts 1:12-26

The story that we are thinking about today is one that could almost be overlooked. Before these 15 verses, we have the story of Jesus’ last words to his followers, his instruction to wait for the promise of the Holy Spirit, and the climax of his ascending into heaven. Right after these 15 verses we have the story of Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit in wind and fire, and the birth of the church that is welcome to speakers of all languages, and members of all cultures.

Our 15 verses are the time between. Theologian Karl Barth has called the time between ascension and Pentecost a "significant pause" between the mighty acts of God, a pause in which the church’s task is to wait and to pray: Come, Holy Spirit (Interpretation, 20). But, even in this pause, God’s spirit is already at work.

Jesus told his followers to wait in Jerusalem until they had received the promise of the Father. But we are mistaken if we assume that waiting means that nothing is happening. Waiting is a burdensome task for we who live in an age of instant everything. We might offer a few synonyms of waiting: wasting time, total boredom, an opportunity for multi-tasking.

But in this time of waiting, Jesus’ followers aren’t doing nothing, nor are they filling their time with a bunch of meaningless tasks. What arises in this time between is a story about discernment.

We use the word "discernment" in many ways, in or outside of the church. We use it in common speech: "It was hard to discern the path in the dark". We use it in our individual lives and we use it in our actions as a congregation. When we use the word "discernment", it is important to remember that it isn’t just a fancy word for decision making. Using the word "discern" instead of "decide" doesn’t automatically make our decisions more weighty. A dictionary definition of "discern" includes the following:

"To detect or perceive with the eyes or some other sense or with the intellect. To be able to recognize or draw fine distinctions, to show careful judgment or fine taste, to recognize as distinct or different".

One Greek word that is often used when the New Testament speaks of discerning or examining is dokimazo. This word has the sense of testing a metal to see whether it is genuine. It can refer to something that has passed such a test and has been approved or found worthy.

Sally Weaver Glick (In Tune with God) offers this definition for discernment, especially as we think about it within a congregation: "Discernment is the practice of tuning in to God’s deepest desires for the world. It is the art of recognizing where God is already at work and of discovering what God is calling us to in our time and place. It is the discipline of aligning our decisions and actions with God’s" (p 29).

Discernment is more than making decisions, because our decision making is shaped by our identity as people of God and followers of Christ.

There are many stories about the early church doing discernment in the book of Acts. It can be helpful for us to look to these stories to help us to know how to do discernment in our time and place. But we may also notice that each story is a bit different, each process is unique as the church faced questions that it had never had to consider before – whether Gentiles needed to be circumcised, how to divide administrative and pastoral gifts, and here in Acts 1, what to do when one of their key leaders has betrayed Jesus and deserted them.

That is the question that about 120 of Jesus’ followers address in our passage – how to replace Judas. But it’s interesting to me that there is no evidence that they went to the upper room planning to solve that problem. All they did was to follow Jesus’ instructions to wait in Jerusalem, and they are led to this place of discernment. But there is more going on in this story, so let’s take a closer look at what discernment looks like in this event, and consider how it could inform our own seasons of discernment as a congregation.

I noticed at least ten things that shaped the discernment of this young community of faith. Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be a 4-hour, 10-point sermon, but I will tell you everything I noticed.

The first thing that Jesus’ followers do is that they obey Jesus’ words. Jesus ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. So they don’t panic at the loss of their leader and get out of town. They don’t sit down on the hillside and watch for Jesus to come back down out of heaven. They don’t pour over sea charts and evangelism program plans and look at their watches as they get ready to head out into the wild blue yonder. They listen to Jesus, who has quite a lot to say once you start reading the gospels. So they listen, as we, too, are called to listen. And this leads them to the second action. They wait.

As I have already said, waiting can be hard for us. But it can be so vital to our discernment. William Willimon says that "our waiting implies that the things which need doing in the world are beyond our ability to accomplish solely by our own effort, our programs and crusades. Some other empowerment is needed". Barreling straight ahead doesn’t always mean we’re being more faithful. I wonder whether many of you could discern what was on the front of our bulletin. It’s a picture (taken by Anika Reynar from Bergthal Mennonite) taken out of a train window, rushing through the forests of Brazil, with the misty weather obscuring much of what was in the distance.

It’s hard to discern what’s around us and where we’re going when we’re moving at breakneck speed. Sometimes what we need most is to stop, to wait, to listen, and to let God speak. And this is what Jesus’ followers were inviting God to do as they "were constantly devoting themselves to prayer". Their waiting is not just an empty space, but it is accompanied by praying. It is in prayer that they are led to the task that they must undertake in order to be ready for the gift of the Holy Spirit. Their praying prepares them for the calling they are about to receive.

So, these faithful followers have been obeying, waiting, and praying, and in all of this they are being together. A simple point, but a significant one. When we speak of congregational discernment, we know that we are speaking of one body, but a body made of many diverse parts. The kids showed us how we can need each other to understand many angles of an issue. We each have experiences and wisdom that will contribute in a discernment process, and it will help our outcome if we are all part of it. Sally Weaver Glick writes that we "listen attentively as others speak, because the Spirit may speak through any one of us" (p116). On this occasion in the upper room, God’s Spirit speaks through Peter, but everyone who has been together, praying together, has been led to the moment of being able to hear what God’s spirit says through Peter. And then they can also own it together.

Another key action that shaped the believers’ discernment was that they were breaking down barriers just as Jesus had done. Whereas in the synagogue, the men and women had their own places to gather, there in the upper room, the men that Jesus appointed as apostles were gathered in continual prayer with the women that also followed Jesus, and enough other people to make about 120. This point would not have been missed by a second century reader. The Jesus followers are a community that breaks down barriers and challenges the status quo. This is their visible identity, and people who had always been overlooked are now part of the discernment of the church. There are always ways that we can also show that kind of welcome in our discernment.

The next two points go hand in hand. First, Jesus’ followers move beyond past tragedy. The very issue with which they are dealing is an upsetting one. Judas sold out. He led Jesus’ killers straight to him and dared to greet Jesus with a friend’s embrace just before they took him away to his execution. And then, this man that they had walked with through so much died a terrible death.

This entire series of events must have been painful or infuriating for Jesus’ friends to recall. But they don’t dwell long in that failure. They don’t focus on what didn’t work, or on who didn’t get the job done in the past. Yes, it happened, so what next? And in their attitude of prayer, they are led to the decision that it is right for a new 12th apostle to be chosen. The work that Judas will now never carry out will be done by someone else. And the church moves forward.

The other side of this action is that the church also moves beyond past glory days. The church could also have been stuck dwelling in nostalgia for a time that no longer existed. After all, all of these people gathered in the upper room had been with Jesus. How tempting was it to remember how good things were then? "When Jesus was here, he would have known what to do. Remember the time that he…? How great was it when he…?" It’s also tempting to romanticize the past and to forget about the times that Jesus was embarrassingly inappropriate by the rules of social convention. Or when he spoke just a little too loudly in contrast to the Roman Empire. Nostalgia’s not a complete picture. But it’s a nice one.

But this community isn’t stuck in it. It seems that from the moment when two strangers in white robes asked the apostles on the hillside: "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?" they began to understand that they are at the beginning of a new era. Maybe Jesus’ words started coming back to them: "the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these" (Jn 14:12). The Church is about to be truly born, and this is an amazing thing that never happened when Jesus was with them. Even when the past has been great, we are called to trust that God can always bring something new into being.

Moving on to the eighth thing that shaped the discernment of this group of people: They are people who have been formed by Scripture and tradition. It is clear how they have been formed by Scripture. When Peter stands up to speak, he goes to the Jewish Scriptures, to the book of Psalms, to explain how he has come to what he is about to say.

You may have two concerns about these two Psalms that Peter quotes. One is – what do they mean, anyway? The two quotes come from two different Psalms, and we read about and threw around quite a few possible understandings of them in the office this week. Peter seems to use them to explain that Scripture gives them direction for the matter before them: "May another take his place of leadership", that is, Judas’ place. But your second concern may be, on closer examination of Psalm 69 and 109, that Peter takes these single verses way out of context, doesn’t he? So, how is proof-texting evidence of being formed in Scripture?

Just to keep you from being distracted by this concern, I’ll tell you that the best explanation I found this week was that this use by Peter of the Hebrew Scriptures was a common Jewish interpretive principle. We can call it the "how much more" argument. You might think of another story that Luke records in the words of Jesus, about an unjust judge who grudgingly grants justice to a pleading widow. God will also grant justice to those who cry out day and night, Jesus says. God is not an unjust judge, though, and so rather than a perfect analogy, Jesus’ listeners understood this story in the sense that if even an unjust judge (who doesn’t fear God or respect anyone), if even he will grant justice, how much more will God do the same?

So, while our two Psalm texts are taken from different contexts, we can perhaps apply this principle that if it was true for the Psalmist, how much more might it be true as we consider the life of Jesus and our calling as we follow him.

A long explanation, and maybe it doesn’t quite make sense to you, but I thought this was the most confusing part of our story that might carry with it a bit of a question.

Whatever our understanding is, though, of how Peter used Scripture, it is clear that it was an integral part of the community’s discernment. Verses from the Psalms were on the tip of his tongue and he believed that those ancient texts had something to say to the situation they were currently facing.

To be formed by Scripture doesn’t always mean that we know just when to quote the right Bible verse. Immersing ourselves in Scripture informs our words, actions, and beliefs in sometimes subtle but important ways. If we believe that God can still speak to us through this old book, then God will.

We’re down to our last two characteristics that shaped this community’s discernment. They are focussed on spreading the word about Jesus. Jesus told them that they would be his witnesses to the ends of the earth, and so they pray for the right person to step into the ministry and apostleship to which the other 11 had been called. "One of these must become a witness with us to his resurrection", Peter says. That is the reason for the decision before them. Not just to take a load of their backs, not just to fill a quota, but because they want to be fully prepared to be Jesus’ witnesses.

And, finally, Jesus’ followers ultimately trust God with the decision. Now, maybe I’ve saved another questionable practice for last, because we don’t cast lots anymore when we’re choosing leaders. I don’t roll a die when I’m making a big decision and trust that if God is listening, it will land on the right number, and push any other powers of discernment out the window. But Jesus’ followers exhibit a clear desire for God to guide the choice, and a trust that God will, in fact, be part of it. A quote from the Mennonite Minister’s Manual says that "discernment is a matter of faith in God (God will show us the way) and faithfulness to God (that we will follow the way we have been shown)" (221).

I said before that discernment is more than merely making decisions, because our decision making is shaped by our identity as people of God and followers of Christ. If you’ve heard nothing else I’ve said today, this is what sums it all up. This is central. Our discernment as a congregation means little if it does not come out of this identity. And as people of God, we place our trust in God.

We trust that God is with us in our waiting. We trust that God hears us in our praying. We trust God to bring us together and to give us the strength to break barriers and to move beyond our past. We trust that God speaks to us in Scripture, and that God will be present as we spread the word about Jesus. We trust God when we start an overwhelming new discernment process, all the way through in its surprises and frustrations, and when we come to the end, as we grab hold of what is new and let go of what must pass away.

This was the shape of the discernment of this young group of Christ followers in the first century, and this, I believe, can also be the shape of our discernment as a congregation. We always have opportunities for discernment before us. Being a faithful community of followers of Christ is an ongoing act of discerning how our actions and decisions can be aligned more fully with Christ’s life.

So, let’s keep alert whenever we come together, in worship, in Sunday school discussions, at fellowship gatherings, and at congregational meetings. Let’s keep alert to how we may be called to these actions of discernment as God is calling us into deeper faithfulness. Sometimes we will need to live in the ambiguity of a time between. But this is not a time that we need to fear. This is a time of hope for what great new act of God will be on the other side. This is a time when we need to pray with our ancestors in the faith: Come, Holy Spirit.