The Spirit blows where it will
Bonus for St. Matthias Day!
Alex Shuper
What did you think, the first time you read about the elevation of Matthias to the status of apostle?
‘We must therefore choose someone who has been with us the whole time that the Lord Jesus was travelling round with us, someone who was with us right from the time when John was baptising until the day when he was taken up from us – and he can act with us as a witness to his resurrection.’
Having nominated two candidates, Joseph known as Barsabbas, whose surname was Justus, and Matthias, they prayed, ‘Lord, you can read everyone’s heart; show us therefore which of these two you have chosen to take over this ministry and apostolate, which Judas abandoned to go to his proper place.’ They then drew lots for them, and as the lot fell to Matthias, he was listed as one of the twelve apostles.
Drew lots? But everyone knows that is just random—there is no will of any sort involved! (How does one know the will of God?)
Let’s look at the idea of randomness, of chance. Modern science is an explanatory structure. Most of us don’t think about this too hard, but we are confident that a scientific explanation is the final one, and if there is something science cannot now explain, it will have an explanation in the future.
If you do think about it, press science hard, you will find that science does not actually promise a universal understanding. Questions of meaning, purpose, and origin are outside its self-defined scope. Only the material, which is assumed to arise from other material events, is the province of science.
When this is insufficient, which happens more often than you might think, science relies on rules of thumb—Occam’s razor, for example: the simplest explanation is always best—or invents a concept that seems to explain away the difficulty. “There is noise in the data;” “It is the placebo effect;” “It is just chance.”
The concept of chance has its own discipline now, called statistical probability. I don’t pretend to understand what’s going on there, and I don’t care, either, any more than the Aristotelians cared about looking through Galileo’s telescope. There was nothing useful to see.
It has been almost 150 years since Nietzsche declared that God was dead. That there was no such thing as Truth with a capital T anymore.
God has not withdrawn from us—the Holy is everywhere—but the dominant explanatory structure has defined awareness of the transcendent out of existence. It is just chance. Or something you ate.
So what do we do, those of us steeped in a culture of relativism and material hegemony, where only science offers even an IOU of certainty, who seek the will of God?
There is no more important question, but you won’t get a definitive answer here. Abraham’s story offers some comfort, though.
At age 75, Abram believes he hears the will of God. He packs up all of his stuff, and with his family sets off to do that will. That acto of obedience was the beginning of millennia of the Abrahamic religions. Eventually, Abraham becomes so comfortable with the Presence that he can argue with the Holy One about the plan to destroy Sodom.
Then Abraham believes that it is the will of God that he kill his son Isaac as a sacrifice. What happens next is the comforting part. He does not hesitate to carry out God’s will. The next morning he gets up and gets things organized for the sacrifice, and gets on his way. But when the moment comes, God prevents him from killing the boy.1
Perhaps this can be a model for us. It is difficult for modern people to recognize a call from God, but sometimes, we do. If you think you have a nudge from the Holy Spirit, carry it out with all of your heart, mind, and body. If you are mistaken, God will protect us from grievous consequences. Also, you will get better at recognizing the Nudger.
The Holy is everywhere. You swim in it, and it swims in you. Abraham was accustomed to this awareness, and could instantly respond to the nudge to refrain from killing his son (whatever that looked like to him). And he knew his own habit of obedience, so he had no concern that he was perhaps acting in his own self-interest.
Back to Matthias. Was the result of casting lots a random, not particularly meaningful event, or was it the will of God? This is not an important question. What matters is to respond to the Holy with all that you have, all that you understand, no matter what the cost. After all, that’s what Jesus did.
What do you think? Is this a mad approach? What does a Nudge feel like in your world?
This essay is not addressed to anyone who might do something as heinous as stabbing a child. If you need another essay just on this point, let me know.