“I am the vine, ye are the branches”
There is something rather disquieting and quite disturbing about The Feast of St. Matthias. He is, after all, the disciple chosen by lot and by prayer to take the place of the traitor Judas, as the Collect so directly puts it. It is impossible to consider St. Matthias without thinking about the kiss of Judas and our own betrayals. To contemplate Matthias is to confront the betrayals of our own hearts. That may be the real blessing for it opens us out to the grace of God which is greater than our hearts of betrayal. Out of Judas’ betrayal comes Matthias’ faithfulness.
To be fair, we only know about his being chosen. That is the burden of the lesson from Acts. About his ministry and personality, we know far less. But that is in keeping with the Scriptures as a whole. They don’t fulfill our Oprah and Dr. Phil type desires; slim pickings for the gossip rags ancient and modern. Instead, they offer theology.
The theology here is most instructive. It is the theology of substitution, the theology of atonement belonging to the logic of redemption. Matthias takes the place of Judas. Why does he have to be replaced? Judas betrayed Christ and out of remorse killed himself. Why not just carry on sans Judas? Because of a larger consideration. The number twelve. The twelve apostles look back to the twelve tribes of Israel and look ahead to the apostolic foundation of the Church. It is all about how we are part of something more and greater than ourselves, namely, the community of redeemed sinners.
“I am the vine,” Jesus says, “ye are the branches.” It is the greatest of the so-called “I am” sayings of Jesus which have to do with God’s relation to us through the divine self-relation. It is impossible, I think, to hear the “I am” sayings without hearing the divine revelation of God to Moses through the Burning Bush, “I am who I am.” It is a ringing endorsement of the essential divinity of Christ. That this is the Gospel chosen for the commemoration of St. Matthias strikes me as significant.
The Feast of St. Matthias stands mid-way between two other major commemorations as they have come down to us in the Prayer Book tradition and as part of a much older ecumenical sensibility – the celebration of Candlemas, that double-barreled feast of Mary and Jesus, the Presentation of the one and the Purification of the other, and the celebration of the Annunciation, the beginnings in time of the Incarnation. That The Feast of St. Matthias should come mid-way between such significant doctrinal festivals is, at the very least, intriguing and, perhaps, instructive.
It opens us out to the deeper wisdom not just of the Scriptures themselves – the primary wisdom, to be sure – but to the way in which the Scriptures are read – a secondary wisdom, it seems to me, and one which we can scarcely ignore since it provides us with the access to the first. The Gospel and the Lesson are most instructive. The Lesson from Acts focuses on the act of choosing, implicitly confirming at least in nutsche the origins of ecclesiastical polity but as based upon a theological insight. What is that insight? The form of our indwelling God through the Word made flesh and the way in which that truth is made known to us; in short, Annunciation and Candlemas.
What The Feast of St. Matthias shows us is the further logic of the Incarnation which is about the theology of substitution. Christ has come to die for us. Such is redemption. “While we were yet sinners,” Christ, the one who is like us in all respects except what makes us nothing, namely sin, “died for us”. By a further extension of that miracle of salvation, Matthias is chosen to take the place of the traitor Judas, not as another traitor, but as one who knows a deeper truth, the truth of our abiding in Christ, our abiding in the love of the Son for the Father, a love which is greater than our treacherous hearts and a love which is only possible by the Incarnation.
The love that redeems and restores is able to make something even out of our treachery and betrayal. Matthias takes the place of Judas not as a second Judas but as a faithful Apostle. What does that mean? The Collect suggest what is needed, namely, “faithful and true pastors,” a concept grounded in the apostolic ministry, all our betrayals notwithstanding. Powerful stuff especially in a world and age which demands conformity to itself. But that is the way of Judas not Matthias. His feast day calls us to the nature of our life in Christ.
“I am the vine, ye are the branches”
Fr. David Curry
Feast of St. Matthias
2014