The Seventh Sunday of Easter

What or who guides you? When you have a decision to make, when you are weighing options or considering a difficult decision, where do you turn?

The picking of Matthias as a new disciple after Judas’s betrayal is an interesting moment in Scriptures. I think it’s easy to jump to the “casting lots” part of the story which quickly seems to justify that as a valid decision-making process but I beg of you not to start letting dice guide you through life. There is a bit of a precedent for casting lots; Proverbs and Joshua for instance point us to examples of how casting lots was a way of discovering God’s will. But I think it is worth considering the immediate context also shows how God can work through a process of discernment. Lots were used only after two candidates were already vetted by a community for their acceptability in this role and, very importantly, prayerful consideration. But today’s reading also comes just a week before Pentecost which I think further clarifies a bit of how discernment can work.

In Pentecost, we see an important moment in how God is made present to us: the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. In this upcoming moment, I think we receive some clarity on how the equation of how we make decisions; as 1 John tells us, “you have eternal life” which is the “testimony that God has given” in our hearts. And this changes everything. God has indwelled in us and we don’t need to be guided by the equations of the world, the fear of death and the like as we know those things are not the final picture. Like the Psalm points us towards, we can now freely pursue righteousness, freely seek after “The Law of the Lord” and freely avoid the counsel of the wicked, the counsel that will play upon our fears and sinful natures but draws us away from the reality of hope in eternal life that God promises.

There are many decisions we will need to make in life, many times when our path forward will be murky but our passages today give us hope beyond randomness. From discernment and the work of the Holy Spirit, we see that righteousness and the testified hope in God should be the ultimate focus as we discern our paths.

— Evan Bassler