Imagine if, on the first Wednesday of November this year, you woke up to the news that Matt Smith had been elected President of the United States.
Who??
What just happened?
Where did Matt whatshisname come from?
You might very reasonably ask yourself – and others – those questions.
Nobody’s heard of a Matt Smith. Nobody knows what Matt stands for, what he’s done, or what he will do.
We don’t know anything about this guy.
It would be – in a recently popular word – unprecedented.
And then, what if Matt Smith quietly disappeared the next day, and overnight the media never reported on him again?
That’s not really what happens in our scripture story from the Acts of the Apostles this morning, but a lot of our questions might be the same, when Luke tells us “the lot fell on Matthias, and he was added to the eleven.”
Because no one has mentioned Matthias ever up until this point in the story – this point where, after Jesus lived and healed and taught all over; has died, been resurrected, taught his friends for another forty days of miraculous life; and been lifted straight up into heaven, telling them to wait for the Holy Spirit… where the friends of Jesus are now waiting in Jerusalem.
No one has mentioned Matthias through this whole story.
He appears here once, along with his friend or colleague Joseph Barsabbas Justus.
Becomes “one of the Twelve” – one of the leading group of disciples and apostles to represent the completeness of God’s people.
And then he vanishes again.
You wake up one morning, and Matthias is there – a key leader selected to ensure we are ready for God’s promises – and then he’s gone again. Before you and I, the folks for whom this story was written, have a chance to find out where he came from, who he is, what he stands for, or what he’ll do as a leader.
And we never will know.
Well, we know one thing. Luke tells us in this story that Matthias – like Joseph Barsabbas Justus – had been with Jesus and his friends through the whole of Jesus’ public ministry, through death and resurrection and ascension to heaven. But that’s it.
We don’t know if – as a follower of Jesus – he was practical, or enthusiastic, or good at persuasion, or particularly kind and thoughtful, or decisive, or curious, or highly competent or a charming fool.
And we never find out what he would do as a leader of God’s people.
Because we never hear of him (or of Joseph of the many names) again.
(There are times when I think that would actually make someone a good leader for our country. Though not most of the time.)
But I do suspect that this disappearing-into-the-story phenomenon we experience with Matthias might be exactly what we need, most of the time, in a disciple, an apostle, a leader of God’s people. The person – any person – who steps into a place to balance God’s people, to help make us all ready to receive the presence of God.
We wouldn’t have most of the inspiring scripture stories we have without some “famous” disciples, like Peter or Mary of Magdala or Thomas. Or have the strong base for Christian theology that comes from the letters of the early Christians preserved in our Bible without big name apostles like Paul and and John and some others.
We do need people who lead visibly – who stand out in front and make speeches and wave flags and write the official opinions and take the heat – or the credit – for big decisions that change or create a community or institution.
But for our wholeness as God’s people, for our readiness to receive the spirit and presence of God, for our readiness to do God’s work and share God’s love, the people who disappear into the story are probably even more important. Certainly more essential.
The only reason we have the story about Matthias, which we read this morning, is because the community waiting for the Holy Spirit felt the need to be more balanced, to be symbolically complete, whole, to be ready for Jesus’ promises to come true, become real among them.
The number twelve is a number of fulfillment or completeness for the people of God, based on the original twelve tribes of Israel who God rescued out of oppression and brought into a land of promise. Eleven just isn’t…whole.
Matthias doesn’t need to be a hero – a speech maker, explorer, decider, organizer, or miracle-worker – in order to make this community of God’s people complete.
All he needs – all we need – is to be there.
To have been there, faithfully showing up and paying attention and being with Jesus and all Jesus’ friends through the downs and the ups.
To keep being there.
Because one thing that happens in this story – one thing we know about Matthias – is that God chose him to keep being there. To make his friends, make all God’s people, ready for the presence of God, the receiving of God’s spirit, by his own quiet presence as a Twelfth.
In this story, as in so many of the stories of scripture – and so very very very many holy stories after we stopped recording them as “scripture” –
the Gospel is carried forward, the presence of God is made real, not by the heroes, but by the people who disappear into the story.
The ones whose names are mentioned once and then never again. The people who never even get named – but who step up to fill a need, or just persist in being there, showing up and paying attention to God, being with Jesus and with Jesus’s friends through the ups and the downs and the slow bits in between.
People like Matthias.
Like Joseph called Barsabbas called Justus, who was also there through it all, who isn’t chosen but keeps being part of the story he disappears into.
The gospel is carried forward by people like many of us here right now.
Like the person in a pew near you whose name you heard once, but can’t remember right now and would feel awkward asking – because you recognize them as part of the completeness of our community, as a necessary, important part of how we stay ready for God’s presence here.
Now, every one of us who disappears into the story of Jesus also has our own story. Like Matthias, like Joseph of the many names, we have friends and family who know us as individuals, who remember our quirks and heroisms and flaws and love.
Every one of us has someone in our lives who has played an essential role in making God’s presence possible for us – and who will probably never be famous for their faith or work – and who maybe you or I can’t quite recall right this minute.
We have, we are, people who are in our own stories, whole, and essential, and holy people, and who disappear into God’s story, making us whole, complete, and holy together.
There’s a very reasonable chance that none of us gathered today will be selected by lottery to be an official Certifier of God’s Promise, or Completer of God’s People. Many of us – if not all of us – are the folks who disappear into God’s story without ever having even Matthias’s brief brush with fame.
And yet Matthias’s story – and Joseph Barsabbas Justus’s story – is our story, too. The story of each of us, as we too slip unrecognized through God’s story, help carry the gospel forward, and help make God’s presence real in the world.
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