Acts 1:15-17, 21-26

Year B - Easter 7 or Assurance ⁷

May 17, 2015

Acts 1:15-17, 21-26

A significant tension in every religious experience:

• Is this the start of something?
• Is this the culmination of something?

In the moment Scripture is opened to new interpretation—understanding. We can now see that something had been germinating there—in the dark. Under an ordinary sky—a new bloom. Where we had no way of fitting a new piece into an old puzzle—new room. Scripture has become a lens through which we see new possibilities.

As such a moment moves with us it becomes enfolded into a new darkness within Scripture that traps us in a prior interpretation and doctrine becomes knowing. Its claim upon us moves from bloom to sustenance and we feed on it even after it has been propped up with poisonous fertilizer and processes of genetic modification for an economy’s sake. From a hopeful bloom we see it emblazoned on a thousand shields and banners going forth to war to take all color out of the sky. There is not and cannot be any shade of gray for all has been decided and the greatest of mysteries has become mundane. Finally Scripture is not a lens but an eye-patch.

Is Matthias a needed piece to open an Indiana Jones quest one door deeper but insignificant in and of itself? Is Matthias a cypher standing for your name and mine inviting us to take Scripture yet another step beyond a previous blooming? I hope the latter. Keep wriggling. Your presence will be plenty enough surprising whenever a next blooming occurs.