The words of Psalm 55 come to mind: “But it was you, a man after my own heart, my companion, my own familiar friend..who betrayed me”.

The reasons for Judas’ betrayal of Jesus have been the stuff of sermons, learned texts, plays and novels ever since. Was it disappointed hopes that drove Judas to do what he did? Was it an attempt to force Jesus’ hand to act in a particular way? Or had he simply lost the plot and gave into flattery and greed? We do not know. But what we do know is that the Judas factor is sadly all too familiar. The judgments in the Enron case remind us of human failures in the business world. While only in this past week the press has focused on the demise of a ministry in a Roman Catholic parish in Connecticut but failures in ministry of one sort or another, some more dramatic and more scandalous than others happen regularly and are always a source of pain to the wider church. It is a mild relief when the failure is in someone else’s patch but nonetheless the whole body of the church suffers each time. Judas’ end is told dramatically and is terribly sad. I have been associated with the suicide of several priests and all I can say the consequences for parish and clergy alike is devasting. I still remember attending the funeral of a priest in Melbourne who took his own life and the pall of gloom that affected all present.

It is at such times of the failure of a ministry that we are most fully aware of the fragility of the church; of its very human underbelly; of how vulnerable its leaders and members are to the pressures and temptations of the world. That is why our earnest prayers for our leaders both parochial, in the diocese and in the wider church are so important. Father McPherson spoke last Sunday of that prayer for our leaders as part of our ministry of love. Our leaders are no less vulnerable to the pressures and temptations than we are and often more so because of the huge expectations made of them.

But the Acts lesson does not dwell on Judas’ failure. There is a certain matter of fact quality in the text. These things happen. But what is impressive is the way the early leadership of the church gets on with the matter of appointing a replacement for Judas.

“So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us – one of these must become a witness with us to his resurrection.”

The concern among the apostolic band is for completeness and for continuity. In the early part of Acts as in the gospels the concept of the Twelve Apostles is of great importance. It becomes of lesser note later in Acts and in the Pauline writings. However in these early days of the church the significance of the Apostolic twelve with its overtones of the Twelve tribes of Israel and with the important continuity of that symbolism to the church as the New Israel was paramount. That made great sense in the Jewish Christian church of the first period before the massive expansion into the Gentile world. This figure of Twelve is caught up in the imagery of the New Jerusalem in the final pages of the Revelation of St John. You will remember the twelve gates each embellished with a different jewel. And elsewhere there is reference to the twelve thrones of judgment occupied by the apostles. Completeness was important to the early church as it is to us when we work to fill vacancies in boards and committees and vestries. But it was not only completeness for completeness sake but completeness in order to maintain the continuity of the witness to the resurrection of Jesus.

The corporate witness of the church to the reality of resurrection is fundamental to our message and makes this lesson so apposite in Eastertide as we consider the implications of the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus for the church today. We are inheritors of the witness to the resurrection from the apostles: that is what we mean by handing on the apostolic tradition of the church. We hand on that which we have received: that Jesus died for our sins; that he rose on the third day; and now is seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven; and that all who believe in him will receive the gift of eternal life. This is the good news we proclaim. This is the witness central to the mind of John in today’s epistle: “And this is the testimony: God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.” But we have to be careful not to slip into some mechanistic view of tradition and of apostolic succession as if that alone is what gives the church integrity. Rather the concern for continuity is to do with the faithful and patient witness to the good news we have in Jesus Christ. That is what is at the heart of our ministry. That is what ought to drive our concerns about Church Order and our Ecclesiology, that is our doctrine of the church and how we order our life.

The reality is that we hear in the Acts passage today of the election of Matthias over Justus but in fact never hear of either of them again in the New Testament. What is important though is the appointment of someone to continue the work of witness. We are all familiar with that concern in the church today with the election of bishops to fill vacant sees; with the selection of clergy for parishes; with the appointment of interims and priests in charge to fill in the gaps which often occur in parish ministries. Part of the charge given to me in coming to Transfiguration was to do with this business of continuity: to keep functioning the daily and weekly round of worship and prayer; of preaching and pastoral care and administration. That is not unimportant because it says something to us about the consistency of our faith and of our God. I always remember an occasion as a young priest in England sitting in King’s College Chapel one winters day at Evensong reading from a large prayerbook dating from the 17th century and pondering on the consistent witness to the gospel that had gone on in that place and in hundreds and thousands of places like it throughout the Christian era.

What we hear today in that Acts lesson is something about the fragility of the church and its ministry but also of the will of the church for the completeness and continuity of its witness to the resurrection. That is a helpful approach to our understanding of the church, that is our ecclesiology. From the gospel passage from John, from the so-called high priestly prayer of Jesus, Jesus prays for the church: for its protection; for its unity; for its joy; for its sanctification and for its mission. This reminds us that the church is of divine origin: it is called into being by God and sustained by his Spirit. But it is made up with fragile human beings like you and me (and it would be dishonest to deny that we all experience times of fragility in our relations with the church). There is an inevitable tension there between that divine calling and the fragility of its members. Our task is to keep that perspective: to recognize God’s call at the heart of the enterprise at all times while at the same time dealing with our shortcomings and sinfulness and those of others which sometimes blur or dim our vision.

As we come to the end of Eastertide with the great celebration of the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost this coming Sunday let us commit ourselves to be an Easter people, witnesses to the Resurrection of Jesus standing in the tradition of the apostles, bearers of peace and hope and future.   Amen

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