Bet On a Sure Thing

By

Reverend Litton Logan

Scriptures:

Acts 1:15-27; 21-26

15 In those days Peter stood up among the brethren (the company of persons was in all about a hundred and twenty), and said,

16 "Brethren, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David, concerning Judas who was guide to those who arrested Jesus.

17 For he was numbered among us, and was allotted his share in this ministry

21 So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us,

22 beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us -- one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection."

23 And they put forward two, Joseph called Barsab'bas, who was surnamed Justus, and Matthi'as.

24 And they prayed and said, "Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men, show which one of these two thou hast chosen

25 to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside, to go to his own place."

26 And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthi'as; and he was enrolled with the eleven apostles.(NRSV)

Sermon:

J. E. Bedenbaugh tells a story about his grandmother, a staunch Southern Baptist, who had marched him off to Sunday school and church regularly. Therefore, when he switched to the Episcopal Church after marriage, she challenged him: "What's wrong with the Baptist Church, son?" "Well," he explained, "Carole and I flipped a coin to see if we would go to her church or mine, and I lost." "Serves you right," said his grandmother. "Good Baptists don't gamble."

          When I read this little story, I thought of my own Southern Baptist grandmother and her injunctions against such vices as gambling, dancing, drinking alcoholic beverages, and idleness.

          I have often wondered how she handled these scriptures about the disciples casting lots for a replacement disciple for Judas.

The community of believers selected these two men, Justus and Matthias, according to the criteria offered by Peter, which was that the replacement for Judas had to have been with the company of disciples from the beginning and had experienced the resurrected Jesus.  Evidently, these two candidates were either too close in abilities for the group to pick one over the other or they didn’t want to factionalize the group by openly choosing one over the other; so, they thought they would let God pick Judas’ successor through chance.  Therefore, the two candidates’ names were written on stones and placed in a bag or cup, shaken vigorously until one name feel out.  Matthias name fell out and became Judas’ replacement.

          Although there may be other interpretations of these scriptures, I personally think the text is clear—the disciples trusted their idea of God working through chance or probability to choose a replacement for Judas. 

          Casting lots or using chance to make a decision was common in the Old Testament.  We find evidence to support casting lots for allocating newly conquered land, detecting the guilt of a person suspected of having broken a taboo; selecting the proper goat to use as a sin offering in the Ritual Day of Atonement, solving exceptional political and labor problems.  In fact, casting lots chose the first king of Israel, Saul.

Imagine if you will, a church searching for a new pastor.  They have two final candidates, they are equally matched and some elder or member of the pulpit committee suggests let’s flip a coin.   I am sure that this has probably happened in some churches, but think for a moment of the implications of such a thing.  Especially, if the winner turns out later to be a loser.  Well, in that case the elders or the pulpit committee could just blame God and be off the hook.

          Interesting enough, casting or drawing lots was not a linked to magic practices that were condemned in the Old Testament (Deut. 18:10-12).  Casting lots was thought of as a human action that brought about a divine “decision”. The outcome of casting lots was to be decided by God, since God controls all the forces of nature, which reminds me of another little story. 

The Voice from Above

A man walks along a lonely beach. Suddenly he hears a deep voice say, “DIG!” He looks around: nobody's there. I am hallucinating, he thinks. Then he hears the voice again,”I SAID, DIG!”

So he starts to dig in the sand with his bare hands, and after some inches, he finds a small chest with a rusty lock. The deep voice says, “OPEN!”

Okay, the man thinks, let's open the thing. He finds a rock to knock off the lock, and when the chest is finally open, he sees a lot of gold coins. The deep voice says, “GO TO THE CASINO!”

Well the casino is only a few miles away, so the man takes the chest and walks to the casino. The deep voice says, “ROULETTE!”

So, he changes all the gold into a huge pile of chips and goes to one of the tables, where the players gaze at him with disbelief. The deep voice says, “27 BLACK!”

He takes the whole pile and drops it on the number 27 BLACK.

Everybody is quiet when the croupier throws the ball. The ball spins, spins, and finally settles on number 26 RED.
The deep voice says, “AWE, DARN!”

          Just maybe God isn’t in charge of chance after all.

          In the New Testament, the casting of lots for a divine decision in the Christian community is mentioned only once, here in today’s scriptures.  I wonder why?

          As we all know, this business of chancing chance in some form or the other has been around a long, long time.  No matter how we feel about using chance in decision-making the fact remains that when we do we abdicate our responsibility of a truly informed choice with its God-given responsibility for self-determination to something we call chance or fate. 

          In our culture today, gambling, playing with chance to determine one’s future is very common and highly destructive. In short, many people will let the role of the dice, the spin of the wheel, the lay of the cards determine not only their fate for richer or poor but that of their families and their communities.

          Legal and illegal gambling is very, very, harmful to our country.   John Kindt, Professor of Commerce and Legal Policy, at the University of Illinois and a leading authority on the economics of gambling calculates that for every $1 a state receives in gambling revenues, it costs that state at least $3 in increased criminal justice, social welfare, and other social costs.

          Robert Goodman, the Director of the United States Gambling Study, argues that diverting consumer dollars into gambling results in a decline of jobs and revenues in other business.  Gambling brings in one new job for every 3 to 5 it destroys.  In effect, since poor people tend to gamble harder in search of a way out of poverty or to deal with the psychology of hopelessness, gambling tends to be a regressive tax on the poor. In states with legalized gambling the poor just get poorer. Interestingly enough, it is the poorer states that were first to jump on the legalized bandwagon as a rule.

          All sorts of addictive behaviors proliferate in areas with legalized gambling.  Eighty-five percent of gamblers are local folks so gambling does not bring in a lot of outside money; rather it takes local money out of the area through the pockets of the owners of the gambling facilities while producing nothing in the market place, undercutting the multiplier effect. One study by the Maryland Department of Health (1994) indicated that each newly created pathological gambler in Maryland has cost that state between $13,200--$52,000 per year in additional social costs. Another study indicated that the average debt for pathological gamblers is $80,000 resulting in serious impacts on families and business such as spouse and child abuse, embezzlement, bankruptcies, theft, and other criminal activities. 

          In fifteen states, that use lottery money specifically for education there has been no significant increase in money allocated for education since the inception of gambling and in most states real-dollar allocations for education have uniformly decreased.   These states redirect previous state revenues for education to other causes, usually pork-barrel projects or increased welfare and criminal justices budgets. 

          Another study I read stated that in general 60 cents of every dollar wagered in a state lottery goes for management, advertising, and promotion of the lottery with only 40 cents going to the state budget. By contrast, direct taxation of the citizens only costs about 1 cent on the dollar with 99 cents going into the state budget.

Definition of Lottery

Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.

          There have also been some very interesting studies done on the increase of divorce and suicides in areas with legalized gambling that make a good circumstantial case for not legalizing gambling.  However, in our society the individual’s right to choose self-destruction even with an increase in social costs is his or her sacred right. No one wants to take away another person’s right to their pet vice least someone messes with theirs.

          So much for my little side-trip into gambling.  After Matthias’ selection by chance, we never hear about casting or drawing lots again.  Again, the question, “I wonder why?”

          Come next Sunday, Pentecost Sunday, I think the answer will becomes obvious.  Soon, God will send the great Counselor, Comforter, and Guide.  The Holy Spirit will come; the Holy Spirit, The Spirit of Truth, will guide God’s people in all their moral and spiritual decisions. The Holy Spirit will lead us in to the ways of life and it more abundantly through the highest of ethical and moral values made known to us in scripture.  This is especially the case of our life in Christian Community, and I believe in all matters relating to the good of life on this planet.

          Through prayer, study, and Christian dialogue the Holy Spirit will guide and counsel us.  The Holy Spirit will help us plumb the depths of each decision, analyze our motives, and be with us in the anxiety between deliberation and decision.  The Holy Spirit may also lead us to seek the counsel of the wise or more informed in our pursuit of answers for our lives.  The Holy Spirit may lead us into study of scriptures or some formal educational pursuit also.  As someone has said, “95% of inspiration is perspiration.”

          The Holy Spirit will be our ever-present Comforter in moments of indecision and anxiety and will help us live with our decisions or guide us in to amending them.

          As human beings, we know that life is full of uncertainties.  Our edge in those moments between deliberation and decision-making is God’s Holy Spirit, our guide, comforter, and counselor.

          Therefore, let us not gamble with our life decisions.  Let us not shoot dice, draw cards, flip coins, draw lots, nor confuse that which is legal with that which is moral and good.  Rather, let us seek God’s guidance and trust God’s Holy Spirit to be a part of our decision-making in matters beyond our competency. Let us place our faith in God, not chance of our making.  Trusting God and God’s reveal will is a sure bet.

Question: Is a sure bet, a bet at all?

          The course of the church beyond the selection of Matthias through chance, which was people doing the best they could with what they knew at the time, has been navigated by human beings under the leadership of the Holy Spirit.  History reveals those decision made by church leaders that were not of the Holy Spirit have brought shame and infamy upon the church and the name of its leaders. 

          There were many reasons why gambling was illegal in this country for many years and now it seems we are having to relearn those reasons.  Likewise, living our lives and the life of the church without the leadership of the Holy Spirit is a lesson I am sad to say we also seem destined to relearn.

If we rely on chance or human pride to guide our lives then grandmother’s words may come back to haunt us when the consequences of our prideful and chance driven choices come home to roost:  Serves you right, good Baptist (good Christians) don’t gamble.

          The Holy Spirit lives and works in the lives of us who open ourselves to God’s leadership.