What's in a Name?

The scriptures referred to are Acts 1:15-17, 21-26.

The first of the Great Courses I listened to was called The Other Side of History. Rather than being about the great men and movements of traditional history, this was about the everyday life of the average person in various eras and cultures. So the lectures were on “Being Egyptian” and “Being Greek” and “Being Medieval,” with specific lectures on things like “Being a Greek Slave,” “Being a Greek Soldier or Sailor,” “Being a Greek Woman,” “Being a Sick or Disabled Greek,” “Being an Old Greek” and even “Being a Dead Greek.” You learned what it was like to be Jewish under Roman rule, to be a Celt in Ancient Britain, to be a medieval heretic and to be a Viking raider. The professor, Dr. Robert Garland, explained how hard it was the glean this information from the sources we have since average people didn't usually get to write about their lives. Only the literate did, which meant the rich and the educated are our main sources of history. We rarely even know the names of average people from the past.

So the apostle Matthias is one step above most of the people. But just one step. The most we know about him for sure is what we have in today's passage from Acts. We know he was a follower of Jesus from the baptism of John all the way to the ascension. He is chosen by lot over a guy with 3 names, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also known as Justus. So he becomes the only apostle who was not one of the twelve disciples, replacing Judas who was a disciple but who, for obvious reasons, never became an apostle.

And that's it! If you try to find out more about Matthias you get a bunch of stories from various sources that are hard to reconcile. A lot of them have him going to Ethiopia, which may simply mean Africa, while many others have him going to what is now the country of Georgia, just north of Turkey and bounded by the Black Sea to the west and Russian to the north and east. He was stoned there around 80 AD. Or he may have been stoned and beheaded in Jerusalem. Or he may have died of old age. Apparently nobody at the time bothered to write down and pass on the details of the last apostle chosen. Which is why I say he is just a step above the average person of the time, who lived and died without anyone recording so much as their name.

That's very different from today when everyone seems to have a social media account so that people in the far corners of the world can find out their names...and use them to create false accounts and commit identity fraud! But theoretically future historians will be able to look back on every person's digital record and get a better idea of how the average person lived. Naaah! There will be too many. They will have programs that will sift through the mountains of personal data and summarize what the average person posted. Actually they have those programs now. And who knows how long after my death Google will decide that my blog takes up too much memory on their servers and deletes it.

We will be forgotten in a few generations and our time will be represented by celebrities, whose lives are definitely not typical. So we have a lot in common with the apostle Matthias. He was not as big a personality as Peter or Paul, but nevertheless, he was chosen by God to spread the gospel. So somewhere people believed and some churches were started because of him. And some of their descendants are probably still believers. Matthias is like one of those long-bearded pastors from 150 years ago whose black and white photos line the hallways of some old historic churches. No one alive today ever heard them preach or knows much about them except that at some time in the past they were the shepherds of the church and they kept it going so that it still is around today. More than that, think about the then-important church secretaries and choir directors and treasurers and vestry or council members whose names might still be preserved in dusty records in banker's boxes stacked in storage but who are as good as forgotten.

The point is that one's importance to the work of God's kingdom is not necessarily indicated by one's fame or the lack of it. There are lots of workers in the fields of the Lord and not everyone makes the cover of Living Lutheran or The Living Church. And being well known is hardly an sign of one's worth as a human being. On Time Magazine's list of the 100 most significant figures in history, Hitler comes in at number 7. Yeah, he changed the world, but not for the better. Likewise Napoleon comes in at number 2, just under Jesus at number 1. But we wouldn't even know about Jesus if it hadn't been for some obscure fishermen and tax collectors and a tent-maker and (gasp!) even some socially unimportant women spreading the word about him.

The important thing is not having your name on a plaque or on a building or trending on social media. Rather it is what Jesus says in Revelation. To the church in Pergamum he says, “To the one who conquers, I will give him some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, and on that stone will be written a new name that no one can understand except the one who receives it.” (Revelation 2:17) A secret name Jesus gives you! That's cooler than earthly fame. And to the church in Sardis, Jesus says, “...they will walk with me dressed in white, because they are worthy. The one who conquers will be dressed like them in white clothing, and I will never erase their name from the book of life, but will declare their name before my Father and before his angels.” (Revelation 3:4-5) Speaking of himself as the good shepherd, Jesus said, “He calls his own sheep by name...” (John 10:3) Who cares if the world knows your name? The world will not last forever. Its glory will fade. It is far better than earthly fame to be known individually by the eternal God and it is far sweeter than the acclaim of men is to be called by name by Jesus, who loves us and gave himself for each and every one of us.