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The following message is delivered by Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler Thielman. Today's sermon is entitled, "The Trial of Judas Iscariot, The Epilogue." Let us continue in worship by giving attention to the reading of God's Word as it is recorded in the book of the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 1.

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I begin the reading at the verse numbered 15. In those days, Peter stood up among the brethren, the company of persons was in all about a hundred and twenty, and said, "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

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arrested Jesus. For he was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry. Now this man bought a field with the reward of his wickedness and falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out and it became known to all the

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inhabitants of Jerusalem so that the field was called in their language, "Akeldama," which means "field of blood." For it is written in the book of Psalms, "Let his habitation become desolate and let there be no one to live in it and his office let another take."

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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 men must become with us a witness to his resurrection. And they put forward two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was surnamed Justice, and Matthias.

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And they prayed and said, "Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men, show which one of these two thou hast chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place." And they cast lots for them and the lot fell on Matthias and he was enrolled with the eleven

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apostles. And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word. Pray with me. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

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The trial of Judas Iscariot is now over. We have heard the prosecution. We have heard the defense. We have heard the verdict, summed in Peter's phrase, that Judas turned aside and went to

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his own place. And so some might argue that the trial is at an end. And I will not debate that point. But it does seem to me that there is one last lesson to be learned from all of this experience.

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And that lesson concerns how the church reacted after the tragic affair in which Judas was involved. And I call this reaction of the church the epilogue. And I ask you to think with me about it this morning.

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You know, basically there are three kinds of church members. First, there are those who don't know what is happening. I read about a little boy who fell out of bed four times in one night. And his mother said to him, "How is it that you keep falling out of bed?"

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And he said, "I think it's because I go to sleep too close to where I got in." Well there are a lot of people who do that in the church. As soon as they get in, they go to sleep. There's a second group in the church, and these are those who know what is happening

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because they watch the church. But it's not because they are involved in the church. I think of these people whenever I remember John Fitzgerald Kennedy's remarks at Yale University when he said, "Too many want to enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort

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of effort and thought." There are a lot of people in the church who will not knock on a door for the church, but will knock the church when it knocks on their door. And then there's a third group in the church, and this is the group that makes things happen.

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I've always treasured the story of the preacher in a little town far out in the southwest who every day used to go down to the train station when the great Amtrak train whistled through town. The train never stopped, but he was there every day to watch it go by.

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And one day the station master said to him, "How is it that you come down here every day just to watch that train go through town?" To which the minister replied, "Well, you see, that's the only thing that moves in this town that I don't have to push."

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Well, fortunately, there are people in every congregation who don't have to be pushed, who get moving on their own, who make things happen. And Peter was one of these individuals. He does not let the Judas matter close with the burial of the man.

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He immediately goes on to propose the election of someone to replace Judas. Peter showed real initiative. I think this is one of the reasons why Jesus chose him to lead the first century church. There was a circus owner who was talking to the ringmaster of his circus about their performer

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who was regularly shot out of a cannon. And the owner of the circus said to the ringmaster, "You know, if that man ever leaves, it will be very difficult to find another man of his caliber." Well, Peter was of the noblest caliber.

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He was one of those exceptional individuals who are anxious to move to the glory of God and doesn't need anyone to give him a push. Now when Peter proposed this election, he said that there were really two requirements that must be met by the person to be elected to replace Judas.

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The first requirement, he says, is it must be one who not only knows about Jesus, but who also knows Jesus. Peter puts it in these words, "One who has accompanied us when the Lord went in and out among us."

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What he's saying is, we must elect someone who has walked with Christ, who knows him personally. Now there are a number of different ways in which you can know a person. Let's assume, for example, that a neighbor moves into your block.

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You've never met them. You can learn a certain amount about them, come to know some things about them, purely by your own observation. That is, you can see what kind of car they drive, you can see how many children they

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have, you can see how frequently they cut the lawn, you can see how the children obey or disobey their parents. You can come to a deeper level of a knowledge of these people, however, if someone else on your block who knows them tells you more about them.

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This person might say he is a veterinarian and his wife is an accountant and they're great campers, they like to go hunting and fishing together. He may even introduce you to them. And now your knowledge of them is a little more than it was simply by that of observation.

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But there's a third way in which you can know someone. And this is when you know them personally, when the life of your family becomes involved with the life of that new family across the street, when an intimacy develops, when you share one another's victories and defeats, when there is a growing deepness and closeness

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and genuine caring between you. That is the purest and the most wonderful kind of knowing. And it is that kind of very personal knowing that Peter is speaking of here. The book of Proverbs says, "There are friends who pretend to be friends, but there is one

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friend who sticketh closer than a brother." And Peter is saying we need to elect someone who has so walked with Jesus that Jesus sticks to him like a brother. Now the way in which we come to know Jesus in this way is through the acknowledging of

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our need. You know, on one occasion Daniel Boone was asked if he'd ever been lost. And he replied, "No, I've never been lost, but there was one time when I was in the woods for three days and didn't know where I was."

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Well it takes more honesty than that with regard to the confession of one's need if one is going to come into a personal knowledge of Christ. It involves the willingness to acknowledge the hopelessness of one's state without him. You thought, I'm sure, at one time or another, of how in the first century Jesus managed

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to reach down and out people much more readily than he reached in and up people. And that was so, of course, because those who were down and out were fully aware of their need. But the successful and the leaders were so confident in what they had accomplished that

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they saw no need of a relationship with Christ. It's a very real sense, coming to a personal knowledge of Christ is much like a person addicted to some chemical substance, to alcohol or drugs. They have to hit bottom before they can begin to climb back up.

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And that hitting bottom and starting that climb is the moment when they admit their need. I don't think anyone will argue with the proposition that Pablo Picasso will probably be remembered as the greatest artist of the 20th century.

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And one of the marks of his genius was the fact that he could take almost anything and make it into an object of both interest and beauty. I remember on one occasion seeing a pair of bicycle handlebars and a bicycle seat, which Picasso had joined together in such a way that they looked exactly like the head of

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a bull with the horns and all the rest of it. He was so gifted, you see, that he could take junk and make it into something beautiful. But when someone admits one's profound need to Jesus, he stands ready to make them beautiful. He is the greatest artist of history.

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He is the master of metamorphosis, that is, of reforming a life. Jesus recycles people. Think about him for a moment. He lived in a very rough and difficult time.

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He was part of a minority group. He was not particularly well-educated by the standards of his day. He was single. He never knew the companionship of a wife or the joy of having his own children.

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He died at a relatively young age. His own mother outlived him. He was persecuted and ridiculed throughout the course of his public experience. Yet this same Jesus always saw sickness as an opportunity for healing, sin as an opportunity

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for forgiveness, sorrow as an opportunity for compassion, and he delighted in taking ordinary folk and bringing them to all of the potential as the children of God that was to be found in them. He brought hope to the hopeless.

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He brought comfort to the uncomfortable. He brought cleansing to those who were corrupted. He gave the gift of life, not just life, but life abundantly to all those who were willing to meet him heart to heart, which means all those who were willing to open themselves

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and say, "Lord Jesus, I desperately need thee. Thou art my only hope." Wendell Johnson, who was a famous American cultural anthropologist and semanticist, was doing some research among the Hopi Indians in the southwestern corner of our country,

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and he became very friendly with the tribe. And when the time came for him to leave, having completed his work, the tribe had a great farewell festival for him. And he has written about how he enjoyed that and all of the delightful things which were

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part of it, but he said the one sentence that meant the most to him was when an old Hopi woman came up to him and putting her arms around him in a hug said, "I like me best when I am with you." Now that is the mark of a disciple who walks personally with Christ, one who delights even

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in her own self more because she recognizes what Christ has accomplished in her life. It's not just knowing about Jesus, it's knowing him personally in one's own experience. Now the second requirement that Peter says is necessary in this one to replace Judas, this one to become a disciple, is the individual must be one who not only knows Christ but

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who shows Christ by his words and his deeds. Peter says, "Let us choose someone who, like us, has become a witness," notice that word, "a witness to the resurrection." Now be careful to distinguish here between a witness and an advocate.

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An advocate will defend a proposition or an argument. You can indeed employ an advocate to do this for you. For example, Bertrand Russell, the great mathematician philosopher of our century, was an avowed atheist.

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He even wrote a book, Why I Am an Atheist, and he gave many speeches on the subject. Repeatedly, in the course of his life, he said that he saw as the only hope for the continuance of civilization the dream that people would begin to act toward one another as Christians.

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Now he was not himself a Christian, and he did not understand that the Christian lifestyle only comes out of a personal experience with Christ. He was arguing something, you see, which he had not experienced. That's what an advocate does.

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But a witness is one who has been personally and existentially involved with Christ. It's interesting, in the New Testament, the word "witness" and the word "martyr" are the same, which means, you see, that a witness is one who is willing to bet her life on her experience of Christ.

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Sad to say, the Church is very short of those kind of witnesses. I read of two old men who enjoyed playing golf very much, but they were too old to play anymore and they were sitting talking about it one day, and one man said, "I can still hit the ball as well as I ever could, but my eyesight's so poor I can't see where it

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goes." And the other fellow said, "Well, my eyesight is just like it was when I was a boy. I can see anything, but I can't hit the ball anymore." "Well," the other one suggested, "let's get together and we can play around, the two of

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us. I'll hit it and you watch for it." And so they agreed. They went out to the first tee and the old man made a whale of a drive, hit that ball

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way out there. And he turned to the older man beside him and he said, "Did you see where it went?" And the old man said, "Yep." He said, "Where did it go?"

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The other fellow looked at him and said, "I forgot." Now, we have a lot of people these days who don't remember that they are to report on what they have experienced about Jesus. They forget about that.

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You see, what Peter is saying here is that the basis of discipleship is to know Christ personally, but the business of discipleship is to tell others what you have yourself experienced. So many times I've heard people say, people who are in the Church and who are Christians, they'll make a comment like, "Well, I don't ever say anything about Christ.

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I just let my Christianity and my belief in him show through the way I live." Whenever I hear that, I think of the Irishman who was asked on one occasion, "Are you saved?" And he replied, "To tell the truth, my good fellow, I am saved, but it was such a narrow squeak, it's really not worth talking about."

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If the early Church had been made up of people who were unwilling to talk about what had happened to them and just relied on their lifestyles as their witness, then none of us would have heard today about Jesus of Nazareth. Imagine a witness coming into a courtroom and sitting in the witness chair and not saying

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anything, just assuming that you'll be able to look at him and interpret in some way what he has been a part of. My friends, let's be very honest. None of us lives so splendidly that we can honestly say that our lives radiate Christ

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to such a degree that it's unnecessary for us to speak of him. Now our task is to tell folks, to when we meet someone with whom we want to share Jesus, to view them as a kind of island and to row about them again and again and again until we find just the right place to land, and then to gently land at this point of this

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person's need and to tell this person not what happened to you forty years ago, but to tell that person what Jesus Christ is doing in your life today which will be of benefit to them in their moment of need. Applying the gospel as you know it now to where they are in time and space.

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That's what it is to live as though you believe it. Well the election that Peter suggested was held and lots were cast, that's the way they did elections in the Old Testament and New Testament period, and the lot fell on a man named Matthias.

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And he became a disciple at a very exciting time. The Roman Empire was beginning its collapse and the empire of the imperial Christ was beginning to spread like sunshine around the world. Interestingly enough, we never hear another word about Matthias after his election.

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There's no mention of him in Scripture, there's no mention of him in ecclesiastical history or in hagiography. So I cannot share with you out of Matthias' experience, but let me choose one other instance of witnessing out of the early days of the church to sort of sum up what Peter has said

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and bring to a close this whole matter of the trial of Judas Iscariot. For the first 300 years of the life of the church, the church was separate from the state and Christians were pacifists and would not serve in the military. Then the emperor himself became a Christian and at that time some Christians did begin

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to serve in the military. Some served actively as soldiers, some served as what we would call today conscientious objectors, that is, they served the troops in ways that did not involve actual battle. Now there was a detachment of Roman troops made up of 40 young Christian men and these

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men were well known throughout the Roman army because they were exceptionally good at wrestling. The Roman army was always having contests and games, that was part of the morale of the period, and these 40 Christian wrestlers excelled at their sport. Now an order came down from a new emperor who was on the throne only a very brief time

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that every Roman soldier must take an oath in which he swore that Caesar was God. And of course these Christian wrestlers would not take that kind of oath. Their captain begged them to do so and told them that if they did not do so that they would be put to death.

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And still they refused to do so. Now it so happened that when this order came they were in Switzerland and it was winter. And so the 40 Christian wrestlers were put to death and the way in which it was decided to slay them was to strip them of all their clothing and to drive them out onto the frozen

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surface of a lake just as the night was beginning and to leave them there to die from the cold. And the hope was that some of them would, as death drew near and as they saw their comrades die, would decide to worship Caesar and return to the other Roman soldiers who were gathered about their bonfires outside of their bivouacs.

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Now as those other soldiers sat warming their hands in this cold place, they could hear coming through the sound of the night its silence. They could hear coming through the silence that exists in places like the Swiss mountains unique in all the world.

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They could hear the song that was being sung by these young men. They were singing, "40 Christian wrestlers, wrestling for thee, O Christ. For thee we claim the victory. From thee we claim the crown."

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And as the night wore on, the song became fainter and fainter as one after another of these young men would succumb to the cold. And just before the break of dawn, one of these young men came crawling to the shore to where one of the Roman sentries was standing, and he said, "I will worship Caesar as God."

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And this sentry looked at him and said, "The courage and the faith of your comrades has made me a Christian. Since thou hast proved the coward, I will take thy place." And stripping off his own clothes, he walked out onto the lake, and they could all hear

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him singing, "One Christian wrestler, wrestling for thee, O Christ. For thee I claim the victory. From thee I claim the crown." You see, the flag never hit the ground.

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It was passed from one hand to another. That's the great drama of witness. That's the great drama of discipleship. So at the Passover table, Jesus said to his disciples, "One of you is going to betray

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me." And they all responded with the query, "Is it I? Is it I?" Today, I believe that Jesus is speaking to each and every one of us, and he is saying,

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"Are you ready to take Judah's place? Will you be my disciple?" And we find ourselves asking the same question, "I, Lord? I?"

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May God grant that we will all answer that question as Isaiah the prophet answered it centuries before. God said to him, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" And Isaiah responded, "Lord, here am I.

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Send me." Let us pray. Our Father, some of us have been hearing for a long time the call to discipleship. Some of us for a long time have known of our need, but have never acknowledged it before

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thee. Some of us have secretly in our hearts stayed close to thee, but have been unwilling to speak so much as a single word to your honor or glory. Move in the hearts of us all, so that if we do not know thee, we will come to know thee,

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so that if we have not served thee, we will come to serve thee, so that if there is anything that is keeping us from thee, separating us from the Savior, that thou wilt give us strength enough by the Spirit to confess it, to seek his forgiveness, and to discover from him the blessed thing it is to walk with Jesus.

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