This magazine appears on the eve of St Matthias' Day. "So what?" you may well ask. What is special about 24 February?
When Julius Caesar invented Leap Years, February acquired one extra day every fourth year. The Romans did not number their days the way we do, and they created the twenty-ninth day by counting this day twice. (It was the sixth day counting back from 1 March, hence the French term année bissextile). As you see, there is not a lot to say about 24 February!
There is even less that we can say about Matthias. You can read about him in Acts 1:15-26. Judas Iscariot has come to a messy end. Peter quotes Psalm 109:8 to the hundred and twenty followers of Jesus gathered fearfully in Jerusalem: "Let someone else take over his ministry of oversight." Those present put forward two names, of people who have spent the whole of Jesus' ministry together with him. One is Joseph Barsabbas Justus, the other is Matthias.
The congregation do not vote. They pray. For only God knows and can choose a replacement for Judas. And they cast lots, as in Old Testament times (e.g. 1 Sam 14), to seek God's will. Matthias is chosen. The eleven other apostles do not lay hands on him in any way - his authority and his strength come from God.
And that is all we know.
Matthias appears nowhere before or after in our Bible. Nor in any other tradition of the time. He is not credited with founding a church, or with preaching or evangelising. He is almost a non-person, a nonentity.
There is a lesson for all of us in this. Matthias was an ordinary follower of Jesus, a boring person, you might even say. But it was he who was chosen to complete the number of the apostles, at a time when the future of the church was in doubt. We too have been chosen, not for anything special we have achieved, not because we are famous or active in our commitment, but simply because we too are followers of Jesus.
And of all the people who have been chosen, there are only a few who have hit the headlines, only a few like Peter or James or, later, Paul or Barnabas. It is enough simply to be one of the cogs on God's wheel, sharing in God's work, not under great pressure, but sharing the load with others, and essential to the operation of the mechanism as a whole - a small but essential member of a complex body, as Paul says in 1 Cor 12:14-27.
Like John Milton, the 17th-century religious and political thinker and poet, we should realize that "they also serve, who only stand and wait." And as in the hymn by George Herbert, fifteen years Milton's senior and quite different from Milton in temperament, we should remind ourselves that God is close to even the most menial person, doing the most boring task, if the task is done "for Thy sake". For
So we should remember Matthias. And realize that in God's eyes, the ordinary is not ordinary, but wonderful.
HD