Bible reading: Acts 1:12-17, 21-26.

[After Jesus’ Ascension] the apostles went back to Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, which is about half a mile away from the city. They entered the city and went up to the room where they were staying: Peter, John, James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, Simon the Patriot, and Judas son of James. They gathered frequently to pray as a group, together with the women and with Mary the mother of Jesus and with his brothers.

A few days later there was a meeting of the believers, about a hundred and twenty in all, and Peter stood up to speak. “My friends,” he said, “the scripture had to come true in which the Holy Spirit, speaking through David, made a prediction about Judas, who was the guide for those who arrested Jesus. Judas was a member of our group, for he had been chosen to have a part in our work.

“So then, someone must join us as a witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. He must be one of the men who were in our group during the whole time that the Lord Jesus traveled about with us, beginning from the time John preached his message of baptism until the day Jesus was taken up from us to heaven”.

So they proposed two men: Joseph, who was called Barsabbas (also known as Justus), and Matthias. Then they prayed, “Lord, you know the thoughts of everyone, so show us which of these two you have chosen to serve as an apostle in the place of Judas, who left to go to the place where he belongs.” Then they drew lots to choose between the two men, and the one chosen was Matthias, who was added to the group of eleven apostles.

Message.

Last Wednesday the Olympic torch, lit in Greece on April 16^th, arrived in Marseille aboard the sailing ship “Belem”. From now until July 26^th it will cross and recross France and be taken to its overseas territories such as Reunion and Guadeloupe before finally arriving in Paris. By the end of its journey the flame will have been carried by over 10,000 athletes who will have run over 3,100 miles. According to the official Olympic website, “The epic Torch Relay will offer a unique insight into France’s history. It will build links between different eras and showcase exceptional sites that contributed to France’s reputation and influence during each major period of its history”.

The purple prose describes the Torch itself as “a symbol of unity and peace”. Well, that may be the case today (although I have my doubts), but the Relay was originally a propaganda exercise devised for the 1936 Berlin Games and captured on a famous film made at the time. Hitler wanted to link his Nazi regime with ancient culture and athletic success, and he realised that the Relay was a way of doing that. It certainly captured peoples’ imagination and has featured ever since.

Having thought about Jesus’ Ascension in the first part of our service, we move on to the events that took place immediately afterwards. And what we are left with is a group of puzzled and perhaps demoralised disciples. Some of them had thought that, after his resurrection, Jesus would drive out the hated Romans and set up a new Jewish state, with them, of course, as cabinet ministers. That hadn’t happened. Others may not have had such ambitious ideas but were still dismayed when, after a period of 40 days during which Jesus seemed to appear and disappear at random, he clearly left them for good. And there was that strange but rather vague promise he’d made: “Wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit, who will give you power”. What on earth did that mean?

There was also some pressing business to transact, as the Twelve now numbered only Eleven after Judas had betrayed Jesus and committed suicide. In other words, there was an Apostolic Vacancy (that’s a good phrase, isn’t it? – I made it up myself!) and the remaining disciples weren’t sure how to go about filling it. The process they decided to use had several stages. First, they prayed; as we heard this was something they were already doing all the time. Next, they agreed the criteria which the replacement apostle had to satisfy: he (and it does seem that women weren’t even given a look-in) had to be someone who’d both been with Jesus from the start of his ministry and had witnessed his resurrection. That narrowed things down a bit. I’d guess, too, although we’re not actually told this, that candidates had to be people who’d built up a good reputation within the Christian community.

So the group of believers ended up with a shortlist of two equally suitable men; no doubt each with their strengths and weaknesses, each with their advocates and possibly their opponents. But how should the final choice be made? We’d probably ask both candidates to make a campaign speech before being bombarded with questions, then take a vote; but that’s not what happened. Instead, everyone prayed and then cast lots, believing that God would guide the process. Was that superstitious? Perhaps. But do our modern procedures necessarily give a better result? Thinking of political leaders who have been elected in recent years, the choice often influenced by personal charisma or populist rhetoric, I’m not at all convinced! Anyway, we know the result of this “contest”: Matthias won and Barsabbas lost; we hope that he was happy to accept the choice as being God’s.

By now you might well be saying to yourselves, “What’s going on? You talked about Jesus’ Ascension this morning, which was fair enough; and we know that the story of Matthias is one of today’s set readings. But we’re beginning to wonder if you’ve lost the plot, because you’ve also mentioned the Olympic torch and because you’ve not said a word about baptism even though we can see the baptistry open in front of us. Is there any way in which all these things can be connected?” Hang on, and I’ll try to explain – but it will be a bit of a journey!

So let’s talk a bit about baptism. It has several meanings, but I want us to focus on one in particular this morning: to use a phrase beloved by anthropologists, baptism is an “initiation rite”. That sounds rather secretive and cult-like, but it isn’t: it merely means an action which marks a beginning. An initiation rite can be elaborate and full of rituals but it can also be something as simple as the boss meeting new employees at the door when they start a new job, shaking their hand and saying, “Welcome to the team, come on in”. In other words I believe that baptism marks a beginning; the start of a journey of faith.

For a child, that journey is of course uncertain: its parents have the responsibility of helping it make the best choices in life. They hope that the child will later come to its own faith and ask to declare that publicly in confirmation. For an adult, things are slightly different: they are putting down a marker which states, “I’m a Christian now, I’m walking on the pilgrim path which, with God’s help, I intend to follow until my dying day”. (By the way, it’s my belief in baptism as a beginning – which I think is very much the New Testament pattern – which means that, unlike some of my colleagues, I don’t ask folk who wish to be baptised to undertake lengthy preparation courses. They can, indeed they should, learn more about their faith afterwards).

“But”, you’ll be saying, “you still haven’t made the connection with Matthias – nor with the Olympic torch. And isn’t baptism for next week’s story about Pentecost, anyway?” Well, this is how I see things. Matthias was what we might call a “second generation” apostle. Yes, I know that he’d been with Jesus from the beginning of his ministry; but for some reason (and it would be pointless to speculate what that reason was) he never made it into that inner circle of the Twelve. But now he’s been brought in, replacing Judas: which means that we’re looking at “succession” or “continuity”. And, although the structure of the Church obviously changed and became more complex as it grew, the “baton of faith” has been constantly passed from one generation to the next. Jesus himself received it from John the Baptist, who told his followers to align themselves with Jesus after his own execution. And Paul, writing to Christians at Ephesus about twenty years after today’s story, says that they are “built upon the foundation laid by the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone”.

That process of building, of passing the torch of faith from generation to generation, has continued from that day to ours. In every century new Christians and children have been baptised into God’s Church; as they aged and eventually died other believers replaced them and Christianity continues. I’ve said that the Church is like a relay team; I think it’s also rather like a football club. For none of the people who first formed the Riverside Association Football Club in 1899 play for Cardiff City today, not even Billy Hardy who made 590 appearances between 1911 and 1932 nor Phil Dwyer who played in 575 games between 1972 and 1985. Yet the Club itself still exists, albeit with a constant turnover of players, managers and supporters, a change of name and two moves – as does the Church which has a far longer history! Baptism (which of course has many other meanings as well) is a moment when we can actually see our faith being passed on.

No organisation, be it a golf club, a political party, a choir or whatever – can survive unless it’s constantly replenishing itself with “new blood”. And that’s of course true for churches, who keep going over the years when its members’ children claim their parents’ faith as their own; or when Christians moving into the area decide that it will be their spiritual home; above all when the church proclaims the Gospel message and people come to faith for the very first time. The sad reality for many churches in Britain today is that their members are ageing and dying, that their young people fall away from faith in their teens or when life’s pressures become too demanding, that the demands of simply keeping the roof watertight are all-consuming, and that any zeal for outreach has long faded. The emptying pews are not being refilled and the flame of faith itself is guttering and failing.

So it’s wonderful when new folk attend worship (and perhaps commit themselves to membership), when young people continue to take an active part in church life, when fresh initiatives are taken in evangelism and community outreach, and – of course! – when people are baptised. These are all signs which show that, despite the statistics of church decline, the Christian faith is not yet dead, nor will it die – although it may well have to find new ways of expressing itself. Matthias took the baton of faith from the first apostles and, although we know nothing more about him, we can hope that he too passed it on to others. Today, two thousand years later and in a very different context, Michael is holding up that same baton; and he and Maria are passing it on to Crispin. The faith of Christ carries on: to him be all praise and glory!