Seventh Sunday in Easter: First Reading, Acts 1:12-26          

Acts 1:12-26

The “baby” church is just beginning to walk. In our first reading this week, the followers of Jesus are still pre-Pentecost in the “birthday of the N.T. church” sense. And so they truly are feeling their way through the world. God loves order and at the moment that wonderful “12” number carried from Old Testament tribes to New Testament apostles has run into a snag. Judas the betrayer has gone to his own place and now there are eleven. God’s order requires twelve. He doesn’t tell us why other than he doesn’t see fit to leave Judas’ spot empty. The psalms prophecy the replacement (cf. Pss. 69, 109) and the Spirit provides through the casting of lots.

What becomes evident in continuing with twelve is the obvious connection to the one people of God that we so commonly see as two. God makes no such distinction. In fact, Paul goes out of his way in Romans and Ephesians to instruct God’s people that there is one entity in the world that belongs specifically and relationally to him. The Church. Those called-out ones with one mission: to bring the message of God’s Kingdom to the world.

As our pastor points out so well, under the Old Covenant the mission was centripetal. In other words, the peoples were sent to Zion, to the city of the Great King. In the New Covenant the mission is centrifugal; the people of God are sent out to the world to gather the peoples by the preaching of Christ in Word and Sacrament. But twelve stays twelve. An even dozen to lead and signify that God is holding his people, his whole people, close from beginning to eternity.

An even dozen. It just sounds right.