There is a saying that hindsight is 20/20 vision. 

You are all familiar with the term.  It means looking back at some event in time,  putting it in a particular context, and developing a new and hopefully more informed perspective of what actually happened now that one has all the facts available.  

 It’s a humbling reality that truth is more often than we care to believe, relevant to the degree of information we perceive about something at any given moment.  It’s important to say as well, that this is affected by the state of our emotional and spiritual lives.     
Part of the mystery of “being” is that we live in the tension between our experiences as they occur in the moment, and our experiences upon reflection after the fact.  The first thing to remember about that is that neither one invalidates the other.  Both are real. Both have meaning.  Both have truth somewhere in between.  

When we read in the bible as we’ve done today, that “scripture had to be fulfilled” this is a cue to us that the characters or writers of a particular passage are reflecting on events after the fact, not unlike the kind of 20/20 hindsight that we use in our own lives today.  

You’ve heard me say before, that in the primitive church, at the time of Jesus and the original disciples, they didn’t have a “New Testament” – their stories were yet to be written and become that portion of the bible that we now know of as Christian canon.   They, like Christ himself, relied on Hebrew Scripture, to form the context of their experiences – the same way we now rely on both Old and the New Testament, especially as it relates to our understanding of resurrection, to help us form the context of our experiences. 

And experience is important because as Christians, who hopefully take regular time to reflect on our lives, we want always to try to understand something about where God is in the process of who we are.

Now, there’s another popular saying that “God has a plan for your life.”  Some of you might take comfort from that statement and may even be able to put it in a meaningful context as it relates to who you are.  I personally am not comfortable with it, understood at face value.

The reason for that is, it implies that all we need to do is but discover what God’s plan is , say yes to it, and then everything about who we are and what we are called to be, will fall neatly and with full understanding into place, as it should in the divine scheme of things. 

We do have periods in our lives when it might be like that, but I put to you that more often than not, life is never quite so neat and whole and complete as that statement would imply.  The scripture today, invites us to recognize that, in its references to Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed Christ.

 In Acts, we read about Peter who is trying to find a replacement for Judas, the one he says who ‘was numbered among the apostles and allotted his share in their ministry.’ As the disciples take up the task of finding his replacement, they pray to God making reference to Judas who turned his back on his ministry, so that he could go his own way and do his own thing.

This is the Judas we know who betrayed Christ for selfish reasons. 
And yet, in his pre-amble, Peter refers to Judas as one who fulfilled scripture by revealing Christ to the enemy.  

In the Gospel of John, after the resurrection, Jesus is praying for God’s protection for his apostles.  He says, not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that scripture might be fulfilled. 

So we ask ourselves, did Judas abandon his gift of ministry and betray Christ, to follow his own way for greedy and selfish reasons, which is affirmed in the bible, …..

…………. or did he in effect, follow God’s will in the divine drama as pre-ordained in ancient scripture, which is equally affirmed in the bible?   

How do we reconcile these contradictions especially since both are named in the context of post resurrection hindsight? 

Maybe where our spiritual lives are concerned, 20/20 vision isn’t all it’s cut out to be.  For me, Peter’s words in particular have a flavor of acceptance, forgiveness and I think sadness.  They don’t really seem to condemn Judas, like we might think, and neither do the words of Jesus. 

An easy explanation might be that so traumatized was this close, tight knit group, by the actions of someone who had once been a beloved, trusted friend, that that in order to reconcile his actions, Judas was understood in light of ancient prophesy. 

And of course we can always fall back on the argument that the writers of these texts themselves, intentionally told the story in a way that would help the readers connect the dots between the promised Messiah of Israel and the person of Jesus Christ. 

Yet still, the question remains complex and without a necessarily satisfying answer.  Perhaps that’s ok, because when we have the answers, we stop asking the questions, and when we stop asking the questions, we stop seeking. 

One of the ways we might approach this is to recognize that what we have read about today speaks profoundly to the activity of God’s call in our life journey and our freedom to shape how we respond.

Last week, I was away at the clergy conference.  And while we were there, we had a wonderful guest speaker, Tim Elliot who was familiar to me from my studies at Trinity where he used to come on occasion as a guest lecturer. 

Tim’s ministry among other things, is to help people understand call and journey, using music as his primary teaching too.  And the music he uses is Jazz.

Now, Jazz and I have a funny history because I’ve always struggled to understand it.  I recall this time last year, being at a pastoral education retreat, and one of my professors who himself writes and composes was playing a tape of  Jazz.  And so not for the first time, I was having to endure this music that I didn’t understand and it was really getting on my nerves. 

So I said to him, “This is driving me nuts.  I can’t pick out a tune.  It sounds like they’re changing it or making it up as they go along!”  And he said to me “yes, that’s what Jazz is!”  Well, that gave me a bit of a new perspective.  In the year since, I’ve been able to appreciate Jazz a little bit more for the musical style it is.

When we met with Tim at the conference, he explained to us that that in Jazz, there are several basic notes or bars that are played, to give it some structure to it and to identify the piece, but that the musician then improvises the rest to create each time, a unique musical composition.

 Framework, freedom and performance – all taking place at the same time vs compose now and play later.  Jazz it turns out, is a wonderful metaphor to help us understand the call of God in our life journey.  
Like the notes which identify a piece of music, God has made each one of us unique, gifting us in very different ways. 

In Jazz, one has to listen very carefully for the basic notes to identify the piece of music.  So too, do we have to listen carefully to identify our basic selves.   How often, are we stopped in our tracks, afraid to make a move because we don’t know what God wants of us or can’t identify what God is calling us to do.  Or we are simply afraid to put ourselves out there – to play our music differently and more creatively?

How often do we bury our gifts or keep them hidden from the world because we are afraid to take risks?  

Well take heart.  Trust God’s creative character to know that the process of call has something to do with becoming all that we can be, and that the journey to that, has the character of improvisation, like the music, mediated by the choices we make.  

In other words, who we are and what God would want for us, is I think jointly discovered in the creativity of an unfolding life.  Call is not just about having gifts and being prompted by God, but also about the process of doing.   

Journey as improvisation. 

An open call of God to an open world of possibilities for discovery, wholeness and fellowship.     

                                                                             Amen