It was about eight years after I was ordained in my second parish of Summerville SC,  just West of Charleston SC – known for its large concentration of military installations and the powerful chairman of the Armed Services Committee – the honorable Mendel Rivers.

St. Luke’s had a large number of military personnel in its membership.  One of those was David Aamodt a member of the JAG core – a Navy Lawyer.

He and Deb had been married a little over a year. They where expecting their first child. On a Sunday afternoon I had stopped by for a short visit and they showed me the nursery – all ready for occupancy.

A crib with one of those carousel mobiles with birds and butterflies dangling over the kids face, a change table and rocker … they where happy. The baby was due in few weeks. The next day I got the phone call from David’s Commander. There had been a terrible accident – Deb and the Baby had both been killed in a head on collision. The officer explained that he and the chaplain where with David and that he had asked them to call me. Those are the kind of calls that all of us dread – Preachers are no different.

I prayed on the way  that God would give me the right words. What are the right words in the face of so much pain and incredulity?

When I got to the front door I was introduced to the David’s friends. I remember David saying that since I was there they need not stay. They were reluctant to leave. He reassured them that he would be ok now that his pastor was there, so they left.

Then he said this

                                                     “ I want you to stay for a while, but          on one condition. Don’t tell me this  accident which took the life of my   unborn child and my wife was God’s   will”.

Today's first lesson from the book of Acts addresses the question of “How do we know God’s will for us?”

If you have read Harold Kushner’s “Why do bad things happen to good people” you will have discovered that the good rabbi doesn’t know.

Luke’s letter to Theophilus gives a partial answer. 

Here is what happened. Peter announces that it is necessary to find a replacement for Judas who, as you may recall, committed suicide soon after he turned Jesus in. Two names are given as possibilities Matthias  and Joseph of Barsabbas –

They decide to cast lots. There are 77 references to this practice in the OT and 7 in the new.. but none any longer seems to know exactly what was involved.

What ever it was it had to be better than what happened to me as kid after I came to America. The teacher usually picked two boys and told them to go outside and pick their teams for whatever activity was pursued. I was neither athletic nor popular.

I was among the last to be chosen.

“O.K. if you’ll take so and so, I ‘ll take Fege” still rings like a death knell in my psyche.

So the first business of the disciples was to replace Judas.. Here we have a sort of snap shot of how the earliest Christians elected members to their leadership team.

And in a way the question of “how do we know God’s will in these situations”, is addressed as well.

I once heard that a Bible believing preacher had to make a difficult decision so he decided that since he didn’t know what to do he would open his Bible, closed his eyes and pointed to a page that was open to see what God wanted him to do.  By chance it fell on the two verses ( 18-20),  that are omitted from today’s first lesson, for obvious reasons – they describe in rather lurid detail how Judas committed suicide..

So he felt that maybe he should try again, and this time the passage was from the parable of the Good Samaritan where Jesus tells those who asked the question about the neighbor with these words “Go and do Likewise.”

You “gotta” be careful how you use the Bible.

Lutherans have always believed that we come to know God’s will for us not by looking up a published list of Bible verses like words in a dictionary, but by understanding that life often calls for difficult choices and that the Bible is not a reference book to absolve us from making responsible decisions by making God the scapegoat.

So here is the formula on how to know God’s will for your life.

When Jesus was asked by the Bible thumpers of his day which part of the Bible is the most important or to put it another way, of all the commandments, which one is number one… Jesus quotes  Deut.6.4, 11.13-21 and Numbers 15.37-41

“Hear O Israel .. the Lord our God is one.

You shall love him with all of your heart, soul and mind and the second is like unto it  You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Mtt.22.34ff. Mk.12.28. Lk.10.25.

That is called the Shema –   from the first word in the Hebrew text “hear.”

All the decisions we make about our lives should be framed within the context of Shema.

The great Hebrew affirmation of faith.

In essence, Jesus reminds us that hour lives are not our own  to do with as we please..

We are to love God by loving others.

Second – we live our lives by grace.

We live our lives by God’s forgiving love. As the apostle Paul put it in this 2^nd letter to the Corinthians  (2Cor.5.7) “For we walk by faith, not by sight. “

 In other words, while we are to pray and ask for God’s guidance, few of us have that flash of revelation that assures us that this or that is what God calls us to do.

As Martin Luther once said, “pray as if everything depends on God then go and do what you got to do knowing that God’s forgiving love will sustain you in the turmoil of life’s competing claims.”

And Finally,

We know that nothing can separate us from the love of God.

In Romans 8.28 we read:

We know that all things work together for good for those who love God.

So the Bible tells us whatever decisions we make, God is always there, working things out for the good. Our bad choices don’t separate us from God.

Claimed by Jesus in baptism, we live with the assurance that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ.

We don’t hear from Matthias again.

There are some obscure references in the literature of early Christianity that he became a missionary to the Ethiopians.

So drawing straws or casting lots has limitations.

It was a man named Saul who was converted on the Damascus Road that we remember best.

He did not become one of the 12 by drawing straws; he was “called over” so to speak!

About five years ago  I got a call from a woman in Portland Or. 

She said you don’t know me. My name is Nancy I am married to David Aamodt. She said that she was planing her husband’s 50^th birthday and could I come to New Orleans to surprise him and help them celebrate.

She went on to tell me how often David had spoken of our conversations after his first wife died.. 

She told me how he had told her about our finishing a bottle of Cevas Regal  - how we had prayed, talked and even laughed through our tears ..

She told me that as a Navy Lawyer he had taken her case when her husband had left her with two young daughters and how they now had a son who was a student at Tulane.

Would I come…?

Of course I would be there. Since we had never met and she wanted to surprise David “how would she recognize me when I got of the plane?” 

I thought New Orleans.

Anything goes.. MJ and I will wear beanies with a propeller on top when we get off the pane..

I had on my beanie and MJ chicken out..

Nancy escorted us outside to a waiting Limo – where a surprised David waited for us with Champaign on ice.

amen