There’s a woman in Pinellas Park, Florida, who is threatening to sue Universal Pictures because she gets about 20 cell phone calls per hour from people who want to contact God. A Colorado radio station is delighted to get the free publicity and is planning a phone-in contest to capitalize. A church in North Carolina with a pastor named Bruce has been getting calls, too. (You know where I’m going with this, don’t you?) Seems the bright bulbs behind the hit movie Bruce Almighty decided against using the usual 555 prefix, which doesn’t exist anywhere in the country. Since they set the movie in Buffalo, New York, they only checked that nobody there had the number God was leaving on Bruce’s beeper.

The surprisingly poignant movie works on many levels, what with Jim Carrey’s comic genius and Morgan Freeman perfectly typecast as God! (I’ll never imagine God quite the same, thank God.) Anyway, the story features a self-absorbed TV reporter who is passionate only about himself. Although things go quite well for Bruce Nolan — good job, beautiful girlfriend, great apartment, he thinks God is falling down on the job of advancing his career. He is passed over for the anchor job at his local TV station, and being incapable of rolling with the punches, he blames God. He shakes his fist at the heavens and challenges God to prove himself worthy of deity. God takes the challenge and leaves Bruce his phone number, sending the movie off and reeling.

So what’s the deal with people calling the fake number? People want to talk to God. Guess they don’t get the whole prayer thing, since they don’t hear back in the way they would like. Most of the time, that’s because we’re too busy talking to listen. But I think there’s something deeper here: People want divine direction in their everyday lives. They want to believe God will guide them in the small stuff of temporal life as well as the big stuff of eternal life.

Well, if you are one of those people, have we got a Bible story for you today! This is a sermon for accountants who hover over balance sheets, for bureaucrats who rifle through legal documents, for stay-at-home moms or dads who make lunches and run carpools, for starched-collar types who spend half their lives in meetings. This is a sermon for Mike Rosamond, who chairs our deacons; for Kevin Cabaniss, who chairs the finance committee; for Don Simons, who chairs the New Building Committee; for Jerry Bryant and Mike Capps, who lead the Strategic Planning Challenge Council. It’s also a sermon for Dale Pride and Bromsey and Cass Reinhart, and John Jost and Rosa Molina, to name a few, who look after the support functions of the church.  It’s a sermon for Sunday school records secretaries and outreach leaders, for the high school boy who manages the football team instead of playing, and for the girl who does the costumes for the school plays but never gets on stage. It’s for all of you who work tirelessly in the shadows, tending to the business of daily chores and routines, wondering if anyone notices or cares — even God.

Turns out God does notice and God does care. Over the next three weeks we will look at three episodes in the life of the early church that are signs of the Spirit in the church. Next week we’ll look at the Broadway version of the Holy Spirit — the one with the mighty rushing wind, the tongues of fire and the miracle of speech at Pentecost. The week after, we’ll note the intensely personal nature of the Spirit’s role in the new birth experience. But today we begin with mundane direction, with ordinary people trying to give leadership to the church. God shows up at the church’s first business meeting. Which is more than I can say for most of you, by the way. Church people generally show about as much interest in business meetings as George W. shows in raising taxes. As long as things are going well, of course. Give us a good controversy and we all turn out. (But I digress.)

Well, right after Jesus ascends into heaven, 40 days after his resurrection and 10 days before the Holy Spirit comes in a big splashy way on Pentecost, we have this humdrum story in the book of Acts about the apostles choosing a 12^th man for their group to replace the dead traitor, Judas. They’ve got no Robert’s Rules of Order to go by. They’ve never conducted a church meeting before. They don’t have a New Apostles Committee to refer the matter to for filling unexpired terms on account of one of them expiring. They don’t know yet that churches ought to have bylaws to guide them. There are some 120 of them, although the handpicked 11 take the lead; and they’re making it up as they go. Heretofore they just fell back on whatever Jesus wanted. Now they have to fall forward on whatever Jesus wants. But how? How’s Jesus going to guide this group now that he’s out of sight? No beepers yet!  No phones, even! So how will they determine the next man to join their leadership group to get the church off the ground?

Peter moderates the meeting, naturally. They talk it over and come down to two men to choose from — a Republican and a Democrat, no doubt.  Actually we get no curriculum vita on either one, no secret dossier on how they like their lamb cooked or the kind of books they check out of the library. We get only that they were with Jesus and the group from the beginning, which tells us there were lots more disciples than just the symbolic Twelve.

Notice that the early church used its head in making decisions. Sometimes you hear the ultra-pious prattle on about how all we need to do is pray about our decisions. I hear this from pastor search committees in churches sometimes. There’s always one person on the committee who is sure that God has already selected the right man for the job, and all the surveying and reference calling and interviewing is just so much ado about nothing. As if God is most likely to bypass the head and go straight to the heart to make the divine will known. (Someday I’d like to live long enough to see that those same people might think God has already selected the right woman for the job! In fact, if I don’t live long enough myself, I hope you will do more than pay lip service to that idea. So many good rabbits to chase today!) But note the disciples do their homework and boil down the contestants to these two men — Joseph, a.k.a. Barsabbas, a.k.a. Justus, and Matthias, a.k.a. just Matthias.  Once they whittle down the group to two, there is no runoff election: they turn to a curious way of breaking the deadlock — they cast lots. Matthias gets the short stick, gets to be the footnote in apostolic history, and is never heard from again.

Now let’s just go on the assumption that the boys were doing the best they could at the time and that God honored their efforts and they chose the right man. That doesn’t mean we ought to run our church the same way.  Can’t you just see us choosing deacons that — Grab a straw, you two! Well, congratulations Mabel, you’re in.  Bad luck, Henry, guess God has something else for you.  Notice, this episode comes before chapter 2, when the Holy Spirit comes upon the church to guide it as Jesus’ own agent among us. Casting lots, throwing dice, and flipping a coin disappear after this in the New Testament. But what we ought to learn at least is that we need to leave room in our decision-making for God to lead us. This is a human body, granted, albeit with a divine head that wants to give even mundane direction.

But for our purposes, we should also note the two faces of leadership the early church thought were important in any candidate. The apostles were being conservative and liberal at the same time; they were facing backward and forward at the same time, being traditional and progressive. (See, I told you, Republicans and Democrats.) They knew they had to have someone who knew Jesus firsthand. He had to have had a personal experience with the Christ if he were to give direction to Christ’s church. Continuity with the life and ministry of Jesus is the sine qua non of the church’s life and ministry.  Whatever the church does, it ought to pass the Jesus smell test; that is, does it have the scent of the Savior?

In the James Gallery hang paintings by Jim Colley that depict this very idea of the church. We haven’t named the paintings yet, but I am toying with Among Us Still. The five scenes represent the juxtaposition of Jesus’ own life and the church’s life in every age. Our baby dedications remind of Jesus’ presentation in the temple as an infant. Our baptisms find their meaning in relation to his baptism. Just as Jesus turned the water into wine at the wedding feast of Cana, thus blessing marriage with the miracle of his presence, so he is present to bless us in the big moments of our lives. The least-popular subject matter of the paintings is the hospital room where a woman has died. We don’t like to face that. But the grief of the husband is matched by the hope of the pastor who is there to assure him that Jesus’ resurrection power shows up at the moment of our death.And finally, the Communion triptych causes us to reach back to the Last Supper and forward to the Great Banquet Feast of heaven.

The church is rooted in the soil of the gospel, and it grows toward the Son in the heavens. The spirit is the energy inside the church that directs its growth toward the Son. So while the apostles were looking back, they did not get stuck in the past. Getting the gospel right is also about making the resurrection present tense. They were concerned about bearing witness in the future, about the life of the church ahead. A legal precedent doesn’t make law; it only guides the judge. Just because your mother made you wear socks to school doesn’t mean you have to make your kid, too. Things change. And just because the church has always done it this way or that way before doesn’t mean it has to be that way forever. The Spirit leads the church to innovate as well as renovate. A church can be so proud of her history that she becomes history before her time. The very fact that the apostles were looking to open up their group to new blood shows us they were ready to adapt to change.

Last year a few of us stayed in a brand-new bed and breakfast inn in Lahinch, Ireland. They have a great golf course nearby, don’t you know?!  Anyway, I was shocked when I got to the room and found radiators instead of central heat, and the sinks in the bathrooms had the two faucets, hot and cold, with that rubber stopper and the little chain. I’m thinking, okay, I know you don’t replace stuff here that isn’t broken, but hello, when you’re starting out new, don’t you know they make modern sinks now?

We need two-faced leadership in the church: people who know what to keep and what to change: people tethered to Christ and blown by the wind of the Spirit. My question is: if somebody called Wilshire looking for God, would they find God at work among us as much mopping the floors on Monday as filling the pews on Sunday? As much at the Wednesday supper table as at the Lord’s Supper Table on Sunday”

The Spirit that shows up only on Sunday isn’t the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is on duty 24/7 — wherever you are, whatever you are doing.