Sunday, May 24, 2009

May 24 and Easter 7B - Coincidental timing

The lining up of the date is rather interesting to me - at least for those of us following the three year series of readings in LSB. We heard of the casting of lots to replace Judas. Now if you turn to the back of TDP, page 1298, you'll find that May 24 is the day LSB commemorates Esther.

Rev. Cwirla (who is getting a lot of mention here today) brings these two texts together in a sermon for this Sunday a few years back:

Have you ever noticed how often God hides His hand behind what appears to
be dumb luck? Luck used to be a holy thing, until the gamblers got a hold of it
and turned it into a religion. We talk about it all the time - how we just
happened to clear that intersection before the truck swerved out of control? Or
how things “just happened” to come together for that new job? If you didn’t know
better, you’d call it dumb luck or coincidence. If you want to read an exercise
in this, read the book of Esther, which never even mentions God. The Jewish
people even play a little game of chance on the festival of Purim to celebrate
their good dumb luck under the hand of God.


It was a fifty-fifty chance that the lot would fall on Matthias. Could it
have gone either way? Perhaps. And certainly God could have worked through
either one of those two men. But the lot fell on Matthias, and he was added to
the eleven. Lucky Matthias. The Lord gets the last word.

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