holy days: Matthias the apostle

called up to the majors

Matthias. Source: getarchive.net

Poor Matthias. He’s the forgotten disciple, the one who joined the team at the last minute and gets almost no screentime in Scripture.

While he may be forgotten by most, he’s remembered by the church, with a February 24 feast day. And his service to the faith is certainly remembered by God.

who was Matthias?

Scriptures tell us almost nothing about Matthias. He is only mentioned once, in Acts chapter 1. After Jesus’ ascension into heaven, about 120 disciples are gathered together. Peter announces to them that they need to choose an apostle to replace Judas, who had betrayed Jesus. He lays out the criteria:

So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us—one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.¹

The group chooses two candidates who fit Peter’s criteria: Joseph called Barsabbas (also called Justus), and Matthias. They prayed to God, affirming that he already knew who he had chosen for this role, and then cast lots. The lot fell on Matthias, and he became the Twelfth apostle.²

That’s it. That’s all the Scriptures give us on Matthias. Like most of the disciples, his story post resurrection doesn’t get told in the Bible.

Outside of Scripture, early Christian writers identified Matthias as one of the 72 disciples who were sent out in Luke 10. Considering that he met Peter’s criteria, that seems like a safe assumption. These 72 disciples were sent ahead of Jesus into all the towns where he planned to minister to prepare the way. He told them “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”³

Tradition holds that Matthias ministered for a while in Judea, then traveled to the mountains of Cappadocia, north of Syria in modern-day Turkey. From there, he headed east to the region around the Caspian Sea, where he was martyred by crucifixion.⁴

is there really anything we can learn from Matthias?

Matthias is barely mentioned in Scripture. He’s a minor-leaguer who gets called up to fill the seat of Judas, who everyone can pretty much agree is literally the worst. Can we learn anything from him?

Yes, we can.

First, Matthias epitomizes Jesus’ teaching that “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much.”⁵ Matthias didn’t make the first string to begin with, but he was a faithful disciple of Jesus. While so many others fell away when Jesus’ teachings got difficult, Matthias stayed.

Most of us won’t be in the top tier of whatever God has called us to. We can learn from Matthias to be faithful wherever the Lord has placed us. We may not get rewarded in this life like Matthias eventually did. But faithfulness will always be rewarded in the end.

Second, despite his bit part in Scripture, Matthias had a huge effect on Church history. Tradition says that he brought the Gospel to a place called Cappadocia. Three hundred years later, a trio of bishops and theologians became known as the Cappadocian Fathers: Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus. These three were leading figures in the fourth-century fight for the doctrine of the Trinity, leading to the Council of Constantinople and the final form of the Nicene Creed. If it wasn’t for Matthias’s missionary work, perhaps the Cappadocian Fathers would never have known about Christ.

Matthias reminds us that when we are faithful, God can use us, no matter where or who we are.

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1. Acts 1:21-22, ESV.

2. Acts 1:15-26.

3. Luke 10:2, ESV.

4. "St. Matthias,” Britannica.com, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Matthias.

5. Luke 16:10a, ESV. I suppose the guy he replaced epitomizes the second half of that verse.