Date- 16 June, 2002 (Fourth Sunday after Pentecost)
Our Gospel lesson today talks about equipping and sending out leaders in the church. Jesus selected 12 men to be the first leaders of the church. He entrusted the future of his church to them. I know about selecting leaders for the U.S. Navy. I sat on several promotion boards and special selection boards. The process is excruciating as the search is made for the brightest, the best educated, the most experienced, the person with just the right background mix of training and experience and the person with demonstrated ability and proven courage and ingenuity. Only the best of the best survive the process. When we look for leaders in the church, don’t we look and pray for great speakers, talented musicians, skilled managers and affluent and influential leaders of proven ability? Since Jesus is able to look into hearts and minds, it stands to reason that he would select persons of great ability with outstanding leadership qualities if he is going to trust them with the future of his church. That would certainly preclude the possibility that most of us will ever be called to fill key positions in Jesus’ church today, I would think. Or does it?
Our Gospel reading includes a list of the 12 disciples who are soon to be sent out a apostles. It is the only such list in Matthew and one of three such lists in the Gospels. There are many lists of names in the Bible and most of us never seriously spend time reading through such lists. And I suspect this list is no different. In fact I suspect most of us can not recall all 12 names from memory. We are fine with Matthew, John, Thomas, Peter and Judas and perhaps Andrew and James, but after that it gets pretty murky. Today let’s take the time to see who the 12 were and what they did and what we really know about them.
They are listed in pairs, perhaps the pairings Jesus used as he sent them out to start their life of ministry. Simon called Peter is listed first in all the lists along with his brother Andrew, the sons of Zebedee. Both are uneducated fishermen living at home with their mother and Peter’s wife. To be sure Peter did some pretty good things for Jesus and was the leader of the early church in Jerusalem, but he also did some pretty awful things as well.. After the crucifixion he disobeyed Jesus and did not wait in the upper room. Instead he deserted the disciples and returned to his old trade of fishing. Andrew brought Peter to Jesus, but other than that we know almost nothing about him.
The second pair, James and his brother John, the sons of thunder are quite a pair. They appear to have been in a fishing partnership with Peter and Andrew. We do know that John died a natural death in exile on the island of Patmos and that he wrote one of the four Gospels, three other short books and the last book of the Bible, Revelation. John constantly tells us that Jesus loves him the best and this egotistical and self-serving pair actually wanted assurance that they would have the best seats at the table on either side of Jesus in the Kingdom. They were hardly humble servants.
The next pair is Phillip and Bartholomew. Bartholomew brought Phillip to Jesus and other than that the Scriptures are mostly silent regarding him. We do see Phillip in Acts ministering to the Ethiopian eunuch, but that is about all we ever see of Phillip. We know nothing else about them.
The next pair is Thomas and Matthew, and what a pair. We know Thomas because he refused to believe the resurrection and we know Matthew was a tax collector and Roman collaborator who was barred from the Temple and had not worshiped God or offered sacrifices to God in years because of it. We know Matthew wrote the Gospel that bears his name, but not much more and information about Thomas is dim and murky at best.
Then we come to James and Thaddeus. James and Thaddeus who? They are names only.
The last pair is Simon called the Zealot and Judas. Simon was evidently a right wing extremist who advocated military overthrow of Rome and in different circumstances might well have killed Matthew and we know nothing more. But Judas, we know Judas. We know Judas because he did not understand the mission, he gave up in disgust on Jesus and betrayed him to the religious authorities and then hanged himself. What a pair to finish with.
There is legend and myth surrounding these twelve based mostly on writings outside Scripture as to what they did and how they died, but we have pretty much summarized what Scripture tells us about them. One has to wonder if the popular rock band, Motley Cru, took their name from a description of the 12 Apostles. I wonder how the best minds of our day would rate the chances of this group of 12 men turning the world upside down and leaving a legacy of faith unequaled in the history of the world based on what Scripture tells us about them? Was Jesus correct in trusting them with the future of the church?
The answer is easy. We need only look among ourselves and then at church steeples all over Madison, Virginia, America, the entire world. Those churches are filled with little people, ordinary people, people of no special note or talents. Yet they, like those very ordinary 12, continue to turn the world upside down as they bring people to Christ. God specializes in using unlikely and ordinary people to do his extraordinary work of redeeming and reconciling people to him. He chose a couple of 100 years of age who had never conceived a child and made them the parents of many nations. As God reminded Sarah in our reading from Genesis, “Is anything too hard or wonderful for God?”
Jesus could have had anyone he wanted to fill those 12 positions of discipleship- rulers, judges, wise men, educators but he chose simple, ordinary men who were willing to follow him and grow into their places in his plan for the church and used them to get the church started. Today he still uses ordinary people to keep the church going and to bring the good news to another generation of men and women. It is clear that our lack of outstanding abilities, our lack of a long list of spectacular achievements and our lack of super leadership qualities does not exempt us from Jesus calling us to discipleship. In fact I think that those very deficiencies make us prime candidates for his call to discipleship because he wants us as we are to nurture and train us to reach out to other ordinary people for him. He called you and I to discipleship yesterday, he is calling us today and he will continue to call us tomorrow to bring our imperfections and inadequacies to him so he can give us his perfection and use us in the everyday, ordinary living of our lives to touch other people for him. Jesus wants us to answer his call in faith and to begin to do the little things faithfully- read the Word, spend time in prayer, regular worship , fellowship with other believers and act as Christ to those around us. As we faithfully do the little things, we grow and then we begin to realize that with God as our Father, Jesus as our brother and the Spirit as our leader, there is nothing too hard or too wonderful for God to accomplish through us. We don’t preach to hundreds or thousands or give thousands or millions of dollars to charity or become Bible authorities or say the most eloquent prayers, but we are faithful in the doing the ordinary tasks in life for Jesus- building our relationship with God through him, giving water to the thirsty, food to the hungry, cloths to the needy, comfort to the sick, forgiveness to the trespasser and God’s love to all we meet. It is this day in and day out simple faithfulness in the ordinary things of life that pleases our Lord the most. Perhaps that is why Scripture is silent about so much of the lives of the 12 Apostles. They were faithfully doing the ordinary things of life for Jesus- nothing spectacular. Why they were just like us! And if we answer Jesus’ call to discipleship, we can be just like them! Is anything too hard or too wonderful for God? No, not one thing; not even using ordinary men and women to carry out his plan for his creation, ordinary men and women just like us! Amen.