The Disciples

Hello and welcome back to the Pastor Talk podcast.
We are thrilled once again to share some time
with you as we continue on this series of The Real People of Faith.
We’ve had a little bit of
just a change of pace in this series as we’ve instead of been looking at one specific person
for the last few weeks,
we’ve been looking at groups of people and that theme is going to
continue today in our conversation.
We talked about the prophets,
talked about John the Baptist,
I guess that’s a specific person,
but now we’re back to talking about a group of the disciples
of Jesus and this is actually a little bit more broad than what you might think.
You would probably have in mind those 12 that we have recorded in Scripture,
but as we continue our
conversation today we’re going to learn that Scripture does name these disciples,
though there’s different names given in different Gospels.
Some disciples we know more about than others,
some we almost really know nothing about and actually you can look beyond what we think of
as the 12 disciples to larger themes of discipleship in Scripture,
including those that follow Jesus.
I mean you would call the Apostle Paul a disciple of course, though that wasn’t
what you would have in the Gospels.
So great themes for conversation today and certainly
a real connection to the real people of faith,
so we’re thrilled to have you join us.
Yeah, welcome.
I think this is a fun conversation.
Michael, it’s an interesting conversation.
We know a couple of things that probably help us backdrop to this conversation.
We know that 12
is a significant number.
There is this group of disciples within a broader group that is
referred to as the 12 and that’s a direct comparison or direct connection to the 12
tribes of Israel, that Jesus has 12 disciples.
What’s interesting is that the various Gospels
give some of them different names and there are arguments to be made within scholarship circles
as to whether they’re naming the same men in every case or not.
There is some school of thought
that they’re making a case for different people being within the 12 and the reason that could be
possible is that we know Jesus has more than 12 followers.
There’s a fairly large group of people
who would consider themselves disciples.
They’re followers of Jesus.
They follow Him around.
They support His ministry.
They support Him and yet within that bigger group there is this identification
of the 12 and it could be that there are disagreements about who is actually in it
when you kind of get to the fringes.
There’s really no argument about the core.
I would say
probably, what would you say,
9 of the 12,
10 of the 12 and one simple explanation is that they
have some different names.
They go by different names.
We’ll talk about why that might be the case.
Scripturally, we talk about the 12 disciples and for our purposes we will probably try to combine
names when we think they may apply to the same individual.
What I think is interesting about
this conversation to start with,
Michael, before we get into the particulars of any individual,
is that the one thing these men certainly have in common is that they’re not on anybody’s
own.
For instance, may likely have been a disciple of James the Baptist at some level or a follower
of James the Baptist.
But other than that,
these aren’t men that are particularly special in any way.
The first thing that I think is really of interest is that in looking for this inner circle,
Jesus fishes from very ordinary ponds and he calls to him men without exception who are not
considered anything special by the world they live in.
Yeah, well some of the men he call,
of course, are professional fishermen and when you have someone whose very job is the business of knowing
the most efficient ways of catching fish,
you know that fundamentally these are not the guys
you want fishing for people.
The very thing that Jesus says he’s going to send them out to do.
These are not the people who are going to be orders.
They’re not trained in going out and doing public speaking.
They’re probably faithful men who go to worship but they’re not going to
be those who are going to be asked or called upon to teach scripture,
what would be our Old Testament.
So when Jesus calls these men,
it is very much a nod from the very beginning
that Jesus’s intent is to glorify God.
In other words, anything that comes of those disciples’
work is not something that could be pointed to towards their own pedigree,
towards their own training.
Instead,
what happens because of the faithfulness of these disciples,
God gets the credit for it.
Yeah, and maybe connected to point number one that they’re
not particularly desirable from a worldly perspective is point number two,
the most consistent thing reported about the disciples in the Gospels is that they rarely get it right.
They are very human,
especially if you read the way this story unfolds pre and post resurrection.
The pre-resurrection disciples,
to be honest, they almost never nail it.
They almost always misunderstand Jesus.
Jesus chides them for having lack of faith.
They ask inappropriate questions.
They have doubts.
They cannot seem to be able to get where Jesus wants them to be,
and they’re very fallible.
This becomes, I think, an invitation to all of us,
but it is another interesting way that their story is told,
not as successful,
not as brave and
courageous and the kind of tenacity we see in Jesus.
They are very ordinary.
In fact, their batting average is probably not very good, to be honest.
Yeah, take someone like Peter who we know because of Acts is a significant leader in the early
church after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension,
and you figure that if you look at the Gospels,
I think you can make a case that Peter has at least equal to the most number of stories,
if not the most number of stories of a disciple in the New Testament.
If you take the weight of those,
Peter doesn’t look like a very wise, thoughtful,
cautious individual.
He doesn’t look much like a leader,
to be frank.
He looks a lot like a bumbling guy trying to impress Jesus
and make an impact on the world.
And if you figure that Peter has a significant authority
role in the early church,
he clearly didn’t exert a lot of influence trying to edit the story.
He didn’t go back and try to push the writers of the Gospels to make him look good in it.
Really,
he comes off looking pretty weak,
and I think that’s actually a testament to what the
disciples writ large, if you look at all 12,
as much as we have about them.
It seems that
they were far more interested in making that connection to faithfulness to Jesus
than their own personal ability,
their own personal gifts or charisma.
In other words, this wasn’t a movement of these 12 people who were extraordinarily gifted and went out to change the world.
It was these 12 normal individuals,
in fact, in some cases,
backwater individuals,
who met the most significant person.
He transformed them, and suddenly they were lit on fire with this good news that they saw and they wanted to share.
Yeah, and I think that,
again, one of the things we see in that is the humanness of these men, real people.
And to their credit,
there are rarely instances where they disobey Jesus.
They just don’t understand Jesus.
They often try to do what Jesus has told them to do.
They just have a way of mucking it up with their own stuff,
with their own assumptions,
with their own preferences.
And I think that’s one of the things that make their story so compelling,
that these are the men in the trenches with Jesus.
For the three years of his ministry,
they’re with him day in and day out,
season after season.
They see the miracles.
They see the exorcisms.
They hear the preaching.
They hear the lessons.
And yet,
it often doesn’t sink in
through their thick heads until they finally, ultimately,
not only see what Jesus was actually
talking about in giving up his life and being resurrected,
but more importantly,
till they’re gifted with that gift of the Holy Spirit.
And upon that moment,
they’re able to really start implementing the things that they’ve seen and heard in Jesus.
So it’s an invitational kind of story to the rest of us who,
as much as we might try,
often get it wrong as well.
The central theme that goes throughout the Gospels as it connects with the Disciples
is this theme of faith and doubt.
And it’s interesting because the Gospels were clearly
written, each by differing authors and to differing communities,
but they share this concern
that we know that even those closest to Jesus struggled with doubt about who he was,
and not even just who he was,
but what that meant.
And I think it’s very comforting for those who live
thousands of years later,
who in many ways struggle to relate to the time and nature and
tenor of the stories that we find in the New Testament.
It’s good news for us when we sometimes
walk our own tenuous journeys of both faith and doubt to recognize that these simple men who were
within arm’s distance of Jesus,
who saw him, who ate with him,
who followed him, who talked with him, that these same people who in many ways I think we can relate to for sometimes just not getting it,
these men found in Jesus someone who they couldn’t not follow,
a person who transformed
them in really fundamental ways.
And so I think as we come to them in their stories,
it’s both relatable in the sense that these are real people who had real jobs that had nothing to do with
professional clergy or institutional church,
and yet they saw in Jesus someone who transformed
everything, and they become the witnesses that invite us to see him.
And they left those jobs,
they temporarily at least left whatever family situations they might have been in.
They did that.
They made that decision in many cases on the spot.
The text often says immediately
they followed him.
And for that we have to praise them and give them credit because there were many
who didn’t and these men really stake their life on the faith that they put immediately in Christ,
even if they didn’t always understand what it asked of them and what it led them to be and do
in the short run.
I think in the long run we might find otherwise.
But maybe the thing to do,
Michael, maybe we just jump in,
we talk about each one for a few minutes and kind of share what we
know of their stories.
The thing that’s interesting as you look at the disciples,
so much of their
narrative comes from outside of the Bible.
The Bible tells us a little bit in many cases.
It turns out church tradition adds a lot to the story.
Now, how reliable some of those traditions
are has been debated.
But we will,
as we go through this,
if we appeal to any of those traditions,
we will try to let you know that we’re outside the parameters of the New Testament and we’re into
church history or church tradition.
And probably, Michael, the place we have to start is Peter.
Right.
Yeah.
So you may know Peter as Simon.
We know Peter as Peter because Jesus called him Peter,
which that name means “the rock.” Jesus says that you are the rock upon which I will build my church.
Which, if you know anything about Peter,
is an ironic statement because he’s hardly a rock-like
character in the gospel.
In fact, he’s more like shifting sand.
He seems to be in different places,
both emotionally and politically and spiritually at differing times.
But once again, and I don’t want it all to sound critical of him,
the text really exudes this sort of almost…
It’s very generous to Peter, right?
Peter doesn’t get it.
Peter’s brash.
But he’s always trying.
He’s never hard-hearted or he’s never seeking foolishness.
That’s just the road that he finds himself on.
Yeah.
And also, I think the scripture is mindful that Jesus
pays him the great compliment of saying,
“You are Peter, the rock.
And on the rock,
I’ll build the church and you’ll have the keys to the kingdom.” Peter is considered by the Catholics
the first bishop of Rome,
effectively the first pope or the paradigm for popes.
He’s confident.
He’s brash.
He is the first to voice that truth of Christ.
You are the Messiah.
You are the Christ.
Jesus says, “Who do people say that I am?
Who do you say that I am?” Peter answers,
“You’re the Christ.” Unfortunately, he then immediately proves he doesn’t understand what that means.
But he is sincere.
He’s often misguided.
He’s not courageous as we encounter him
in the gospels.
I think he talks a better game than he plays.
But when we get to the book of Acts, again,
with the gift of the Spirit and the hindsight of understanding all of those things,
Jesus tried to tell him he stands out as incredibly brave,
confident.
He is an outstanding preacher.
He is an outstanding missionary.
He is in many ways the leader of the early church,
especially in its infancy and its first evolution.
And he stands apart in that.
And so many of those
things are foreshadowed in the gospels,
but not really do they come to fruition until we see him
in the book of Acts.
Yeah, I think a paradigm for me of who Peter is comes to us in the story of the
world. You have this moment where Jesus is up on the mountain,
and he is literally transformed
before the eyes of some of these core,
this inner circle of disciples.
Peter is among them.
And Peter,
seeing that something really remarkable has happened,
says, “Lord, it’s good for us to be
here.
And if you want,
I’ll make three dwellings,
one for you, one for Moses, and for Elijah.” These
two great pillars of the Old Testament appearing on either side of Jesus.
And it is, it’s just so,
it’s so much Peter.
This is, he sees something happening,
he knows it’s significant,
and he goes with his gut that we need to do something in response to it.
The unfortunate thing is,
he chooses the wrong thing,
that God doesn’t need a house made on earth,
that God literally took on a living tent.
He became enfleshed on earth,
and that is Jesus Christ.
And that is,
that’s, I think, the invitation for those of us who are seeking to learn from what it means
to be a real person of faith,
is that we oftentimes do see God working,
and our temptation can be to
sort of jump in and to fix it,
or to run it,
or to control it.
And Peter does that in lots of ways.
And the invitation that comes to us is maybe to just step back and to try to listen,
try to learn, to try to let God speak into our lives in meaningful ways before we rush to action
and go inevitably the wrong direction.
Pete You know, I think it was a few weeks ago in our David podcast, Michael,
we talked about the reality of your strengths being your weaknesses,
and I think that’s true.
Peter is quick to leap in,
he wants to be in the front,
he wants to grab the reins,
he wants to do well and do the right thing and be involved in it.
And that often just
leads him to the wrong place,
you know, speaking when he should be listening,
and saying the wrong thing,
and going off sort of half prepared.
And we see that,
especially in the Gospels.
In the book of Acts it’s subdued a little,
although he and Paul do
get in some conflict over how Peter has treated the Gentiles,
and at least as Paul tells it,
Peter is slow to come around to the truth that Jesus has opened the gates of salvation,
even to the Gentiles.
Paul accuses Peter of some hypocrisy,
though in fairness, the book of Acts
is extremely pro-Paul,
and so whether there’s more to the story or not,
I think you would have
to argue that out.
Tradition holds that Peter is eventually martyred,
and as a sign of his humility,
and in some ways,
contrary to the stories of him in the Gospel,
the tradition is that he requests
to be crucified upside down.
And so the symbol of Peter is an upside down cross.
In some churches, you will see a cross that’s inverted,
and that’s often called Peter’s cross,
and it has to do with
that story that he felt unworthy to share the same kind of death of Jesus,
so he asked if he
could do it upside down,
and they let him for whatever reason.
Before we move on from Peter,
I think it’s worth just making note of the fact that Peter was undoubtedly one of the linchpin
leaders of the early church.
Without Peter’s administrative leadership,
without Peter’s proclamation,
which we see in the very early chapters of Acts, without Peter
having some of that get in the middle,
get moving,
take charge,
it’s,
you know, you can’t
speak in hypotheticals of what would have happened,
but Peter is, as history turns out,
one of the significant bearers of the Gospel,
and it is because of him in many ways that the church
exists as it does today.
So let’s not come across as if we’re critiquing Peter too much,
or at least I don’t want to from my own comments.
I just think that,
once again, as you said, well, Clint,
there’s both strength and weakness in it,
and it turns out that very much his weakness was
redeemed as strength in his leadership role in the early church.
Yeah, without a doubt, Michael, in fact, in the book of Acts on Pentecost,
it’s Peter that preaches,
and it says 3,000 people responded and came to Christ that day,
or were baptized, or joined the faith,
and, you know, that’s an amazing statistic and certainly a credit to Peter’s leadership.
It’s hard to see the early church leaving its first few years
making it through those challenges without Peter’s leadership,
100%.
Well, that brings us,
there are different orders we could go to,
but maybe just in terms of the
biggest amount of stories and maybe impact through the Gospels,
we’ll go to John next,
sometimes called the beloved disciple,
as he seems to refer to himself in the Gospel that bears his name.
In many ways,
an opposite to Peter.
John seems to be more reflective, more philosophical.
He seems to be somewhat more reserved.
He has a deep faith like Peter,
but is it fair to say,
Michael, it’s a more contemplative faith,
or at least it’s a faith
that is not rushing ahead,
but asking the meta question,
“What does this mean?” And he seems
constantly to be involved in trying to sort out those questions.
If you were to read John’s Gospel,
as many of you did in our 90-day New Testament project,
you’re going to find that that fourth Gospel has a completely different tone.
And I’m not even
talking about the stories included or not included.
The tone of that letter is one such
that Jesus in his teaching,
especially in the upper room section towards the middle,
late middle of that book,
is just unbelievably word-filled.
You can see the person who wrote that
as sort of sitting in the room and just absorbing the words,
the knowledge,
the wisdom that Jesus has to offer.
Peter, very much you get this impression of a person ready to take action.
John, you get this impression of someone who’s soaking in what Jesus is saying,
and not just sort of in an intellectual way,
though I think you could say that that’s there,
but also in very much a spiritual way.
If you’ve ever known one of those people for whom spiritual
connection, prayer,
devotion comes easily,
that’s the impression I get when I read John.
And that’s not explicit.
That’s more of just a feeling I have as I read passages about him or things written by him.
But John’s the kind of guy who can come into a room,
and I think he sits quietly,
he listens, he’s faithful, he’s devoted, he follows Jesus.
And if he was ever given the title “Beloved
Disciple” by Jesus, I think it’s understandable why.
Yeah, you have the vision of John being a
person who kind of sees behind the thing.
He embodies that wisdom.
Much of the gospel is kind
of esoteric.
Some of it is it will leave you scratching your head,
but spiritualists do that,
right?
That’s kind of their gift,
and we all try to catch up with them.
And John is responsible,
we think, for writing the gospel.
There are three letters that bear his name.
There’s some dispute over that, but then also the book of Revelation,
which again,
if that’s accurate,
very much would be in keeping with a kind of spiritual discernment,
understanding,
big picture,
weird, strange imagery,
kind of…
That would fit John’s affect,
at least as we…
I think we see it.
John is exiled, late in his life.
He doesn’t end up martyred like so many of the disciples.
Tradition holds that he ends up on the island of Patmos,
where he’s given credit for writing the book of Revelation.
And there are some other stories about him being boiled in oil or poison,
but he survives those.
And I think church tradition generally holds,
Michael, that he dies of old age while exiled,
essentially imprisoned on an island from which he can’t escape,
but he’s not in a jail.
Yeah, you get very much the sense,
and I think even Revelation,
of an older disciple who’s seeing
the church increasingly come under fire of persecution from the Roman state.
And it is clear in the writing of that book that John is yearning for a time in which all things are set
right, in which Jesus returns,
in which the church can see what John has very much been
seeing the whole time,
and that’s this whole other reality behind the reality.
Really an important disciple, though I’m going to be honest,
I think probably for many of us,
less relatable than Peter, maybe,
but I still think an important voice in the history of the church.
Yeah, and we want to make sure we don’t give the impression that there’s a softness in John.
John
is steel.
I mean, John stands up and thunders away.
The gospel of John is very much Jesus
clashing with people.
John has this prolonged section about the world and hating the world,
and the world hating us.
And of course,
the book of Revelation is written in this
deeply divisive cast in this deeply divisive model in which the world and Jesus are at war,
and the result of that is undecided.
But John is not a pusher.
I don’t want anybody to get the
sense that we’re saying that John is soft,
because that certainly wouldn’t be true.
I see the man who
ends up on Patmos is old and gnarled and tough.
Tough as a boot, probably.
Well, let’s go back then to Peter’s family.
Now we move to Andrew.
Andrew is also a fisherman, Peter’s brother.
He’s kind of the come and see disciple.
He’s the first one who makes that
invitation.
In fact, he brings Peter.
He brings Jesus, the boy.
You know the story about the
boy who has the fishes and loaves in the feeding of the 5,000.
It is Andrew who brings that young boy to Jesus.
It’s possible that he was a disciple of John the Baptist,
and then he sort of
gravitates over as he explores Jesus’ teaching,
as invited to follow him.
That,
to my knowledge, Michael, is most of what we know about him.
Yeah.
No, that’s true.
He’s not.
He begins, I think, a list that we’re going to find,
of a lot of disciples who we maybe know a little bit of their call.
Maybe we see a story of
significance in the scripture,
but here we already see someone whose major play is actually to
make the connection between who we know is Peter and Jesus.
And really, beyond that, we know that he goes along with Jesus throughout his earthly ministry.
Yeah, there is some interesting extra-biblical stuff about Andrew.
The story goes that he is
hung on an X,
an inverted cross.
He’s tied to that.
He’s martyred.
And then his body is being
transported by ship where it falls under a storm and there’s a shipwreck.
His remains end up in
Scotland where miracles begin to happen and all kinds of stuff.
And so there is this community
of disciples that ends up formed in Scotland.
And hence, if you go to Scotland,
you will encounter places like St.
Andrew.
The church I served in Texas was named St.
Andrew, and the symbol,
our symbol was a blue shield with a white cross on it, the St.
Andrew cross.
So if you see that cross,
that’s the symbol of Andrew and that’s the story that goes with it.
Yeah, I think as we get into these characters,
Clint, it’s worth maybe helping people navigate
what we do with these early church history stories of the disciples.
Because when you read scripture,
Jesus is the one almost without exception for whom we see miracles happening.
And you see a little bit in acts of some miraculous healings.
You certainly see demons being cast out,
Paul survives a snake bite.
So it’s not all to say that scripture doesn’t
have a place for some of these,
maybe you say almost fantastical sort of elements in the story.
But the early church very much collected stories of great renown of these individuals,
and they were compiled in a variety of differing books and codexes.
And it is not on accident that
they didn’t arrive in scripture because the purpose of scripture is to point us to Jesus Christ.
But it’s not to say that these stories either are or aren’t history and what we understand history
to be.
What matters is they reveal to us men,
and in some cases,
especially as history goes on,
women of faith whose actions and faithfulness to Christ resulted in beyond ordinary things, supernatural events happening.
And it’s not worth getting caught into the did it happen or did it
not happen.
I think it’s far more helpful to look into these stories like this and to say, yeah,
the gospel has a way of working even beyond the death of this disciple who is faithful.
Yeah, and maybe we should have put this on the front end,
Michael, but in a tradition like ours
that doesn’t have what we call saints, in other words,
we don’t really deify those characters
in a way that puts them in a place of prominence other than the appreciation we have for their
stories and their faithfulness.
We don’t consider them more holy than others.
However, it would not be rare at all to walk into a Presbyterian church,
which may be named St.
Matthew’s or St.
Luke’s or St.
John’s and find some of these disciples symbolized in stained glass or in art or in some other fashion.
So even in our rather cautious tradition,
we do have a way of looking to these
men and in our own way expressing appreciation for their place in the story.
Very much.
So I think many of these next characters will go fairly quickly.
Now we move to another brother.
This is James,
John’s brother, also a fisherman, son of Zebedee.
And the thing we could say about
James, I think, is that he’s in the inner circle.
Whenever there’s a story about Jesus taking a
smaller subset of the disciples somewhere,
James shows up in it,
and yet we don’t really get much
of his story.
We know some things about John.
We know some things about Peter who were also in that inner circle.
James is always there,
and that has to matter.
But there’s not a lot of
corresponding information about what he did or why he’s there.
Right. And in fact, you might say, well, hey,
pastors,
what about the whole book that’s named
after the guy?
And scholarship would say that we’ve got to be maybe a little tenuous about
being able to trace that book directly to the disciple we have named James.
But I think that’s
an important point that maybe can be named at this juncture of the conversation,
is that
whether or not James wrote the book of James that we have in the New Testament,
there is throughout this very early stage of Christianity, these amazing strands,
these differing voices and perspectives of the faith that are completely captured in our New Testament.
And this is what I mean by this.
You have James,
which is this, we’re studying it right now in the
practical hold no punch telling of the gospel.
It is earthy and it’s relatable.
And if you aren’t
hit by it, you weren’t listening to it.
And then you have John,
which is this more thoughtful,
esoteric, maybe spiritualist sort of writing.
And then you come into Peter and you have,
once again, a very wise pastoral sort of move forward voice.
And I think each one of these core disciples,
they presented for the church,
differing ways of understanding and seeing Christ.
And these things are not in conflict with each other very much.
They’re differing melodies that all come together
to make a beautiful harmony.
So yes,
we don’t have a ton of stories about James,
particularly,
sort of contributing.
We don’t have lots of long speeches.
We don’t have lots of texts.
But I think we still have in subtle ways ways that James impacted the church,
certainly in this whole
school of faith and practice that we see really written in and instilled in the book of James.
Yeah, absolutely.
And again,
a fun story about James,
there’s a moment to kind of reinforce
the idea that he and John have a strong spine.
There’s this village that has told Jesus they’d
rather not have him there.
They’re afraid of causing trouble or something.
And James and John
come and ask Jesus if he wants them to call down thunder.
And there’s no indication that they have
the ability to call down thunder upon them and wipe out this village.
But Jesus then calls them
the sons of thunder.
Sometimes they’re referred to in the text as the sons of thunder.
And James would be half of that couple.
Next, we’d find Philip.
Philip is interesting.
He recruits Nathaniel, who was sometimes also called Bartholomew.
He challenges Jesus.
Jesus is talking about the Father late in his ministry.
And Philip says, “Just show us the Father and
we will believe.” And unfortunately,
Michael, that’s kind of Philip’s one claim to fame,
is that he asked Jesus for proof.
And Jesus says, “You’ve been following me all this time,
and you don’t get it,
Philip.
If you’ve seen me,
you have seen the Father.” And unfortunately,
his one moment in the spotlight is one of being rebuked.
But that’s the nature of the disciples
and the Gospels, right?
They’re always sort of saying things and getting it mostly wrong.
And then Jesus is correcting them,
and certainly none of us are outside of that paradigm.
Yeah, no.
And it is important to note,
right, that the Gospels are very much written around
this core group of disciples following Jesus,
and it’s not interested in teasing out all the relationship.
So yes, there’s a time when Philip got it wrong,
but I’m sure there’s lots of times
when Philip got it right.
Yeah. So next, we go to Bartholomew also in some lists called Nathaniel.
Again, you could argue whether Bartholomew and Nathaniel are or are not the same person
for purposes of this podcast.
They are.
He’s the one who,
when told that they found the Messiah,
who is from Nazareth,
he’s reported to have said,
“Can anything good come from Nazareth?” So not a
fan of Nazareth, not a fan of people from Nazareth.
But the next day,
when he goes to see Jesus,
Jesus says of him,
“This is an Israelite in whom there is no guile.” And this is a wonderful
compliment when if Jesus could look at you and say,
“You know, there’s no deceit in this person.
This is an honest person.
This is a real person.
This is a genuine person.” That would be truly
a wonderful gift that Jesus would give you.
And there again,
as far as I know, Michael, that
is kind of all we have of his story.
Yeah.
He later says in that same story,
“Rabbi,
you are the Son of God.
You are the King of Israel.” And mind you,
this is in the first chapter of John.
In the other Gospels, like Mark,
you don’t get Son of God till people do not get who
Jesus is.
So much credit to Nathaniel for that insight.
But of course, as John does in that
Gospel, Jesus says to him,
“You’re going to see greater things than these.” So Jesus says,
“Yeah, you saw that right,
but your mind’s going to still be blown for what’s to come.”
Next, we talk about Matthew, sometimes called Levi.
If there is an oddest disciple,
Michael, a case could be made for Matthew.
Matthew’s a tax collector.
Right.
The absolute epitome of everything so much of the disciples would have been against, as Israelite men,
as those who live under Rome’s authority and occupation.
They generally are not any fans.
In fact, we’re about to meet in a few moments a man who is ready
to try and destroy Rome.
And here is Levi or Matthew,
this tax collector, this collaborator, one who has probably gotten wealthy off of Roman authority exercised against his own people.
He’s considered by many of his day a traitor,
probably well-educated,
probably pretty wealthy.
It would have been typical for a tax collector,
which again makes him stand out.
He’s arguably the most successful disciple.
We don’t know that,
but that’s a reasonable guess.
And of all the odd
pairings, I think,
in Jesus’ inner circle,
for me, that one might be the most.
Very much,
Clint.
In fact, I think we miss how odd this is.
We think of tax day and
nobody throughout all time enjoys paying taxes.
But it’s a respectable career to work for the IRS.
I mean, it’s a good job as your citizen doing your work for the nation and everybody understands
that nobody likes paying taxes,
but that’s a thing that needs done.
That’s not the case
in the ancient world.
It’s not a person who’s just trying to do the administrative duty of
the government.
It’s someone who is personally benefiting off of raising tax to whatever level
they see fit and having the force of the Roman government to enforce that self-enrichment.
And doing that against their people.
Your own people.
Yeah.
No, you’re a sellout,
and you’re getting wealthy because of it,
and you’re doing it off the backs of your own people.
So we maybe don’t have the same kind
of emotional charge to what the early readers and receivers of Scripture would have had,
but this guy being in the Twelve is repulsive.
There’s really no other word.
Yeah, and it’s amazing.
You know, he’s sitting at his booth,
and Jesus comes to him and says,
“Follow me.” And the text right here in Matthew says,
“And he got up and followed him.” And we
don’t get a lot of Matthew stories,
but there is that remarkable moment where Jesus looks at a
person that everyone else hates and says,
“I want you to come with me.” And Matthew instantly
recognizes something better than what he has,
something better than money,
something better than power, something better than prestige,
and he leaves all of that at a moment’s notice
to go follow Jesus.
And say what you will, that’s impressive.
I think many of us
would struggle in that moment to respond with that kind of willingness and faithfulness.
Yeah,
Scripture contains the opposite story.
The rich young man comes to Jesus and says,
“What do I need to do to inherit salvation?” Jesus says,
“Well, you’ve done all the things.
You just need to leave your stuff behind and follow me.” And he walks away unable to do that.
Matthew is able to somehow do that in an instant.
He’s able to even leave the place of his enrichment
and to go with Jesus onto a path of really poverty and want.
And that is, I think,
to him, a huge credit.
Yeah, and keep in mind that Bible people argue about everything that can be argued about, but historically,
Matthew is given credit for the gospel that bears his name,
and as an educated person,
as an intelligent person, that fits.
And again, there would be people who would
want to argue about that,
but for our purposes,
that’s him.
And so,
on one hand, we don’t get a
lot of stories about Matthew.
On the other hand,
we get something of a flavor of who he was
by how he tells the Jesus story and by how his gospel unfolds,
much like we do of John.
We see in Matthew some of the things that are vitally important to him and the way he shapes
the story to make the points that he feels are most important.
And so, in a strange way,
we know a lot about him for knowing not very much about him.
Yeah, that’s well said.
So then, we move to Thomas,
often called the doubter.
Yeah, that’s a bummer.
Sometimes called Didymus, the twin.
The best guess is he had a twin.
Others have suggested maybe he
looked like Jesus, although that’s also said of another disciple.
Yeah, and unfortunately,
Thomas said some other good things.
When he sees the resurrected Christ,
he says, “My Lord and my
God,” but unfortunately, that one story of him saying,
“I can’t believe it.
I won’t believe it.”
Jesus says, “Do not doubt,” and for the next however many thousand years,
that’s the label that sticks with him.
And maybe he earns that,
maybe he doesn’t, but Thomas is going to be forever associated with that moment where he doubts.
I don’t think you could be a Christian through a whole lifetime and not hear one sermon on
doubting Thomas.
That’s going to be the sermon that I would most likely think that you would
associate with him.
And maybe I’m reaching a little bit here, Clint,
but that’s not the worst thing.
Which one of us in life ever escapes doubt,
right?
Thomas had the ability to
ask Jesus who’s standing in the room,
and in many ways that text is, I think,
intended to be comforting for those of us who receive it as a reminder that, hey,
yeah, you don’t get to be in the room.
And so your doubt is hard, right?
He got to have Jesus respond.
And so as you
seek to be a person of faith,
living in a world that’s full of complexity and nuance and division,
and faith can be hard in times of unrest and unsettledness, you know?
Have a little bit of
grace for yourself because this guy gets named in the 12,
and he’s got Jesus literally standing in
front of him.
And so,
yeah,
if I’m Thomas, I probably feel bummed out when I’m at the heavenly
table and all the other disciples are chatting.
But on the other hand,
that’s great good news
for people who are trying to be real disciples,
real people of faith.
And I think significant too,
Michael, that in the aftermath of that doubt,
Thomas issues what is,
without a doubt, the strongest affirmation of Jesus in the New Testament.
He says,
“My Lord and my God,” and it’s really Thomas who for the first time in the gospel
begins to introduce or begins to discern the extent to which Jesus’
words to Philip are true.
If you’ve seen me,
you’ve seen the Father.
And it’s Thomas who first gives voice to that idea
that the resurrected Christ is the embodiment,
the incarnation of God, of the Father.
And so,
yes,
Thomas doubts, and we should know that about him,
but we should also know
that on the other side of that doubt lives a profoundly deep and insightful faith that the
rest of the New Testament then grows out of.
Yeah, we would all do well to be more like Thomas
and to express our doubt and to admit our weakness and to recognize that we need Christ to invite us
to reach into the truth of the gospel.
Because without that, we’re going to be hopelessly lost on the journey.
The next disciple is another James,
sometimes called the James,
sometimes called James the Less,
and that doesn’t mean important though he’s less pronounced in the story.
It means younger probably,
and so he’s the son of Alphaeus.
There’s some speculation that he
may be the brother of Matthew.
I’m not sure where that comes from or how reliable it is.
There’s also a tradition,
a legend, that he is the disciple that looks most like Jesus,
and therefore that explains why Judas then goes to kiss Jesus in the garden because he knows that
the soldiers wouldn’t be able to tell,
particularly in the dark,
Jesus from James and that they might
arrest the wrong person.
Again,
as to how much of that is reliable,
just know that it’s out there and it’s interesting.
It is also held that he’s a Nazarene,
a religious commitment that means no alcohol,
no haircuts,
and no meat.
It may be that he is of that kind of very narrow tradition,
but it may not.
Well said.
Anything to add on James?
He doesn’t make much of an appearance.
So then we come to Simon.
Again, I think an interesting
disciple, not for what we know about him,
but for what we know about his title.
He’s called Simon the Zealot.
The zealots are essentially a band of guerrillas or rebels that are very anti-Rome
and willing to do violence generally,
to protest or even rebel,
that they believe Rome should be overthrown.
Rome occupies what they believe to be their sacred land and they want them gone.
The zealots are always doing things like starting skirmishes, attacking soldiers.
Now, we don’t know Simon’s role in all of that.
We do know that later on Jesus says,
“We need a sword,” and Simon says,
“Here’s two swords.” He might think it’s time to go.
Finally, the moment is here, but it’s a very interesting person to have in the table hearing,
“Love your enemies
and turn the other cheek.” Those things could not have come easily to Simon.
Right.
Though I would encourage you to read the gospel through his lens for a moment,
and you can also see how he gets there because Jesus talks a lot about how this kingdom is
passing away and the new kingdom is coming.
And if you read that just on its face to a zealot, yes,
get rid of the current kingdom.
We’re ready to overthrow it.
We’re going to have a new king,
which is literally the implication.
So when Jesus comes into Jerusalem and you have this whole processional,
I mean,
surely Simon the Zealot is excited,
right?
Because we’re coming to the capital city.
Jesus is getting hailed as the king of the Jews.
I mean, we’re finally making it happen.
And you’ve got to recognize that religion has always had nuance.
Maybe sometimes we let that flatten to history.
There are people inside Jesus’ circle who would vary remarkably in his willingness
to take extreme measures to affect what he thinks is the religious good.
And that’s all the way back
to Jesus, that people are sort of living in that tension.
And yet, I think your point is well made.
We have to recognize that Jesus was able to hold Simon the Zealot,
even though those zealous ideas wasn’t what Jesus intended from the start.
Yeah, imagine how Simon feels when Jesus heals the Centurion’s son,
or doesn’t speak out about
Rome, instead fights with the religious leaders of Israel.
Or imagine him sitting at a table with
Matthew.
We said this in a sermon a couple of weeks ago.
The tension that must have been present
when those two met for the first time.
So Simon is a fascinating footnote on the disciples,
a man of potentially a man of violence,
a man of anger,
a man who sees the world in us and them and enemies,
and lives beyond that in the ministry and ultimately in the sacrifice of Christ.
And for those of us who are inclined to think in those terms,
certainly a lot to offer.
So then,
almost done, we get to Jude/Thaddeus/ possibly Judas,
not the Judas you’re thinking of,
but possibly another Judas who was called something else,
especially after the other Judas went bad.
But probably most often known as Jude/Thaddeus,
depending on which list you read.
There’s a tradition that he’s the son of James.
In fact, there’s a reference that he’s the son of James.
It’s not clear that that means James the disciple,
but if so, that would mean that
there’s a father and son team within the disciples.
And that would also make him the grandson of
Zebedee, the nephew of John.
He would then undoubtedly be the youngest of the disciples.
We don’t, to my knowledge,
we don’t know much about him other than that strange possibility
that he is family with some of the other disciples.
Yeah, one thing I’ve heard is that
there’s some thought that Thaddeus is actually a nickname that’s given to him because of the way
that it plays in the original language,
so that his name may have been Judas,
that Jesus may have
called him Thaddeus, or the disciples may have called him that.
But once again, we’re now reaching into murky waters.
The text doesn’t say it, and quite frankly,
the gospel doesn’t rise
or fall either way.
But here we have another person who is a follower of Christ.
And then the, in some ways, best known,
or certainly most infamous
disciple, the one named Judas, Judas Descariot,
and, you know,
it really, whatever else you could
or couldn’t say about Judas,
you’re going to get to the point that he betrayed Jesus,
and that’s his legacy.
That’s the mantle that he wears.
There have been those,
Michael, that have tried to
kind of redeem his reputation in saying that he understood he was doing something good.
Maybe he thought if he forced the conflict that Jesus would move to overthrow Rome,
or that he would take his
mantle as the Messiah in that conflict.
But the Scripture is not that kind.
The Scripture does not
have a mixed voice on Judas at all.
The Scripture sees Judas as a man who let his greed and his
personal desires lead him to betray the Son of God and deserving of all the
negativity that goes with that.
Yeah, that’s also a struggle,
though, Clint,
because it was also Jesus’ path to walk.
It’s not to say that it had to be that way,
but we couldn’t imagine it not being that way,
even the way that Jesus talks about the whole gospel.
He knows that he’s making his way towards
the cross, and Judas’ sin becomes an occasion for the greatest salvific work of all time.
And
you’re right.
Scripture does not speak with a unified,
positive voice in any sense for Judas, and quite frankly,
history through literature,
through song.
I mean, history dogpiles Judas as
well.
So he certainly has gotten a lot of criticism for that action.
I think maybe the only thing
worth saying is that Jesus seems to have known far ahead of what anyone else knew what Judas was about,
and yet Jesus kept him in that circle.
And I think it speaks to a kind of not just knowledge,
but a kind of humility that Jesus has to submit to really what it means to be human.
Surely the Son of God,
knowing what’s happening,
recognizing this character flaw,
could have easily chosen,
as we saw in the garden,
let this cut past for me.
Jesus could have easily chosen another road
that didn’t involve this betrayal working,
and yet Jesus submitted to it.
And so I think
in this whole meta story of what it means to be God’s people living in this kingdom,
Jesus was willing to let this man’s bad action,
for whatever motivation drove him,
to move Jesus on to this salvific work of grace for the whole world.
It’s unfortunate, though,
that Judas’ sin was the thing that started that process.
Yeah, and ironically, in some ways, that makes Judas’ story perhaps the most accessible
for Christians.
That question that hangs over his narrative,
what would it take
for me to turn my back on or betray Jesus?
And for Judas, it’s money.
Maybe for us, it’s something else.
But there is a humility in reading the Judas’ story in such a way
that we are willing to see reflections of ourself in it.
And I think that’s the way it’s intended.
Really, I think other than the gospel of John,
is this true, Michael?
Other than the story of John,
Judas may be the only other disciple that I can think of that we know the end of the story.
We’re told that he can’t come to terms with what he’s done and he commits suicide,
either hangs himself or jumps off a cliff,
depending which story you read.
But they both say the same
thing that in a difference with the rest of the disciples who are often martyred for preaching or for serving,
he takes his own life,
again, an act of what the scripture might consider
selfishness or thinking only of himself.
And unfortunately, that betrayal and selfishness
will be Judas’ legacy as long as people read the story.
The fact that Jesus’
disciples included a traitor is a significant point that we shouldn’t rush beyond.
When we talked in the sermon a few weeks back about the diversity of the disciples,
we meant that in many senses,
qualitatively, that it’s not just people of varying backgrounds.
You might say that Simon the Zealot brings a maybe antithetical voice to the table as well,
bringing sword when Jesus says that the sword is not the path of the kingdom of God.
But here you have someone who is chiefly about his own advancement,
or if not his own advancement,
a very selfish understanding of Israel’s advancement,
depending upon how you read that.
And so when push comes to shove,
Judas chooses himself.
And I think we can all confess the
reality that we as humans live out of that basic posture.
In fact, as Reformed Christians, we maybe sometimes overemphasize that simple desire,
that inward turning that we have.
But it’s an important part of the gospel because Jesus not only invited him into that circle,
but ostensibly,
the larger voice of scripture would say that Jesus had other choices available
to him, and he didn’t make those choices.
So let that stand as an example,
as a cautionary tale,
and let it also remind us of the grace that is on our call for us,
that we might be like the other disciples who,
not having the gifts for ministry,
not having the charismatic voice,
maybe not even having the education, can still be witnesses to the grace of Jesus Christ.
Yeah, there’s an interesting challenge that lie in that,
Michael. I think we are okay.
We can sort of resonate with
the idea that the story of the disciples includes incompetence.
It includes overconfidence.
It includes ignorance.
It includes bias.
It includes heart-a-heartedness.
And yet,
what Judas forces us to face is that the story of the church,
the story of us as followers of Christ, also includes darkness.
It also includes betrayal,
sinfulness, and harm.
And that is
a guiding word that we should use to always move forward with humility and with great care
in the knowledge that we can do harm,
that we can follow our sinful desires,
even to the darkest
places that damage the witness of Christ among us.
So friends,
there’s some of the disciples’
stories, what we know of them.
Again,
fascinating that we don’t know more.
Michael, maybe one of the
most important things about Jesus is that they were all about these men,
as if they were heroes.
The Scripture instead focuses on their ordinariness in order to show us what Jesus does with them ultimately.
And again, there’s a great lesson in that for us.
It’s both what Jesus does with them,
but it’s also the fact that they were unable to see the thing that they later spoke to in the time
that they lived with him.
And that is absolutely essential to those who now seek to point to Jesus
Christ with our own lives,
confessing that we have not seen him at all.
And that’s on purpose,
is that we see that the very disciples of Jesus,
it wasn’t the act of seeing Jesus that made them
authoritative witnesses.
That’s not a fair statement.
John would say that it is.
But
there’s a sense in which it’s the knowledge of God revealed to them in the resurrection of Christ
that shoots them out kind of like a shotgun into the world, differing voices,
differing strengths,
differing lives and different endings to their stories.
And yet as they’re sent out,
they transform the world.
And that is driven not by something inside them,
but the spirit of Christ living in them.
Yeah, there are no superheroes in the faith.
There are men and women following Jesus
and what God does with those ordinary people through their faith and the gift of his spirit.
And what a wonderful word for all of us who don’t need to aspire to be anything more
than who we are faithful to Jesus Christ.
We thank you for joining us for this conversation.
Hope that you’ve been encouraged, challenged,
and would love to see you again when we
premiere the next podcast that happens every Wednesday,
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And we are glad that you’ve joined us from wherever you are today.
Thanks for your time.
Thanks, everyone.