The Many Struggles of Meeting the 12 Disciples

So here’s the basic idea of what we’re going to do together.
Next time that we gather,
we’re going to actually jump into the 12 disciples.
We’re going to be looking at the life of those who Jesus called and who He equipped to be His apostles.
And we’re going to be going through a messy combination of what we have in the Scriptures,
which I’m sure you’re aware is not a lot for most of the disciples.
But we’re going to then also turn to what we know historically,
the things that is recorded about the 12 disciples.
But you might be surprised to know that’s also not a lot.
So then we’ll also be turning to some of church tradition,
which if you’ve done any reading of church tradition,
it blends very quickly between the very solid historically founded facts to things that may sound to us,
fantasiacal, things that may be even beyond hyperbole that we may struggle to see as reality.
And so the line that we’re going to try to do is to walk somewhere in the middle of all of that,
somewhere in what the Scriptures tell us,
something about what history tells us as it’s recorded,
and then something as to what church tradition has left us about these men and the impact that they had.
So we’re going to jump into them individually starting next week and you’ll see how that gets played out.
Today,
I wanted to spend with you setting some context as to how the disciples have been recorded for us,
their lives and their history,
and to sort of explain to you why in the course of the coming weeks,
I’m going to say so often,
we don’t know for certain,
but fill in the blank.
And I want to sort of share with you full disclosure,
a little bit of the picture of how we get to where we’re at.
So
the first thing I want to share with you is the oddity of the 12 disciples.
If you were to construct
a new religious movement,
right, if you were thinking to yourself,
I want to have an effective religious movement that I want to sort of take over.
And, you know, even within our lifetimes,
we’ve had people sort of spin up their own religious movements.
The thing that I think most of us would pick would be really effective leadership,
right?
And you would want to pick people in your closest circle who were gifted and capable,
who you could trust to be your spokespeople.
And ideally,
you would want them to be charismatic enough to grab people’s attention,
but not so charismatic as to take the founders’
attention, right?
What’s unique about the 12 disciples are,
as scripture tells it,
they were mostly not qualified,
quite frankly,
right?
When Jesus calls them,
he calls fishermen.
He says, I’m going to teach you to be fishers of men,
which to a fisherman makes no sense,
right?
And it really only makes sense if you look at Christian history.
We’ll talk a little bit more about how we’ve come to understand that that was actually somewhat of a purposeful,
literal statement as we see the 12 disciples going out.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
So this idea that you would want to pick charismatic individuals, Jesus doesn’t,
then you would think you would want people who are particularly administratively gifted.
You have your teacher,
your charismatic person who calls people to himself.
Then you need people who are going to handle all of the Moses-isms we just had in worship,
right?
All of the dealing with the people.
Well, the struggle there is the disciples also didn’t seem to be particularly gifted at that.
In fact, if you read the book of Acts,
we see very little of the 12 disciples,
as Jesus called, except for we get quite a bit of reference to Peter.
Because it seems that Peter and Paul had an ongoing debate between the two of them of how much the Gentiles should be allowed into the Christian faith.
You might know that the 12 disciples,
they actually stayed in Jerusalem almost up until the point at which no one was in Jerusalem,
because in 70 AD you may remember that Rome completely destroyed the temple.
And we’ll talk a little bit in a few minutes about why that’s the case.
But regardless,
the 12 disciples, they stayed in Jerusalem as long as humanly possible,
cultivating the Jewish side of the faith.
And Peter and Paul kept getting into debate over to what extent the church should allocate resources to the Gentile mission,
how much should be spent to the Jewish mission.
And so we know a little bit about Peter,
but beyond that, we don’t know a lot about the 12 disciples as told in Scripture itself.
So here’s the point.
What’s striking is,
for all of the influence that comes with being chosen by Jesus himself to be an apostle,
there were no formal histories written about the 12 disciples until about the year 200 AD.
So what that says to us is these men chosen by Jesus himself were humble enough to never make it about themselves in their own lifetime.
In fact, they were out doing this work,
and no one in their lifetime thought we should take a record of these individuals,
at least as we have that survived history.
And there’s something very striking and different about that.
The fact that these men were humble and willing to serve and didn’t make it about themselves sticks out historically.
We move on to talk a little bit about the challenge of secular history.
So you might know that it’s not until 320
that the Roman Empire essentially allocates Christianity for its own use.
And previous to that time,
Christianity was this unknown religious group that operated the fringes of mostly Jewish crossover Gentile communities.
So what that means is the history makers who survive,
you know that history is recorded by the people who win.
And so the people who won in the ancient world,
100, 200, 300 AD,
were Roman historians.
They were the people writing on behalf of Caesar.
And then later you have Nero,
you have all these Roman emperors.
So they didn’t see Christianity largely as something worth recording.
Josephus, as you may have heard that name,
he did do a little bit of writing about the early church,
but not much.
He only mentions James’s death.
And then here’s some names for you if you want to do some research.
Haggisippus and Eusebius named the 12 disciples.
Those were Roman historians.
But other than that,
Roman records don’t include records of the early church.
So there’s another challenge to this conversation where you turn for your sources.
What we’re going to eventually turn to when we come to the 12 disciples next week is a lot of the works written 300 and beyond.
And so because of that,
there’s some looseness to it.
Another part of the challenge in this conversation is something that we may take for granted.
Let me illustrate it this way.
I was once on an online message board and there were people from Europe
insulting the American public transit system.
I’m talking about how horrible it is that you folks all need cars,
right?
And they were talking about how,
you know, why don’t you just have trains and buses like everyone else in the world?
And someone went on to the comments and said,
do you have any idea how big the United States is?
And the people were,
I don’t know what you’re saying.
They said,
you realize that you couldn’t get across Texas and you would be across multiple European countries,
right?
And that’s always struck me.
The challenge of size and what we take in the United States now for granted,
which wasn’t for granted for a long time,
is our interstate system,
right?
You hop on the interstate and the kind of accessibility that gives you to the rest of the country, right?
We might take that for granted,
but the reality is it would be substantially more challenging to move people and product to conduct trade if those roads weren’t well maintained and didn’t exist,
right?
So the same in the ancient world.
I’m sure you all have heard of the Roman roads.
Some of those, by the way, are still used today.
And the Roman road in what is called the Pax Romana,
the Roman peace,
was established because of Rome’s might.
And this may strike us as strange,
but to the ancient world,
there had never been a season of such extended peace
as the season that was inaugurated by the Roman military.
It’s interesting how that contrast lives.
You think military,
you don’t think peace,
right?
But Rome was so effective in conquering the places where it went and in subduing those places that ultimately they created an unintended moment of cultural exchange.
They built roads which enabled chiefly military transport.
They could move their troops quickly if they needed to resource a place.
But then it later had the cross benefit of providing economic
transfer and commerce,
which brought with it cultural exchange.
So the reason that this is relevant is the 12 disciples,
as I told you,
they stayed in Jerusalem really as long as they possibly could.
And I told you that the temple was destroyed.
That’s because,
turns out,
Judea and the entire region of Israel stuck out in the Roman Empire.
For an empire that was known for its peace and stability,
the Israelite region,
specifically around Jerusalem,
was known to be a hotbed of violence and rioting.
So you remember the story of Jesus and coming in on the Passover and you have that whole week, right?
I’m sure at some point you’ve heard about how the military presence in Jerusalem during Passover would substantially increase.
And I promise that this is relevant.
I’m getting somewhere with this.
But the way that Rome worked was they would conquer a people and then they would,
instead of getting rid of the leadership,
if they thought that they could get the leadership of those people on their side,
they would essentially have them pay substantial taxes to Rome and then leverage their resource,
their connection to their people in their region.
That’s what happened with the name Herod.
Herod.
So the Herodian family was the royal leading family in the area when Rome conquered.
So they did what they always did.
They went.
They said, “Will you swear an oath to the Roman Empire?”
And if they said yes,
then they would pay substantial taxes to keep the privilege of ruling.
And they had to make the promise that they would keep peace in their region.
And unfortunately,
the Herodian family was unable to do so there because,
as you know in Jesus’ story,
they didn’t just have to contend with the zealots or the people who had political bones with the Roman Empire.
They had to deal with the religious community.
They had to deal with the people in the temple,
the religious aristocracy who occupied a high place in the society of Judea,
Samaria, that whole region.
So the point that I’m trying to make here is that what ends up happening is Rome has to have an increased presence in the area to put down the rebellions that Herod couldn’t.
And ultimately, they said,
“We’re sick of this.” So the year 70 AD,
they completely raised the temple.
They said, “You want to put up a fight?
We’re going to get rid of the fight.” And they successfully did so.
They completely destroyed the temple.
In fact, if you went to Israel today,
you might know of the Wailing Wall,
which is thought to be the only remaining part of the temple.
That part of that temple and the wall that is remaining there was destroyed with Roman soldiers’ hands.
So when that happens,
and the point I needed to get to was you have largely this Pax Romata,
this peace across the empire,
and you have a road system that had never existed to that extent in the history of the world.
So what happens?
The 12 disciples are launched out.
They’re flung out from the city.
The center of Jewish life is destroyed.
So they then take to those roads and utilizing that peace,
essentially become evangelists to every known part of the world at that time.
And I want to write down so I got this right for you.
The 12 disciples are believed in their own lifetime to have made it as far to the northwest to the Gauls in Great Britain.
They’re thought to have made it to Alexandria and Carpage,
which would be the north side of Africa.
They’re then thought to have made it to Scythia in Armenia,
which would now be the northern part of what we would have called the Soviet Union.
And then there are also recorded it’s recorded believe that they made it all the way to Persia and India to the east.
So that launching was enabled uniquely by by the empire that snuffed out the temple.
Essentially,
the same thing that destroyed Jerusalem made possible the kind of evangelistic effort that they took after that moment,
which is one of those things I love about history,
right?
It’s that crossover between how one thing is bad and another thing is good and that resonates with us.
But what is difficult about recording their journeys then is they went to people and to churches which are off the map,
right?
And so we’re going to talk about the disciples who go to India and go to Great Britain.
And there are stories about snakes and animals being charmed and about languages being bridged.
And there’s things that to us in a modern 21st century historical context are going to find fantastical.
But you have to know that they’re going to cultures that literally had just been discovered by Rome within 100 or 200 years,
right?
So they’re engaging with the very edges of their world.
And you can imagine the things you’ve heard about Christopher Columbus and discovering them, right?
The stories that come back are mixed with truth and things that probably are salted a little bit.
And that’s what we have as well with the 12 disciples.
So that is another complicating factor.
There’s more.
The first real, I’m going to say sustained historical attempt to uncover the life of the 12 disciples was done in the year 330 AD.
I told you 320 was significant.
Does anyone know who made the year 320 significant?
Yes, Emperor Constantine.
So he had a vision, right?
Famously.
And he was told in that vision to put a cross ahead of his armies and to march.
He was successful.
And so he made it a formal proclamation that the Roman Empire would,
from that point on, be Christian,
which institutes a whole series of social,
religious, political changes in the country,
which I will not bore you with.
You’re welcome.
But that said,
he took that very, very seriously.
So in the year 330 AD,
he set up out on the journey to build his tomb,
as any world-changing leader might want to do,
right?
The pharaohs build the pyramids and the valley,
the kings, all this kind of stuff.
Does anyone know what Constantine,
you knew Constantine.
How far can we go?
Does anyone know what Constantine built to be his final resting place?
I would tell the high school,
try to draw the hint from the conversation.
It is officially called the Church of the 12 Apostles.
So this is his thinking, right?
I’ve converted to the faith.
We’re a Christian nation.
What would be better than being buried in between the 12 disciples?
So he builds this mega church.
In fact, it’s not done at his death.
His son actually completes the building.
And he sets out historians.
And at his day,
they wouldn’t be called archaeologists,
right?
But people who he charged with the task of recovering the remains of all 12 apostles.
And so he sends them out,
and they scour the world looking for these individuals.
That is the first formal,
governmentally-funded research project to find the 12 apostles.
You might be surprised to learn that they were not successful in the slightest.
So they came back with three bodies.
Three bodies were ultimately carried to the Church of the 12 Apostles.
That was Andrew,
Luke, and Timothy,
only one of which was actually a disciple,
right?
Because you know that Luke and Timothy all were apostles on the other side.
They didn’t see Jesus.
Luke recorded his gospel from eyewitness testimony.
And you know Timothy,
from his letter and his work with Paul,
he was a young man who was called up into ministry.
So the only apostle,
the only 12th disciple that they were able to find was Andrew.
The rest were spread to,
by that time already, history.
So this is also a complicating factor.
While that research was done,
it in its own time,
lended no particular outcome
of finding where these individuals were buried.
So that only makes it more difficult.
Then,
how are we doing?
Okay, we got a couple minutes.
I’ll share one more.
So if they didn’t start spreading until 70 AD,
these guys were like 100 years old.
Yeah, so they were older.
You know, the first disciple to die was James,
and he was considered to be the living testimony of a martyr,
which in the language means witness, right?
The rest, yes,
lived to old age.
And there’s anecdotal reasoning.
I’ll flush this out when we get more to the class,
because I need to do some more research on this as well.
But I believe it’s true that John is thought to be the oldest surviving disciple
because of his age on Patmos and Revelation and that kind of thing.
But yeah,
no,
the disciples,
we know of the Roman persecution.
What we tend to not know is that it was hyper-localized
until it went farther into the second century.
That actually it took quite a while before Rome,
and really it was Nero who,
if you know your Roman history,
was a pretty unhinged individual.
He felt threatened by the witnessing community in Rome,
and that became for him the impetus to start
what became a far more coordinated persecution of Christians.
But before that,
the persecution of Christians tended to be done
in a very localized area by people whose power and economy were affected by the church.
And if you want to sort of encounter that in the Bible,
go to Acts and the story of when Paul,
and I believe Silas was with him, were in Ephesus,
if you remember.
The Ephesian community arrested them not on charges of religious heresy,
but they were arrested because they were adversely affecting the idolatry market in the city.
And so the church would become persecuted in situations where a person converted.
And one of the practices of the day was that if you were in an industry,
say you were a meat salesman,
that trade would have an idol.
And to become part of the trade,
you would have to give allegiance to the idol.
And so when Christians would convert,
it would be a problem,
because if they were in their family business and they no longer swore allegiance to the idol,
their family could no longer operate in the industry.
So it’s an indirect persecution.
Yes, they chose it, but they would lose their business, because of it.
And that would then spin out in local cultures and communities.
So did I answer that?
I just said they were old.
They were old.
That’s what you said.
That’s fair.
Okay, last thing probably that we have time for here.
This is tough for Protestants,
so I’m going to do my very best to make sense of this.
But we have to account for the early church’s fascination with relics
and with praying to the saints.
It is an ancient tradition of the church,
not one that Presbyterians share.
So we might as well be talking about something completely foreign to us.
But if we don’t understand it,
we’re going to struggle to understand the conversation
of the historicity of the 12 disciples.
Because though
they were unable to find the bodies of the 12 disciples to put
inside the church of the 12 apostles,
there were hundreds and thousands and thousands
of items that were selected and chosen as being relics of these disciples.
That was everything from Jesus’ cloak to the wood from his cross,
to the wood of the cross that the disciples were crucified on,
to a stone.
Pretty much everything you can imagine that could be associated with one of the disciples
would be called a relic,
would be taken to a church,
and would be venerated.
And the best I can describe this to you is that in the church’s theology,
they were not worshipping the object.
They considered it a physical touchpoint to the
eternal Savior.
They thought of it as a mediator in between Jesus,
who they would have affirmed as Savior.
This is the early churches sort of wrestling with this.
And they thought that this object became for the common person who, remember,
couldn’t read.
This is significance, not until the Reformation that the church really emphasizes the laity
being educated in the scriptures in church theology.
So the idea was,
here’s a thing that the common person could hold on to that would connect them
to the reality of the faith,
and that would become for them sort of a window into the deeper true
faith.
With that mentality,
there became a market for these relics.
And with a market comes salesmanship,
and with salesmanship comes blurred lines.
Right?
So,
is it true that this thing came from this disciple?
Is it true that this thing represents this thing that this disciple did or taught?
These are questions we’re going to have to reckon with.
Because if you go to Europe today,
there are many churches that still have their relic.
There are churches who today preserve the story of that disciple.
And
the particular guide who’s helping me with this class,
his name is William McBurney.
He spent a better part of 30 years touring
Europe,
going to these congregations,
trying to pair
historical writings with their stories,
with what scripture tells us.
He was trying to do some of this work,
and he just confesses throughout his own writing,
and therefore I think it’s fair I share with you,
that at some point there will be
interpretation as to whether this is true or whether it’s not.
And we can look at that,
I think, one of two ways,
by way of conclusion.
Either you’ll be disappointed because you just came to a class where the person said,
“If you come back,
who knows what I’m telling you if it’s true or not?” Right?
That’s one perspective.
The other is that actually life is full of those things that live on the boundary.
That faith is full of those moments in which we live,
not knowing exactly where the line is.
And it all comes down to faith in the one who these 12 disciples spent their entire life proclaiming.
And I think it’s their humility that is maybe the thing that I see over this entire conversation.
Because there’s nothing in our modern world more
prescient or pressing than our desire to live forever.
I don’t know if you’ve thought of this,
but the idea of Twitter
is that all of the tweets get stored in the National Archives.
Have you heard this?
It’s actually not factually true.
But as one of the allures to Twitter was this idea,
if you go say your words there,
then they’ll be preserved forever.
Of course, we know that from history.
How many leaders have bus and sarcophagi
and ways of making
themselves known in history, right?
But the modern dream is can we have our name remembered forever?
And these 12 men did
not live their lives to be remembered forever.
They lived their lives in
such a way that they truly succeeded at making Jesus
Christ known that these 12 highly unprepared
and not charismatic, as we’re told in the book of Acts,
men became a launching pad for a movement
that each and every person in this room finds lineage in,
which is unbelievable.
So either
this is a story about fantasies and fairy tales,
and it’s not worth your time.
Or it’s a story about
people who lived so purposefully that they succeeded in making Jesus Christ known,
even amidst our human desire to lift up the followers and not the leader.
I’ll let you choose.
Let’s pray.
I’ll let you go.
God, thank you for the time that we spend.
Bless us as we seek
to know those who knew you best.
May in our search for them,
may we find something about what it means
for us to be your disciples,
that we might share the very good news that they shared so freely
with those around them.
We pray that you might move us this day,
that we might be your disciples
everywhere that we go,
far outside this place we pray in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.