My heart was heavy for a number of different reasons as I drove to the funeral of a dear friend. I had put on Handel’s Messiah as I often do when I need comfort. For me, nothing else quite encapsulates the power and hope of the gospel story, from beginning to glorious end, as that masterpiece does.
A part of my sadness that day was the confusion I felt about the terrible division within Christianity over strong opposing convictions in the political arena. How could people I love, people who solidly agree with me on the central tenet of the gospel--that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone—position themselves at the opposite end of the political spectrum from where I was? I felt near despair as I pondered this rift. It, also, felt like a kind of death.
As the miles passed and the music played, my thoughts turned to Jesus and his disciples. Jesus carefully selected those who would be his closest followers. They came from all walks of life and all points of view, but the most striking contrast, to me, was between Matthew and Simon.
Matthew himself seemed to highlight that difference in his list of apostles:
“The names of the twelve apostles are these: first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.” (Matthew 10:2-4)
Aside from Judas, who was described starkly as the one “who betrayed him", all the other disciples were described simply by a family relationship, like brother or son; but, Matthew chose to identify himself as a tax collector and Simon as a Zealot. As far as politics go, you could not get much farther apart than a tax collector and a zealot.
Tax collectors, under Roman occupation, were typically Jews who were colluding with the Roman oppressors. They were hated and viewed as traitors by their own people because they grew rich by forcing their fellow Jews to pay more than the already exorbitant taxes owed to Rome and then they kept the excess for themselves.
If most Jews hated the tax collectors, the zealots despised them. The zealots were a Jewish political movement who sought to incite the people of Judea to rebel against the Romans and expel them from their land by force. Tax collectors were collaborators with the enemy, so they were especially heinous in the eyes of the zealots.
So, why would Jesus choose one of each?
The stock answer might be, to show that no matter who you were before Jesus found you, his love has the power to transform you.
I have another take. Maybe the whole point is that, while we may see things completely differently, we all badly need Jesus, and he wants us all.
It’s not as if the minute Jesus picked out his group they immediately joined hands, sang Kumbaya and began to live happily ever after.
The primary picture we get of the disciples is of them asking Jesus dumb questions, missing the point of almost everything he said and fighting with each other over who was going to be the greatest in the earthly kingdom that he had no intention of establishing.
All of their time spent with him, seemingly, barely did anything to change them for the better. At his death, they all ran away and hid.
After his resurrection, they spent forty days with Jesus where he presumably explained some things to them, but when they all stood on the Mount of Olives together, the very last question they asked him was:
“Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6)
They still didn’t have a clue!
“He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.” (Acts 1:7-9)
After his ascension, they stayed in Jerusalem, as he had instructed them, and the Holy Spirit did, indeed, come upon them. We might think that, from then on, the ‘happily ever after' stage had finally arrived.
We’d be wrong. Peter had to be confronted because he was discriminating against the new gentile Christians whenever the Jerusalem representatives were in town.
Paul and Barnabas split up because Paul didn’t like Barnabas's nephew, Mark.
People became groupies, saying ‘I’m for Paul’, or ‘I’m for Apollos’.
The point I’m making is, there was never that shining moment when every Christian was in total, happy agreement. And maybe that’s okay.
I know what you’re probably thinking, because it’s what I was thinking as I was driving pensively down the road. “But what about love? What about how people are supposed to know that we’re Jesus' disciples by the way we love one another?”
So, here’s the thing. For the most part, the disciples quickly stopped hanging out together, and went off to find the ones with whom they were meant to be.
Maybe Matthew spent his time with a lot of former or even current tax collectors. Or maybe he talked to people who struggled with a need to feel powerful or wrestled with greed. Or maybe he talked to the poor who had been robbed by others like himself. Regardless of who his group was, his mission wasn’t so much to tell them how he had been changed and how they could change too, as it was to communicate that he understood the helplessness and the self-loathing they felt and to reveal to them the secret that would give them hope. His task was to use whatever common ground they shared to give them the only true answer, which is Christ.
Maybe Simon talked mainly to his fellow zealots, or, talked to those who lived in fear of the oppressors. Maybe he talked to those who thought the answer to their safety lay in their weapons. Or maybe he traveled far and wide, standing with the oppressed against the oppressor. His mission wasn’t really to tell people to stop caring about and fighting for justice and freedom, his task was to relate to them and share Christ, the one who came to truly set the captives free, perhaps even as they stood together, shoulder to shoulder.
Maybe the disciples didn’t actually have to like each other and see eye to eye on everything. Their differences might have been grating and irritating to each other, but, perhaps, that was inevitable and even intentional.
Maybe the plan was just for them to go out and find their “people” so that all of the different people out in the world would have the joy of discovering that Christ was even for them, and that they weren’t so alone after all.
Perhaps, if we believed that differences were okay, we could let go of being “right" and love each other despite, or even because of, them.
“What if that’s the kind of love,” I thought, “the one that accepts differences, even big ones, that lets the world know we belong to Christ?”
And the choruses swelled with hope. Hallelujah. Worthy is the Lamb. Amen.
