A church board was interviewing a young man for the position of pastor. One old hard-working Irishman, who was on the board, looked at the young man sternly and asked, “Young man, is God calling you here?
The young minister replied, “Well, I don’t know if God is calling me here. I am here trying to find the will of God and find out if you would like me for your next pastor.”
The board member replied, “Young man, is God calling you here?”
The young minister was somewhat at a loss for words and said again, “Well, I just stopped by to talk with the board and…”
The board member interrupted again and said, “Young man, is God calling you here?”
Finally, the young man screwed up enough courage to say, “Well, I guess God isn’t calling me here. I just stopped by to see whether we could get together.”
The old board member leaned back in his seat and said, “That’s good. The last four ministers we had said that God had called them here, and we had nothing but trouble with all four of them!”
That story reveals a certain bit of truth. It is easy for the words “God has called me to do such and such” to be abused in certain church circles. However, that does not change the fact that God does call us, and discerning God’s calling in life is important.
Today we are going to look at Jesus’ calling of his first disciples. We are going to see whom Jesus calls, to what he calls us, and on what basis he calls us. Let us listen to what Mark has to say in his Gospel, chapter three, and verses thirteen through nineteen. Listen for God’s word to you…
He went up the mountain and called to him those whom he wanted, and they came to him. And he appointed twelve, whom he also named apostles, to be with him, and to be sent out to proclaim the message, and to have authority to cast out demons. So he appointed the twelve: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter); James son of Zebedee and John the brother of James (to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder); and Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.
The first thing we see in this passage is that Jesus calls to him those he wants. Those first disciples were wanted men, and we are wanted people. Jesus wants us to help him fulfill his mission. He could do it without us, but he chooses to use us. Is that not amazing?
I suppose we all can imagine several ways that Jesus could have gotten his message of love out to the entire world more efficiently and quickly. If he had come in the twenty-first century, he could have used the Internet, television, radio, and satellite communication to beam his message around the world in an instant. However, God did not choose to send his Son to earth in the twenty-first century. God chose the first century. Furthermore, he did not choose the capital of the world at that time, Rome. Instead, God chose the backwater of Palestine and the hick town of Nazareth as the home for his Son. Jesus did not start with twelve thousand apostles, though he could have done that since he had so many people coming to hear him. Instead, he chose twelve ordinary men. Yes, the number twelve was certainly symbolic of the twelve tribes of Israel. And the mountains of Israel were the place where revolution was plotted. Jesus was truly doing something revolutionary. In a way, he was starting a new Israel. However, it seems most significant to me that Jesus began his worldwide mission in a way that was small, personal, and relational. He wanted people, not programs. He wanted to communicate his message of love by life touching life, not through a flat image reaching a bunch of couch potatoes around the world.
The bottom line is this: Jesus wanted his first disciples, and he wants you and me. He wants a personal relationship with us, and he wants us to share his love with others in a personal manner as well.
In October 2011, the Associated Press ran a deeply moving story about a name-changing ceremony for girls in Mumbai, India. At birth, the 285 girls had been named Nakusa or Nakushi, which means “Unwanted” in the Hindi language. The name “Unwanted” is widely given to girls across India where families often value sons much more than daughters. As a result, female babies have been aborted or neglected at an alarming rate.
However, the renaming ceremony was an attempt to give the girls a new identity. The article reported, “The 285 girls—wearing their best outfits with barrettes, braids and bows in their hair—lined up to receive certificates with their new names along with small flower bouquets.” Some of the girls chose new names meaning prosperous, beautiful, good, or even “very tough.” One girl who had been named Nakusa by her grandfather, who was disappointed in her birth said, “Now in school, my classmates and friends will be calling me by this new name, and that makes me very happy.”
I believe that if Jesus could give each one of us a name, that name would be something like “Wanted” or “Beloved”. Jesus desires us. He wants to have a relationship with us. He loves us and has a wonderful plan for our lives. All we must do is respond to his calling.
A second thing we see in this passage is that Jesus calls us to be with him. We read that Jesus appointed twelve men, designating them “apostles”. The first job Jesus gave to these men was simply to be with him.
P. T. Forsyth once wrote, “It is possible to be so active in the service of Christ as to forget to love him. Many a man preaches Christ but gets in front of him by the multiplicity of his own works… Christ can do without your works; what he wants is you. Yet if he really has you, he will have all your works.”
That statement from Forsyth is like a quote from C. S. Lewis that I have on a plaque in my office. The plaque says, “God doesn’t want something from us. He simply wants us.”
What an amazing thought! The God of the universe wants you and me, and the first thing he wants us for is simply to be with him.
There is a tension in the Christian life between being and doing. As Christians, we usually tend toward one extreme or the other. Either we are quietist Christians, spending all our time in prayer and Bible reading, worship and communion with Christ, or we are activist Christians, always doing work for Christ, serving the poor, bringing in new members, cleaning the church building, printing the bulletins, but perhaps forgetting to nurture our own relationship with Jesus. We need a balance between the extremes. We need to remember that we cannot really do anything for Jesus unless we spend time with him first, time just being. In John 15:5 Jesus says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” Doing flows out of being.
That leads to a third thing we see in this passage and that is that: Jesus calls us to send us. Jesus called the twelve that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons.
I will grant you: the first apostles were unique. They physically spent time with Jesus. They were eyewitnesses of his life, death, resurrection, and ascension. We can never be apostles in that sense.
However, we can be “sent ones” in a more general sense. That is the meaning of the word “apostle”—a “sent one”. Jesus continues to send people where he wants them to go. He continues to send people to preach, and he gives them power to drive out demons. Wherever we live right now, we can serve as witnesses to the truth and love of Jesus. As St. Francis is purported to have said, “Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.” We can preach the good news of Jesus’ love as much with our lives as with our lips. Wherever we are right now, by the positive power of Jesus Christ, we can be leading people out of the darkness into the light of Jesus’ life, simply by allowing that light to shine through us.
It is interesting to me how this pattern repeats throughout the Gospels. Jesus calls the disciples to himself on a mountain. Then he sends them back down into the valley. He is transfigured before Peter, James, and John on the mountain. He talks there with Moses and Elijah. Then he goes back down with the three disciples into the valley where they encounter the other disciples who have been unable to heal a demon-possessed boy whose father has brought him to them for help. That is the pattern of the Christian life—mountaintop experiences followed by times in the valley where we must encounter the demon-oppressed world and bring to it the hope and healing of Jesus.
The Times-Reporter of New Philadelphia, Ohio, reported in September 1985 about a celebration at a New Orleans municipal pool. The party around the pool was held to celebrate the first summer in memory without a drowning at any New Orleans city pool. In honor of the occasion, two hundred people gathered, including one hundred certified lifeguards.
As the party was breaking up and the four lifeguards on duty began to clear the pool, they found a fully dressed body in the deep end. They tried to revive thirty-one-year-old Jerome Moody, but it was too late. He had drowned surrounded by lifeguards celebrating their successful season.
I wonder: how many people around us are drowning in loneliness, hurt, and doubt, while we, who could help them, do not realize it? Jesus is sending us to rescue those who are drowning, perhaps drowning in different ways—maybe physically, perhaps emotionally, and certainly those who are drowning spiritually.
Finally, we see in this passage that Jesus’ call is not based upon our worldly qualifications. William Barclay says,
Judging them by worldly standards the men Jesus chose had no special qualifications at all. They were not wealthy; they had no special social position; they had no special education—they were not trained theologians; they were not high-ranking churchmen and ecclesiastics; they were twelve ordinary men.
Who were the first people that Jesus called to be with him and to be sent out? There was Simon whom Jesus nicknamed Peter, or as we would say, “Rocky”. Simon was a fisherman. On the eve of Jesus’ death, he denied ever knowing him.
James and John were fishermen too. Jesus nicknamed them “the sons of thunder,” apparently because of their thunderous personalities. James and John tried to reserve seats at the right and left of Jesus in his eternal kingdom. When a Samaritan village did not welcome Jesus, James and John wanted to call down fire from heaven on the inhabitants.
Andrew was Simon’s brother. He was more of a behind-the-scenes kind of man, not a leader.
The Gospel of John tells us that Philip was from Bethsaida. After Jesus first called Philip, Philip went and found his friend Bartholomew, also known as Nathanael. Nathanael initially rejected Jesus because Jesus was from Nazareth, a no-account town.
Matthew, also known as Levi, was a tax collector.
Thomas was a doubter.
Luke calls Simon the Cananaean the “Zealot”. William Barclay explains, “The Zealots were a band of fiery, violent nationalists who were pledged even to murder and assassination to clear their country of the foreign yoke.”
Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus.
As for James, son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, we do not know much, if anything, about them. They are just names to us, names that appear only in these lists of Jesus’ first disciples.
We may be tempted to think that if we had been there at the time Jesus picked his first disciples then we might have suggested some better candidates. However, Jesus may have had a different goal in mind than we often do in launching our worldly ventures. Perhaps Jesus picked these particular people to follow him so that he could show the world that “little is much when God is in it”. With these ordinary people, and often despite them, Jesus turned the world upside down. Jesus continues to do the same thing today with unlikely people like us. Even when we fail, as his first disciples did, Jesus stands ready to forgive and empower us to start afresh.
Jesus wants us. He is calling us to be with him. He has a special purpose for our lives. He has not chosen us because of any worldly qualifications on our part. Though our small lives may not seem like much to us, our little can become much when we place it in the Master’s hands.
What is our response to Jesus’ call?
Søren Kierkegaard, the nineteenth century Danish philosopher, once told a story about a goose who was wounded. The goose landed in a barnyard with some chickens. The goose played with the chickens and ate with them. After a while, the goose thought he was a chicken.
One day, a flock of geese flew over the barnyard, on their way home. They gave a honk up in the sky, and the goose that thought he was a chicken heard it.
Kierkegaard said, “Something stirred within the breast of this goose. Something called him to the skies. He began to flap the wings he hadn’t used, and he rose a few feet into the air. Then he stopped, and he settled back again into the mud of the barnyard. He heard the cry, but he settled for less.”
That story makes me wonder: will we settle for less, or will we respond to the upward call of Christ Jesus? He lived for us to show us what life in flight could really be like. He died to heal our wounds. He rose again to empower us to answer his call. Perhaps it is time for us to flap our wings and fly…
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