Where Everybody's Crazy

Argh, so much to do and so little time. I have of course another sermon this weekend to write, and this time - the third Sunday - in Japanese. This takes twice to three times as long as doing a sermon in English. But fear not, I still do do the same kind of preparation for those sermons; here's part of my preparation for this week's:

Luke lists these twelve disciples. The first six evidently formed a pre-existing community, or at least set of overlapping communities, while none of the latter six seem to have any connection to the others.

There are some possible connections: Mark says that Matthew the Levite was the son of Alphaeus and Luke says that James was also son of Alphaeus. So they might have been brothers, but there's no tradition for that. It's possible that Mark got confused. (Well, not if he was inspired by the Spirit but we can blame it on a mistaken harmonization by a scribe, which has the same effect.) But on the whole the second set of disciples are fairly independent.

Indeed some of the connections between them are ironic: Matthew the Levite and Simon the Zealot would not ordinarily have been the best of friends, and that style of relationship was also prefigured in the relationship between Jesus and Judas from Keriot. Remembering that Jesus deliberately chose this set of people, I'm taking it to mean that he wishes his kingdom to be composed of those who ordinarily would not necessarily get along, but what a testimony it becomes when they do get along in his name. These days it's kind of rare, but it really is a testimony when it does happen.

So Jesus uses both "friendship evangelism" - utilising existing relationship networks - and "cold" evangelism, calling people like Matthew off the street. Let us not say that one way is better than the other.

I'm also looking at the way people change as a result of meeting Jesus. John was an aggressive and feisty fisherman and yet he dedicated the last few years of his life as bishop of Ephesus to telling Christians that they should love each other. Matthew was greedy and he became generous. Peter was a racist (or at least an elitist) when he met Jesus, and - here's the interesting bit - stayed a racist long after Pentecost until God finally dealt with that bit of his personality. And he still had a fight with Paul about it. Perhaps, just perhaps, the apostles were human after all.

Thomas - well, people get the wrong idea about Thomas. Yes, he was not inclined to believe people who said that someone had raised from the dead. I think that's a fairly sensible position to take, given that people don't often come back from the dead. Thomas always wanted a bit more proof. But Jesus knew that Thomas needed that proof, and he gave it to him, and when Thomas got it, he called Jesus his God, giving the rest of us a handy proof-text against Jehovah's Witnesses. And while everyone else was messing around heading west around the Mediterranean, he thought, well, someone's got to take this good news east, and off he went and founded churches in Iran and India.

I don't know yet how the sermon's going to finish and tie all this together, which is why I equally don't know how this blog post is going to finish and tie all this together. But at least with a blog post I can say: Well, that's as far as I've got with my thinking. Can't really do that with a sermon. Still, the blog post has a pretty picture and the sermon won't, so that makes us even.