P
eter? The choice was obvious. The first thing that struck you about Simon Peter was his six foot, four inch frame. He cast a long shadow. Almost everyone looked up to him — physically. He was a natural leader, decisive, clear, forthright and brutally honest. His fault lay in his impulsiveness. He too often said and did things he regretted. Impulsive, perceptive, and bright! He was all of these. Jesus thought about it for a moment. Peter’s sharp mind was often blunted by his impulsive nature, at the same time his impulsivity was the direct consequence of intelligence. He saw things. Solutions and resolutions often popped into his head and they were so clear to Peter that he was at once done with it, the conclusion inevitable. Sometimes these conclusions were embarrassingly wrong. But Peter was the earthy sort whom Jesus loved. Peter was his first choice. He could find none better. But Peter had a family. What of his dear wife? What of Joanna? Would she understand?
Whom do you want, Father? Who would be your choice? Peter? Yes, Peter. I know Peter. What of others? Jesus considered. His first cousins, the sons of Zebedee and his mother’s sister, Salome, came to mind. He thought of them together, Sons of thunder!, he thought. m>Melodramatic but true. They were a family of means. His uncle Zebedee had owned his own successful business all his adult life. He was a businessman, a fisherman, as had been his father and his father’s father and back several generations. He allowed himself to consider their wealth. They would bring financial support to the group. That is not an issue! Irritated with himself for the thought, It has no bearing on the decision! He dismissed it from his mind. While they lived in different towns, he had known these men and remembered well the occasional adventures they spent together as boys. They were in some respects as close — closer! — than his own brothers. The fishing trade produced iron-tough men. Hauling heavy nets soaked with water and filled with fish built powerful bodies and brutally calloused hands. Songs at sea and shouted commands made for boisterous personalities. They were straightforward men. Opinionated. Often intemperate in their demeanor. Peter, James and John, sons of sail and sea who stink of fish, were no exceptions. Jesus smiled as he thought about it, they were perfect!
My natural brothers, Father, the other sons of my mother and father, should they be included? Why not? If I chose one of them, I would have to choose all. Again, Why not? He considered the issue carefully. As it turned out, none of these were included in this special circle of companions.
The moon hung low in the western sky. A shaded opalescent circle, a dull-orange crescent hanging at its bottom to one side as if anticipating a deposit, a golden, inviting receptacle. To its right several inches, or miles, or light years or however God takes measure of the universe, hung the brightest star of the sky. Jesus gazed at this sight, seeing beyond it into what for most was stellar darkness, but for him stellar Light. There he touched the holy Nucleus. There he connected with the Father’s heart. With the Father then, both far and near, he prayed into the warm surrounding velvet.
Peter’s younger brother, Andrew. Another raw-boned, muscular fisherman. Black tousled hair, dark penetrating eyes, inquisitive, a seeker, an asker of questions. His temples and beard flecked with premature gray. His face bronzed, his shoulders broad, his hair tied back in a ponytail. Active, energetic and very protective of Jesus. He was perhaps a year, maybe two, older than Jesus. Quick to wrestle and make sport with his friends. A bit of a clown who knew when to be serious. Fiercely loyal to his family and his brother, he would fight in a moment anyone who challenged him. He and Peter were alike in this last characteristic. No one would dare face them both. Good men to have with me, Father. Number four: Andrew, brother to Simon Peter.
Philip. Consummate cultivator and harvester of fig groves with his close friend Nathanael-bar Tolmai (Bartholomew). Their fruit both fresh and preserved could be seen on the counters at the marketplace. “Master,” he had once said to Jesus, “I have great respect for John the Baptist. It requires courage to leave one’s family and friends and go off into the wilderness, there to dwell alone.”
“He is not alone,” Jesus had replied.
“I know,” Philip continued, “He communes with the Father. And he preaches and he baptizes. I should like to follow his example someday.” Jesus smiled as he recalled the dialogue. Jesus could not think of Philip without also thinking of his sister, Miriamme. They were inseparable. If any woman could be among them, certainly it would include Miriamme. And perhaps Joseph, Philip’s friend from Arimathea, a town about 15 miles inward from the great sea, near Joppa. The only agrarian to be chosen. Philip had followed Jesus for the past year. Good Philip, thought Jesus, Strong Philip! A man accustomed to bear fruit.
Nathanael (Bartholomew) An Israelite in whom there is no guile. Jesus smiled at the amusing memory. While some preferred to think of Nathanael by his ancestral name, Jesus thought of him as Nathanael, the one to whom I promised to see the Father’s angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man. Two farmers, Philip and Nathanael, friends who were loyal to each other and loyal to me. Do you approve, Father? His heart warmed with satisfaction.
Jesus felt sleep approaching. He was tempted to lie down in the soft grass, build himself a pillow of fallen leaves, placing a cloth over it to keep the insects from crawling into his ears, and sleep. He had chosen six men to be with him. It was not enough. It was not time for sleep. He rose to his feet and walked off into the darkness observing the path closely. Abishag followed closely at his heels.
After a few minutes of striding on the inclining sheep-path, he felt the blood pounding against his temples and his breathing becoming labored. His mind was clearing of cobwebs and drowsiness. Who, Father? Who else shall it be?
Is it not comforting to know how close the Son walks with the Father in making his choices of who shall be with him? Shuttling between them, adjunct to both, the compassionate and all wise Spirit, separate yet the same as both Father and Son. Without Whom no selection could be made. So it was then, so it is millennia since, so shall it ever be. Three wills, one Mind; three Spirits, one Purpose; three Persons, one Symphony.
Matthew. A gift from God! For such is the meaning of his name. If Peter was a captain, a leader, a force to be dealt with, so was this publican. There was however, a wall, an obstacle to overcome where Matthew was concerned. He was hated by almost everyone. The reality that Jesus himself had accepted him is the only reason Peter, John and the others tolerated him, but they did not trust him. How could anyone associated with the Empire of Rome, let alone a Jew who had betrayed his own people for financial compensation, be accepted as an equal among their number? His surname, Levi, was a misnomer. If he is a priest, were a priest, he is a priest of exploitation, a priest of lurid capitalization. But he was not a priest of anything having to do with the Levitical order. He was a swine of a publican. But Jesus had loved him, accepted him and embraced him as a friend. The others must learn to do so as well.
Two captains then. Peter and Matthew. Peter the outspoken, brash fisherman, Matthew the quiet spoken, objective, pragmatic, perhaps even cynical intellectual. They will go in different directions, and Peter will draw the most attention, but Matthew will work his quiet genius for the love of his Master that will impact the world.
Matthew did have one friend among the others, Thomas, called “Didymus,” which called attention to the fact that he was a twin. Thomas and Matthew were not unalike in their personal constitution. They had much in common. The thing that set Thomas apart was his analytical mind. Thomas thought about things. Measured things. Jesus could not recall Thomas ever making a careless remark. He, like the others had grown up in Galilee, but like Matthew, he was not a fisherman. The industry seemed repugnant to Thomas who made no bones about disliking fish. There is a quality of sweetness about Thomas, thought Jesus. He has a tender heart despite his need for pragmatism. Thomas was chosen.
And what of the sons of Cleopas Alphaeus? Jesus considered the sons of his uncle. James, Thaddaeus and Simon the young zealot? Cleopas was brother to Joseph, the only earthly father Jesus had ever known. These men, though brothers, were as different from each other as any three men could possibly be. Jesus was amazed that they had been raised in the same household. They were his step-first cousins.
James was short. It is mentioned only because it was obvious and only because people remarked about it. He was younger than the other James. The result of all this was a certain feistiness and bravado which seemed inappropriate for his size. Because he had been put upon and ridiculed all his life, he had developed a certain toughness. He would not be pushed around or made to feel inferior because he was short. He had dealt with that all his life. Basically, what he lacked in stature, he made up for in arrogance. An arrogance that people did not find unappealing. Perhaps in a short man, such arrogance can be amusing. Incredibly, he actually was something of a bully. Not many withstood him for to do so one invited verbal abuse the like of which one does not hear from ordinary men. Moreover, he was irrepressible. His laugh was hearty and quick, often tinged with sarcasm, yet one did not really feel insulted when James insulted them. Well, maybe a little. He saw through pretense. He was relentlessly practical and would not brook hypocrisy. He is delightful, thought Jesus. James will keep us all near the precipice.
Thaddaeus. Jude. Lebbeus. The man has more names than a robber! Like his two brothers, an acerbic soul. I would hate to meet these boys on a dark lonely road. Sons of Alphaeus. Sons of hell! Thaddaeus was the middle brother and served as a foil between the other two. The brothers argued incessantly with unseemly pouts and tirades from James. Usually, it concerned Simon’s political ambitions. Thaddaeus was no less argumentative, no less a participant in the adolescent fights. But then, the Alphaeus boys had been doing this all their lives. Thaddaeus seemed the rallying point, the glue that kept the other two from killing each other. Yet, they would instantly give their lives for the other. Choose one of them, choose them all!
Simon, the youngest and most radical, had joined the Zealots, that rag-tag army of not so underground resistance against the Roman oppression. He was always spouting off at the mouth. He always had something to say -- usually extreme and not well thought through. He held no love for the Romans, or for anyone who wanted to try to make the best of a bad situation. He could think only of war. “If this isn’t a war,” he would opine, “then we are spineless worms.” His eyebrows furrowed, his face contorted into manufactured rage. He was bright enough to know that there was little he and his friends could do against so powerful an army, but that did not stop their pseudo-guerilla tactics, nor stop their vituperative rhetoric. James, the eldest of the brothers, just shook his head and rolled his eyes at his brother’s recklessness. He often tried to counsel him to be less intemperate, but to no avail. Simon was known to fraternize with some scurrilous people, Barabbas the murderer among them. How could the Son of God use such an extremist? How could men like Matthew, the publican and Roman sympathizer and Simon the Zealot ever comprehend one another? How could they ever get along? It was not a good mix. They held in common only their devotion to Jesus -- and for quite different reasons. Only their devotion to Jesus? It was this singular devotion that held them all together, that bonded them, that made them feel nothing else mattered. I need his passion, his obsession, thought Jesus. I need such a man as Simon!
It occurred to Jesus that everyone he had chosen thus far came from Galilee. It did not seem necessary for him to select anyone from elsewhere. He himself grew up in Galilee. Why look elsewhere? Yet, he felt within himself that he had yet a choice to make. Among the faces that sifted through his mind was that of the young man from Matthew’s tax office. Jesus searched his mind for a name, . . . Judas! Did not he say that he came from a town called, ah . . . Kerioth? Judas came from Ish-Kerioth, a small town in Judea. Judas. Iscariot. The man from Kerioth!
Like Matthew, Judas had been with those that followed Jesus since that day in the Office of Tribute. Interesting how a man from Judea has followed along with our Galileans, he thought. He remembered how this young man had come to him as they rested from a day’s journey and said to him, “Teacher, I know you have not invited me to follow you as you have the others, but will you object if I stay? I wish to learn.” Jesus noticed that while his lips smiled, his eyes did not. “I believe in you and what you are trying to accomplish.” An accountant, Jesus remembered. It would be advantageous to have such a man among us. Abishag whined.
After having preached for a year in the region of Galilee, many people followed him and after his all-night season of prayer and a few hours toward morning for sleep, he appointed these twelve -- designating them apostles — that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and he gave them authority over the forces of evil.
