Minions By The Bunch Series

While they were Special Minions, They Were Ordinary Minions

So, who were these “Apostles” and what were they like? Well let’s start by saying they were people, they weren’t statues or stained glass windows they were people. Living breathing people with all of the faults and foibles, passions and vision that make us people.

Too often we elevate the apostles up on a pedestal and point to them and say, “Well I could never be like them.” But they reality is that we are just like them and they were just like us.

You don’t have to dig very far before you discover that Jesus wasn’t recruiting from Ivy League universities or prestigious firms and institutions.

He found Peter and his brother Andrew along with John and his brother James on the beach. They were all fisherman. I’m kind of glad he still calls fishermen.

Matthew was a tax collector and Jesus found him in the tax booth. We talked a little bit about tax collectors last Sunday.

2000 years ago tax collectors weren’t anyone’s favorite people, I don’t even think their mother’s liked them. If you do a search of tax collectors in the New Testament you find them mentioned with thieves and prostitutes, drunkards and sinners.

And it wasn’t just because they collected the taxes, although to be fair that was a good part of it, it was who they collected the taxes for. The tax collectors worked for the Romans, the occupiers and so they were seen as collaborators and traitors by their countrymen.

On the other end of the spectrum was a man named Simon, and whenever he is mentioned it says in brackets (the Zealot) which meant he was on the far right on the political scale. The zealots were nationalists and in reality, they were probably terrorists. Depending on which side you were looking at them from.

You would be hard pressed to have a zealot in the same room as a tax collector without a fist fight breaking out. But from the very beginning Jesus insisted that the most diverse people should be able to get along.

I’m pretty sure that Matthew and Simon never came to a place that their political views were in agreement, but that’s the great thing. We don’t have to agree about politics or hockey or what type of music we enjoy or the food we like. But we have to agree that Jesus is Lord.

And then there was Nathanial who was a little bit of a racist. And you’re thinking “No, one of the apostles could never be guilty of something so base.”

Really? Let’s pick up the story in the book of John.

Andrew has introduced Philip to Jesus and now Philip goes to look for Nathanael and when he finds him he tells him told him in, John 1:45. . . “We have found the very person Moses and the prophets wrote about! His name is Jesus, the son of Joseph from Nazareth.”

And I love the response that Philips gets from his friend: John 1:46 “Nazareth!” exclaimed Nathanael. “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”

Well maybe he wasn’t a racist, but he was a cityist.

If’n I was Jesus, and I’m not but If’n I was not sure that would have endeared Nathanael to me. I’m from Saint John NB, or at least that’s where I call home and if someone asked, and they probably have “Can anything good come from Saint John?” I’d take it personal, even if there is a certain amount of truth to the statement.