Twelve Ordinary Men

I'm enjoying taking a long look at Jesus as i aim to preach through Mark's Gospel verse by verse with my teen group. We started slowly, but as Mark picks up the pace, so have we. Last week we were in Mark 3:7-35 and i was struck by how Mark weaves his narratives around his themes.

Mark's Gospel is written to answer Jesus' question to Peter in chapter 8. 'Who do you say I am?' Mark's Gospel drives towards the cross in a car marked 'kingdom,' and 'eucatastrophe.' How does Mark work out those themes in a narration as apparently straight forward as the calling of the twelve Apostles?

First of all, why twelve? John Macarthur sees this as judgement on Israel. The twelve tribes have been replaced by twelve men. As Jesus has taken refuge outside of the city because of the plot to kill Him, and expanded His ministry twelve-fold, so he tells Israel that He's moving on and starting again. It's these twelve, minus Judas, plus Mattias who have their names in precious stone around the Heavenly city. These men who have been directly appointed by God incarnate to carry on His mission. Not the Pharisees, not even Jesus' family, but these twelve men. The old has gone, the new has come. We new new wine, here are our new skins.

Jesus' family appears in Mark 3 as well. They come to take Him home in verse 21, thinking that He was out of His mind. Which is a fair assumption, given what He was doing. And then again in verse 31, asking for His attention to be on them. A perfectly legitimate demand in that culture. What is Jesus response? He tells His listeners that a new thing is happening, that the way into the Kingdom of God is now through faith and nothing else.

Who were these twelve men? Some of them we know fairly well. Simon Peter, James, John, Matthew and of course Judas. Some vanish from the pages of Scripture as soon as we hear their names. But this is a close group, this is a group where your name may not be your name. There's Simon the rock, James the short guy, the sons of thunder, Simon the zealot, who might have killed Matthew if they'd met under other circumstances. There's Thomas, the twin who doubted, there's Nathanael Bartholomew, and Thaddeus, which apparently means 'mamas boy.' And as always, as a constant and terrible reminder, is Judas.

Not noblemen, fishermen, farmers, people from the fringes of society. Not the intellectual elite, but Galileans. And Jesus says, 'such shall my Kingdom be.' Not for the people you might expect, but for those i call. Not for those who look good on the outside but for those who are changed on the inside. Out with the old, and in with the new.

It's easy to think that Jesus turned the world upside down, but He actually turned it the right way up. Mark uses something as potentially mundane as the calling of the Apostles to help us see this.