"Now during those days [Jesus] went out to the mountain to pray; and he spent the night in prayer to God. And when day came, he called his disciples and chose twelve of them, whom he also named apostles: Simon, whom he named Peter, and his brother Andrew, and James, and John, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James son of Alphaeus, and Simon, who was called the Zealot, and Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor." [Luke 6:12-16]
Jesus' chosen inner circle of apprentices--the ones we call today the "twelve apostles" and sometimes name churches after--was a surprisingly broad mix of people. And given that Jesus didn't merely just have a random drawing to accept the first twelve ticket-holders or names drawn out of a hat, that's saying something. Jesus chose these people from among the larger cloud of followers who were interested in what Jesus had to say. And so it is worth considering what it means that among the dozen disciples Jesus deliberately picked, Jesus gathered people from opposite ends of the social and political spectrum--and offered them an alternative to both.
Sure, you know the names and call stories of Simon Peter, and his fellow fishermen Andrew, James, and John. You know the great catch of fish and the drama at the shore where Jesus says, "Follow me, and I'll make you fish for people." We know that Philip gets a few speaking lines and Thomas gets least gets fifteen minutes of fame at Easter-time for his need to touch Jesus' wounds in order to believe the resurrection. But two lesser-known names are worth thinking about for a moment today.
Matthew, for one, is almost certainly the same man remembered as the tax collector, also known as Levi in some of the gospel stories. And while tax collectors are never the most popular professionals in any society, in Jesus' time and place, they were especially vilified for selling out to the oppressive Roman Empire. Matthew the tax collector isn't just working to fund the local roads and bridges. The money you paid to Matthew wasn't to fund your local library or school district--these were taxes that the Empire extracted from conquered subjects in order to fuel the Roman war machine and enrich Caesar. If you collaborated with Rome as a tax collector, you were seen as a traitor to your own people, bilking them out of their meager subsistence and redirecting the money to the same armies that were harassing your neighbors, abusing your relatives, and beating up or crucifying whoever they thought might be troublemakers. Of course nobody else wants to associate with Matthew or any other tax collector in first century Galilee! And yet--Jesus calls him, not just giving him permission to lurk at the edges of his entourage, but making him his representative to the world, an apostle!
Now, maybe if you're Matthew the tax collector, you're tired of being estranged from your own kinfolks and looked down on by the Empire, but you don't know a way out. Maybe getting out of being a tax collector is like trying to get out of a street gang or the mafia--and you don't even know how to extricate from a bad situation. No matter what, Jesus has to know the scandal he is causing by including a tax collector like Matthew in his movement--he's not stupid. Having Matthew as a public face of Jesus' movement would have made Jesus unpopular with anybody who hated the Romans (a lot of people) as well as with anybody concerned with looking pious and righteous (a lot of Respectable Religious people). Jesus does it anyway, because his movement is big enough to include people trapped in a dead-end situation like Matthew's.
On the other hand, notice that this listing of apostles includes someone named Simon who was called "the Zealot." That's not just a euphemism for someone who is enthusiastic-it's the name of a partisan guerilla group in first-century Palestine. These are the brigands who have formed their own militias and are picking off targets they think are loyal to the Empire. These are the people trying to violently overthrow the Romans, maybe with a dream of setting up their own independent kingdom and hearkening back to the "glory days" of ancient Israel's past greatness. Some of them are the ones convinced that God wants them to fight a holy war against the pagan powers of the Empire. And they would have seen not only the Romans as the enemy, but anybody who conspired with them as the enemy, too. That would have included--you guessed it--tax collectors like Matthew. Calling a Zealot (or even a former Zealot) would have been unpopular with anybody who didn't want to incur the wrath of the Romans (a lot of people) as well as with anybody who saw the empire as at least a force for law and order (the Sadducee party, for example, seems to have had made peace with Roman occupation). So having Simon the Zealot as one of Jesus' lieutenants would have cost Jesus' reputation from a different angle... and yet, he does it anyway.
This is the surprising, provocative, befuddling way Jesus operates: he gathers people who likely saw themselves as enemies and offers an alternative to the dead-end systems of violence and oppression they had been stuck in. People at opposite ends of the spectrum were not just permitted into Jesus' movement--he made leaders out of them! To Matthew the tax collector, Jesus offered friendship when everyone treated him as a pariah, and a way to live with himself without having to be Rome's errand-boy or patsy. And to Simon the Zealot, Jesus offered a vision of God's Reign that didn't require a bloodbath of everyone deemed to have "sold out" to Rome. Jesus offered a compelling and different way of life that freed people from the no-win choices they felt they could not get out of. Maybe that's why the likes of Simon the Zealot and Matthew the Tax Collector were both drawn to Jesus, even though they should have hated each other: he welcomed them as they were, but also pulled them into something different than the oppressive systems they had each bought into. That's Jesus' kind of alternative community.
Maybe that's what Jesus is doing among us, too--pulling us from the rotten systems and dead-ends we've been stuck in, setting us free the ways we've been taught to see each other as enemies, and giving us a new belonging that doesn't depend on having someone else to hate.
Maybe that's just what we've needed.
Lord Jesus, call us away from our old idolatrous allegiances that so easily lead us to hatred and hostility, and pull us into the movement you have begun.
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