Mark 3:7-19
“Motley Crew”
April 15, 2012 - Second Sunday of Easter

         Murderers, a psychopath, an insubordinate, and a dimwit. That’s just part of the crew, all of them military convicts, that Lee Marvin as Major Reisman must transform into a successful attack force in the 60s film, “The Dirty Dozen.” The movie turns on how each unlikely and flawed member of the team plays a crucial role in the mission.

         Something like Jesus’ own “dirty dozen” appears in our text today. The first part of the passage is a description of the overwhelming crowds who respond to Jesus’ teaching and healing. So many people surrounded Him, we’re told in verse 9, that He arranged for the disciples get Him away in a boat so the crowd wouldn’t crush Him. And in verses 11 and 12 we hear the demons only making the problem worse by threatening to reveal His deeper identity as the Son of God.

         Jesus responded to the enormous demand and pressure of so many people who wanted His help by commissioning a core group of companions and helpers. That’s the message of the second half of our text today.

         There were already many, many followers, many disciples of Jesus. We’re so familiar with them that we focus on the ones named here, but there were more. At the beginning of Luke 10, Jesus sent seventy others to do preach and heal. In I Corinthians 15 we learn that over five hundred followers were witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus.

         Yet there is clearly something special about the twelve who are called and appointed here as “apostles.” They are the inner ring, the core, as I said, of all those men and women who gathered around Jesus.

         Verse 13 shows that those who are appointed are those whom Jesus wants. It all rests on His choice. Earlier in Mark we saw how Jesus came and specifically called five of them, Peter and Andrew, James and John, and a little later Levi. He selected them. That makes Jesus different from other rabbis.

         In those times disciples chose their rabbis. A person who aspired to seek God, who wanted to learn a life of holiness and faithfulness to God’s law, looked around to find a teacher, a rabbi who he thought would guide him well. It’s like our own modern practice. You seek out a church and a pastor where you feel you will grow in your faith. You start attending and decide if you will stay. Likewise with rabbis. The disciple took the initiative, chose the rabbi, started following to see how it would go.

         But Jesus’ disciples did not find Him. He found them. He went up the mountain to seek God the Father’s guidance and then He called and named the particular people that He wanted to most closely follow Him.

         There’s something more about Jesus’ initiative just in the word here. Verse 14 in your text probably begins, “And he appointed twelve,” but it literally says that “he made twelve…” They didn’t just become apostles. They weren’t just named apostles. Jesus made them what they became. It was Jesus’ work and power in them which gave them the position they had.

         The number twelve is worth noticing. There were twelve tribes of Israel. Jesus makes twelve apostles. It’s symbolism. By choosing exactly twelve Jesus started Israel over again. Nine or ten of the literal tribes of Israel were dispersed and lost in history. Jesus chose twelve to say that here in their faith would be the beginning of a new and spiritual Israel.

         What did it mean to be an apostle? The word means “one who is sent.” It’s a noun, but it’s primarily a verb. After verse 14 says He named them apostles, apostolous, we read that they were to be sent out, apostellei. To be an apostle meant having a mission, a job to go and carry out for their master.

         When we recite the Nicene creed, we say that we believe in “one holy, catholic and apostolic church.” To be apostolic is to be like the apostles in having a mission, a job that Jesus gave us to do. Let’s look at that job.

         The last part of verse 14 and the beginning of verse 15 gives the apostles three parts to what they were supposed to do. They were, “to be with him, and to be sent out to proclaim the message, and to have authority to cast out demons.” It’s crucial not to skip over the first part. The first thing for the apostles was “to be with him.” Before going anywhere, before preaching anything, before saying “boo” to even a little demon, they were to be with Jesus.

         That’s where all Christian discipleship begins. We haven’t got any message, we haven’t even got any real help to offer anyone unless we have first been with Jesus. These twelve spent three years walking and talking with Him. Mark’s way of telling the story is to show us how they slowly discovered who He is, how their initial attraction and amazement is transformed into a lasting trust in Jesus as Lord and Savior. That kind of process is to happen for every Christian.

         Being with Jesus is why we worship every Sunday. We get together to feel His presence with us, to receive His presence at His Table, to learn more about Him in Sunday School and in the preaching of the Word. It’s why we individually read our Bibles during the week or get back together to keep studying. We want to be with Jesus. There would be no apostles if they hadn’t been with Jesus. There’s no church if we don’t first and foremost give ourselves to being with and knowing Jesus through the Word and through worship.

         When we’ve been with Jesus, then He sends us out for the other parts, with good news to share with those who don’t know Him yet, with divine power to help those trapped and hurt by the demons of this world. It’s when we’ve been with Jesus that we can offer a message of hope to people who feel hopeless. It’s when we’ve been with Jesus that we can help deliver others from the demons of addiction and depression and lust and all the other spiritual enemies that plague us.

         Our four men who went to Mexico last month, I am absolutely sure, went because they had first been with Jesus and heard Him calling and sending them to share His love and His help with the people they met there. But it’s true for us all. We engage the mission when we first engage our hearts and minds in the person of Jesus.

         The last four verses of our text is just a list of names. It’s a familiar list, so it might be easy to skip over it quickly. Yet I’d like to go back to where I began and see what a “dirty dozen,” or as you might put it, a motley crew it is. The first four, as I said, we’ve already met, four fishermen. The first three, Peter, James and John, are what you might call the inner ring of the inner ring. They are Jesus’ closest companions. At all the crucial moments, like we saw on Transfiguration Sunday in February, it’s these three who are with Him.

         As much as I enjoy the fact that those closest to Jesus were fishermen, I have to admit that they were not at all the type of fishermen I like. For them it wasn’t a sport. It was a living. They didn’t fish with graphite rods and barbless hooks. They didn’t practice catch and release to conserve the environment. No, they got cold and wet and dirty and caught and killed as many fish as they possibly could in order to feed and support their families. They weren’t educated people who read philosophical treatises on fishing. They were peasants who probably drank and told stories whenever they weren’t on the water.

         Yet Jesus included these very ordinary, probably very smelly, folks in His core group. He gave them nicknames, like calling Simon Peter, which just means “Rock,” and calling the Zebedee brothers “sons of thunder,” which likely means they were hot-headed. Jesus had room for people with bad tempers.

         We know a bit about Andrew, Philip, Thomas and Matthew, who is generally thought to be Levi, the tax collector. They all get mentioned at other points in the Gospels. We know next to nothing about Bartholomew, or James son of Alphaeus or Thaddaeus. Jesus’ team included undistinguished people, who never did anything notable.

         Simon the Cananaean is interesting considering he’s in the group with Matthew. Luke 6:15 calls him Simon the Zealot. The Aramaic word for “zealot” sounds like “Cananaean,” which explains how Mark puts it. A “zealot” was a member of the group working to overthrow Rome’s rule of Israel. Simon belonged to a revolutionary political party.

         Now think about how much Simon must have hated Rome and then think about that as a tax collector Matthew or Levi was working for Rome. In Simon’s eyes, Matthew was collaborating with the enemy, a traitor. Yet here they are together on Jesus’ team.

         Last there is Judas Iscariot, and the short ugly description, “who betrayed him.” Again, because most of us know the story, we’re not surprised. We know who Judas was. But imagine reading or hearing this for the first time. The traitor was in there from the beginning. Every indication is that Jesus knew it from the beginning. Yet Judas too is included in Jesus’ dirty dozen. It really is a strange and motley crew.

         That’s us. The beginning of the church is twelve motley, mismatched, dirty, hot-headed folks whose ways of life and politics don’t fit together. All that brings them together is Jesus. It all happens because they are with Jesus. That’s how it still happens. Sometimes people tell me they come to church but feel like they don’t fit in. Exactly. None of us fits in. None of us really belongs here. We’re here because Jesus calls those He wants, as it says in verse 13. It’s all around Him. It all because we are here with Him.

         The original meaning of “motley crew” was not a disheveled collection of misfits. In the eighteenth century, it referred to multi-colored, motley uniforms. They were worn by a disciplined team of the best oarsmen in the English Navy who rowed the captain’s longboat. That’s the kind of motley crew Jesus made out of those first twelve. By staying with Jesus they grew deep and strong and went out and changed the world with His good news. That’s the kind of crew Jesus can make out of us if we let Him be our captain. May it be.

         Amen.

         Valley Covenant Church
         Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
         Copyright © 2012 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj