WERE THE APOSTLES COWARDLY, AVARICIOUS, SLOW…OR ALL OF THE ABOVE?

3/19/13




It’s often said that Jesus chose very ordinary men for His apostles. Their ultimate greatness, manifested in their spreading the gospel and, with two exceptions, giving up their lives for the sake of their Lord and Savior, was therefore not attributable to any innate abilities of the men involved but, rather, to the grace of God. The message is clear: we can do little on our own. The type of greatness that Jesus demands can be achieved only through His grace and therefore is available to anyone, even the simplest of us. Legions of saints, in addition to the apostles, were very, er, ordinary people.

One might easily take the argument about the ordinariness of the apostles a step further and contend that, in almost all cases, to call these guys ordinary would be giving them too much credit. See my 11/21/12 post WAS ST. PETER AN ALCOHOLIC? for an expostulation on the weaknesses of perhaps the greatest of the apostles. Another example of the shortcomings of the apostles can be found in one of my favorite gospel stories, Matthew 20, 20-27. In this story, the mother of James and John comes to Jesus and asks



“Command that these two sons of mine sit, one at your right and the other at your left, in your kingdom.” Matthew 20, 21



Jesus goes on to pull the old switcheroo, and asks



“Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?” Matthew 20, 22



James and John, of course, say that they can. Then Jesus tells them, effectively, okay



“My cup you will indeed drink…” Matthew 20, 23



and we all know what He meant by that…these guys were in for some major league trials and suffering. But then He turns around and says



“…but to sit at my right and at my left is not mine to give but is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.” Matthew 20, 23



So He tells James and John that they’ll pay the cost but won’t get the reward. This would have either made them angry or bewildered them. If the latter, one can almost hear them saying to each other “Wait a minute; what did He just do there?” They probably wished they’d never asked the question, though, in all likelihood, they didn’t fully understand at that stage what “my cup” entailed.



But it is not this latest manifestation of the wisdom of the adage “Be careful what you wish for” that illustrates the shortcomings of James and John. Note who it was who asked Jesus that they get the best seats in the throne room…yes, it was their mother! This may have been just a case of a stereotypical Jewish mother working too hard for the best for her children. But one gets the impression this was a case of a couple of guys who were too timid, to put it nicely, to ask Jesus such an important, and potentially embarrassing, question and instead hid behind their mommy’s apron strings, or whatever the impression is, and had her ask the big question.



Not only does this indicate a shortfall in the manliness quotient for James and John, it shows a lack of faith and understanding of who Jesus was and what Jesus wanted. Yes, it was natural to fear a guy who had calmed the seas, walked on water, healed paralytics, expelled demons, been transfigured before their eyes, and told the religious leaders of the day to effectively stick it in their ears, if not somewhere else. But Jesus was the same guy who said



“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy and my burden light.” Matthew 11, 28-30



and whose favorite admonition, if one goes by the number of times He is recorded saying it in the gospels, was



“Be not afraid.” (too many citations to list)



Yet James and John were so afraid of Jesus that they had to ask their mother to ask Him for the big prize. This would perhaps be attributable to their embarrassment at asking Jesus for such aggrandizement when He repeatedly preached the virtues of meekness. Either way, they were missing Jesus’ message.



Perhaps I’m being too hard on James and John; Mark’s account of the same incident (Mark 10, 35-45) has them, rather than their mother, asking Jesus to give him the most prominent places in the kingdom to come. But even if I am being too hard on James and John (I’m probably not; Matthew’s reason for including the mom in the story probably transcended the allusions to Bathsheba and Solomon, but I digress.), the story gets better.



After James and John ask and receive not what they had been asking for but, rather, the downside of what they had been asking for, Matthew tells us



“When the ten heard of this (request), they became indignant at the two brothers.” Matthew 20, 24



Maybe I’m slow on the uptake, but for years I thought the other guys were upset that James and John had made such an outrageous, self-serving request. Hadn’t they learned anything?



But then it hit me about fifteen months ago (My note in my Bible says 12/12/10) that the other apostles were not upset because James and John had been so vain. No, the other guys were upset because they wished they had asked first; James and John were asking for something the other apostles felt they deserved! It wasn’t that James and John had made a request that ran counter to everything Jesus was trying to teach them; what angered the others was that they wanted those coveted places for themselves. After all, who were James and John to request the really good seats? Those seats, in the eyes of probably each of the apostles, belonged to him, not to those two guys who were still hiding behind their mommy’s skirt, or whatever that expression is.



Ordinary guys? Ordinary would have been a big promotion for this crowd. These guys were not all that courageous or all that smart and, one suspects but can’t know, probably not all that charming or good looking at that. Yet they went on to do the work that Jesus had in mind for them, and, believe me, it wasn’t those guys who achieved the transformation. It was the strengthening, transforming power and love of the Holy Spirit, manifested most clearly, but not only, at Pentecost, that changed these guys from a pack of cowering, and not all that bright, cowards into heroes of our faith, men capable of holding up under torture and death to proclaim the very Good News that they formerly had such a hard time grasping.



More good news is that we will, in all likelihood, never be asked to endure torture, derision, and death for our faith. But better news is that, despite less being asked of us, that same Spirit that infused these ordinary, at best, apostles with the power and strength to accomplish their herculean missions is available to each of us…and all we have to do is ask.



Being a little more mentally agile than the apostles might seem to help, but won’t; this grace stuff doesn’t depend on the strength of our more human attributes…thank God!

WAS ST. PETER AN ALCOHOLIC?

11/21/12




It was the first Christian Pentecost, around 29 A.D., in Jerusalem. The disciples were “all in one place together.” (Acts 2, 2) Suddenly, tongues of fire descended over the heads of the disciples, they were filled with the Holy Spirit, and they started speaking in tongues. Speaking in tongues, at least in this first manifestation, was an ability to speak in one’s own language while one’s listeners heard what was said in their languages. This came in very handy in this instance because there were Jews from throughout the Diaspora, or dispersion, in Jerusalem to celebrate Pentecost, and most spoke languages other than Aramaic. But, as St. Paul points out in the 14th chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians, to most listeners, speaking in tongues can sound like so much babbling. So in response to this first speaking in tongues, some observers said of Peter and the Apostles (Acts 2, 13)



“They have had too much new wine.”



What is remarkable is Peter’s response to the charge that he and his buddies had been drinking too much “new wine” (Act 2, 15):



“These people are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning.”



So Peter’s defense against charges of drunken babbling is not so much that he isn’t drunk but that he isn’t drunk yet; after all, it’s only 9:00 A.M. You almost expect him to follow with something like “…but if it were happy hour, well, then you’d have a point.”



I’ve found this passage and interpretation thereof fascinating since a great friend, and Jesuit priest, pointed it out to me more than twenty five years ago. If indeed Peter did have some trouble with the new wine, he would be exhibiting a condition that is very prevalent among people back then and people now; alcoholism is a big deal now and it was a big deal then.



More importantly, if it were indeed true that Peter was an alcoholic, this would be only one instance in which he was the most human of all Apostles, the Apostle to which most of us can most easily relate.



Like many of us, Peter was headstrong and impetuous with sudden and passing bouts of bravado and pseudo-strength followed by a realization of his innate weaknesses and a consequent reassessment of his seemingly rash actions, very human traits and actions that seem to be especially manifested in alcoholics, both practicing and recovering.

The examples of these traits in Peter are abundant. St. Matthew, in his account of Jesus’ walking on water (Matthew 14, 24-33), tells us that St. Peter, obviously impressed by this heretofore undiscovered ability of his Master and wanting to both please and imitate him, said



“Lord, if it is you, command me to come out to you on the water.”



and, hardly waiting for Jesus’ assent, went racing out to meet Jesus on the waves. There he was, caught up in the moment, strutting his stuff…for a few minutes until he realized something like “Hey, wait a minute; I’m walking on water! I can’t do this!” and started sinking, only to be saved by Jesus.



This tendency to act now and think later on the part of Peter again displayed itself at the Transfiguration. There they were, Peter, James, John, and Jesus, up on the mountain, all but Jesus thinking this would be what had become by then a routine prayer session, when, suddenly, Jesus’ (Luke 9, 29)



“face changed in appearance and his clothing became dazzling white.”



and then who showed up but Moses and Elijah! If Peter ever needed a drink, this was certainly the time, but I digress. Peter quickly realized that this was no ordinary day on the hill, but, rather than, like James and John, simply drinking it all in and enjoying it, he immediately blurted out (Luke 9, 33)



“Master, it is good that we are here; let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”



Luke even points out



But he did not know what he was saying.



Effectively, what Peter was saying was something like “Man, this is great! Let’s just stay up here and never come down to the reality of life.”



and thus became like so many Christians throughout the ages who think that signing up for Christianity means, first, going to heaven, which is a great place to be, and that, as an additional bonus, sticking with Jesus will somehow keep trouble away and make life easy. But most of us know that, while Jesus does promise a place in heaven for us, He promises nothing of the sort in this life. He’s not going to take away our troubles; indeed, following Him will result in plenty of trouble above and beyond life’s normal trials. But He does promise us that He will be with us during those troubles; after all, He experienced most of them while He was here. But Peter didn’t want to hear that; He wanted to keep the good stuff on the mountain and avoid the painful stuff that awaited him down in the valley and thought his Master was the ticket for achieving this goal.



Peter’s impetuousness comes through again at the Last Supper when, after Jesus tells his Apostles (Mark 14, 27)



“All of you will have your faith shaken, for it is written ‘I will strike the shepherd and the sheep will be dispersed.’”



Peter replies



“Even though all should have their faith shaken, mine will not be.”



(If my thesis about Peter’s having an excessive love of the fruit of the vine is true, this may have been the 1st century forerunner of the Manischewitz talking. After all, at least according to the three synoptic gospels, the Last Supper was a Seder, and one can be confident that more than the wine that Jesus transformed into His Precious Blood was being consumed at the meal. Note that Peter, James, and John were having a very difficult time staying awake an hour or so hence in the Garden of Gethsemane at a not, by any stretch of the imagination, inconsequential time. But I digress.)



Jesus, being the cooler head at the table, replies (Mark 14, 30)



“Amen I say to you, this very night before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times.”



and, as always, He was right. When the heat was on, Peter, being human and afraid, denied even knowing Jesus despite his previous bravado.



And then, after the resurrection, when Jesus tries to make everything okay again between Him and Peter by asking Peter three times (John 21, 15-19)



“Simon, son of John, do you love me?”



Peter gets “distressed,” not understanding at all what Jesus was trying to do and replies in an exasperated fashion after the third time he was asked



“Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you!”



The guy pops off, falls down, and fights back when Jesus tries to lift him up. Sound alcoholic? Sound human?



Then, getting back to that first Christian Pentecost….



Peter, inspired by the Spirit and now clearly not full of “new wine,” launches into a long explanation of the meaning of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and its implications not only for his Jewish listeners and for all mankind. Three thousand people are convinced and want to be baptized, to sign up, if you will. So what does Peter do? He doesn’t look into their backgrounds. He doesn’t ask if they’ve been good. He doesn’t ask them to renounce their existing faith. He doesn’t make them jump through hoops. And he doesn’t make them feel like he is, through his great graces and manifest goodness, doing them some kind of favor. He, and his buddies, simply baptize them…all three thousand of them. (Acts 2, 41). Impetuousness does have its positives!



Later on, when the family of Cornelius, a Gentile, undergoes a Pentecost like experience, filled with the Spirit, speaking in tongues and all, Peter doesn’t check the rule book and say something like “Wait a minute; these guys aren’t Jews like us. This can’t be real. Our rules tell us only Jews can be filled with the Spirit. No, these guys can’t join us! Not these infidel Gentiles!” Instead, he says (Acts 10, 47-48)



“Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people, who have received the Holy Spirit even as we have?”



and



He ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.



Again, impetuousness has its positives!





Speaking of impetuousness having its positives, thank God Peter was the often weak, yet headstrong far beyond his abilities, man that he was. Why? Because God’s glory and strength is manifested through otherwise weak and very ordinary and fallible people…people like Peter…and us. So there is hope for all of us, who can all easily relate to Peter’s manifest humanity.



And…



If Peter were the kind of guy who thought through everything, who carefully considered his every move, we might not have had the Christian faith that we have today. No rational person gives up everything for what seemed like, nearly literally, a wing and a prayer. No rational person follows an itinerant preacher up a hill for God knows what purpose. No rational person decides to get out of a boat and walk across the water. No rational person gets up and talks to a group of thousands of people not having the faintest idea what he is going to say. No rational person breaks all the rules and lets insiders in on this great thing we really should save for ourselves. And no rational person goes to his death by being crucified, upside down, as tradition says Peter was.


So, unless you (perhaps, too,) are alcoholic, raise a glass to St. Peter this Thanksgiving. His very human tendency to shoot first, aim later, to rush in where wise men fear to tread, his impetuousness too late tempered by reason…his very alcoholic traits…are among the greatest things for which we should be utterly grateful.