Still, there are a couple of interesting tidbits in this list. Matthew is called "the tax collector." And that meant that Matthew collected taxes on behalf of the occupying Roman government, which meant that Matthew was, in the eyes of many of Jesus' contemporaries, a collaborator.
Then, there was also Simon, who's called "the Cananaean". That was a label that was used for people who were also called "Zealots", which was a group of "freedom fighters" who actively tried to attack and sabotage the Roman authorities.
So Jesus had really "interesting" group if he could manage to include both a tax collector and a zealot in his first group of followers! Along with those two, at least four of them (Peter, Andrew, James and John) we know were fishermen. The rest, we really don't know about.
But do you know what occupation I'm sure was NOT included in this group? A PR consultant! And that's because if Jesus had had a public relations consultant as part of that group, that person would surely have objected to Jesus' most basic instruction: "As you go, proclaim the good news".
Really? Proclaim good news? Good news doesn't sell. Good news doesn't get attention. Good news gets buried in our news feeds way below terrorist attacks, political scandals and global catastrophes.
I'm sure it wasn't any different in the first century. Jesus knew that "good news" wasn't always noticed, didn't keep people's attention for very long, and easily got lost in the midst of the bad news that was always just around the corner.
Yet maybe for those very reasons, Jesus told his first disciples that everything they said and did was supposed to convey the "good news" of God, and that the good news would have to keep being proclaimed over and over again precisely because people so easily fixate on bad news.
"Proclaim the good news." It sounds like such a simple instruction. But it wasn't always easy for the first disciples. And it hasn't always been easy for successive generations of Christians to stay focused on proclaiming good news.
And maybe that's why Jesus said, "proclaim the good news" just before he told his followers to do three things. It was as though he was reminding them that these three things would need to be proclaimed as God's good news, instead of as God's threat.
Jesus said "good news" was to be proclaimed by:
- Announcing that "the kingdom of heaven has come near." Right here and right now, God has come close to you. Good news or threat? It's good news if it means that God loves you and wants to help you. It's threat if it becomes like that bumper sticker years ago that said, "Jesus is coming and boy is he ticked!"... In our proclamation of God's presence in our lives, are we announcing good news for everybody, or good news for us and threats for everybody else...?
- Healing and the raising of the dead - actually, when the disciples returned they didn't announce to Jesus that they had physically brought anybody back from the dead. But they had given new life to people who thought they were forgotten and unloved. They had cast out the demons of doubt and despair. They did that by proclaiming the good news of healing, instead of telling people how sick they were and how much they needed to change if they ever wanted God's help. Even "repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near" (which is sometimes the way the Gospels report Jesus' words) isn't a threat, but a way of saying, "hey! Turn around and look over here! It's great and you don't want to miss it." In our proclamation of God's presence in our lives, are we announcing and sharing healing for everybody, or are we spending too much time focusing on other people's perceived "sickness"...?
- "giving without payment" - in other places, Jesus tells his disciples that laborers deserve their wages, and so they should accept food and lodging in the places they went. So what does this mean? In one important sense, perhaps this means, "you can't sell good news, because people aren't going to buy it. So keep giving it away regardless of how it's received." Yet for many Christians throughout history, and even today, it seems easier, more effective (and sometimes more fun) to sell judgement and condemnation (the bad news) than it is to get people to receive good news. "Do what God says, or else!" Yes, says Jesus, that does sell. But that's not your job. Proclaim the good news, even if it seems like people don't want it and won't buy it...
Proclaiming God's good news was the goal of everything Jesus sent his first disciples to say and do in the world. It's the goal for what Jesus wants us to say and do as well.
And Jesus sends us out fully knowing that good news doesn't always sell. Good news doesn't always get noticed. Good news even gets willfully ignored.
But it's for those very reasons that Jesus came into the world - to proclaim God's good news. And that's still what Jesus seeks to do each day through us.
