Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.”
NL Daily Devotion for Saturday, February 11, 2023
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
An apostle is someone sent on a mission. Jesus chose twelve (men) to correspond to the twelve tribes of Israel (Ten of Jacob’s sons, and Joseph’s two sons). All the synoptic gospels make this point (although in Luke, Thaddeus is replaced with Judas, son of James, who, considering naming conventions at the time, might have been the same person). It mattered to the readers of these early gospels—it connected Jesus to their Jewish heritage and understanding of the world. It supported the idea that Jesus was the Messiah, who would come and restore Israel.
And it’s woefully insufficient to the way I understand Jesus’ ministry and God’s reign. I love how the subtitle for the beginning of Luke 8 in the NRSV is “Some Women Accompany Jesus.” Like he doesn’t even want to admit it but feels like he has to throw it in because it’s actually what happened. One might argue (as I have heard it said) that these women stayed in their culturally expected roles of doing all the work of cooking and cleaning and caring for the men, who had the important job of being “sent on a mission.” But there is plenty of textual evidence that these women (and others) did far more. That they were apostles in their own right. I read a take on Jesus’ sending out of the seventy apostles to heal and spread the message that posited convincingly that, since Jesus sent the apostles out in pairs, it was logical to assume that each pair was made up of a man and a woman. I have heard the same said about the two disciples walking to Emmaus following Jesus’ resurrection. Cleopas is named while his companion is not (common with women in scripture). Clearly there was at least some deliberate attempt made to downplay the role of women in the early church in the gospels that made it into the Christian canon. As you read over and over about Jesus’ twelve apostles, may you be challenged to consider who the women in Jesus’ inner circle were and how they contributed to the sharing of the good news of Jesus.
Who is my favorite woman named in the New Testament? Why?