The Disciples

You know, I’ve heard more than one person say that the Bible just doesn’t speak to them.  That the people in the Bible were a bunch of goodie-two-shoes and nothing like them.  And when I hear something like that, it saddens me, because I can see the sinner in the saints of the Bible.  Those biblical joes aren’t so different from us.  And one day, I just got to thinking:  If Jesus came to earth today for the first time, what would his disciples be like?

            Well, I can’t be entirely certain, but based on the Biblical descriptions; I can come up with a few possibilities.  Peter, for one, would still be a hothead who talks big but has a little trouble following through on all of his boasts.  He’d still be the guy who vowed to follow Jesus to the death . . . or at least until such time as Jesus was facing death and his own life was on the line, at which time he would declare he didn’t know the man.  Still a hothead working in a minimum wage job with his dad and his brother.  Depending on what part of the country we’re talking about, Peter might be the guy who works in the chicken factory or the mines or the mom-and-pop grocery or hardware store down the street.  He might work construction, or even be a fisherman still.  He wasn't from the rich mansion part of town, but a tough neighborhood in a large, important city.  Not the capital, but a city that's important enough to be renamed by a conquering army.  Like New York, say.  So he’d be tough as nails, and probably have a bit of a rap sheet.  This Peter is the guy you’d find in bar fights and jails doing 24 hours on a drunk and disorderly charge, just like the Bible finds him getting in trouble for cutting off people’s ears.

            James and John, the sons of Zebedee, are a pair of brothers cut from a similar cloth.  They spend their days with Peter—doing the same kind of minimum wage jobs and doing a little goofing off and hell-raising in their time off.  After all, they don’t call them the “sons of thunder” for nothing.  I can see the two of them and Peter starting a motorcycle gang.  Also, I must add that these two are ambitious and just a bit devious.  That’s why they had their mom ask if they could sit on either side of Jesus when he came into his kingdom—they wanted the power and prestige.  And John was clever enough to follow Jesus to Golgotha without being caught and killed himself.  The fact that he then cared for Jesus' mother like she was his own-- apparently for a couple decades-- shows that beneath the rough exterior, there was a caring heart.

            Peter’s brother Andrew thinks things through a little bit more.  He’s definitely more cautious and mild-mannered—even though he still gets along just fine with his brother.  He’s the guy who’s on the sidelines making the wisecracks that start the fights, or else calming Peter, James, and John because he’s the slightly more responsible one of the group.  He’s probably the foreman or assistant manager wherever it is that he and his buds work.  Who knows?  He might be the slightly geeky kid brother that the jocks let tag along with them because he’s good at thinking up excuses.

Matthew, on the other hand, reminds me of Leo Getz.  You know the one I’m talking about, the guy in Lethal Weapon who’s ripping off silk PJs from the hotel, spending as much of other people’s money as he can, and advising a cop on how to cheat on his taxes.  Matthew might also be the IRS guy from Grumpier Old Men, who’s just doing his job but is not too understanding and certainly isn’t very popular.  Matthew could be every guy who is despised for the government work he does.  Whether he’s an IRS agent, a cop on the take, or a posturing politician who reneges on his campaign promises, Matthew is the guy that makes good money and has a nice big house, but not very many friends.  He’s the guy the song’s describing when somebody sings “The Richest Man on Lonely Street”.

I see Thomas as a scientist and a confirmed skeptic.  The kind of person who doesn’t believe anything unless he has the evidence staring him in the face.  He reminds me of Temperance Brennan in Bones.  He'd be willing to take medicine just in case he might have been exposed to a microscopic bug that he's never seen, because science and the evidence are never wrong, but please don't ask him to put his faith in something he can't see.  Like, say, Someone rising from the dead and appearing to his pals inside a locked room.

The woman at the well is a has-been movie star who was a looker once but has been worn by the years and all her attempts at thrill-seeking.  She’s the Drew Barrymore/Lindsay Lohan type with the drug and alcohol problems in her past, the kind of star who’s been married and divorced five times and is now getting it on with someone else in her quest for adventure and acceptance.

As for Paul—well I know what kind of person Jesus would call as his Paul if he were coming for the first time this year:  A confirmed atheist and harsh critic of Christianity, who would make a sudden and drastic turnaround, such as Frank Tipler, Allan Sandage, Francis Collins, Howard Storm, Ammon Hennacy, Bernard Nathanson, Lee Strobel, Norma McCorvey, Shelley Lubben, Crissy Moran, George Price, Alister McGrath, John C. Wright, Nicko Mc Brain, or Peter Steele did.  God would pick someone who may even be considered a genius in their own right, highly successful, and powerful; somebody who stands there approving others but not getting his own hands dirty.  Paul is used to hobnobbing with bigshots—in Bible times, it was the scribes, Pharisees, and Saducees—who he’s good at manipulating; today it would be Wall Street, politicians and movie stars.  He might even be a lobbyist or a politician himself.

Philip is actually one of the leaders of the disciples, although he doesn't get much talk time today. He seems to be the organizer of the group-- even Jesus asks him logistical questions, such as "Where shall we buy bread?".  He also seems to have authority to speak for the group; on at least one occasion, you get the feeling there's a whispered conference in the background before Philip (audacious Philip!) asks Jesus to "show us the Father and that will be enough for us." (emphasis mine).  He's also one of the first disciples; it's implied that he's the one hanging out with Andrew following John the Baptist when they meet Jesus; they both immediately run off to tell their brothers.  Philip shows some of his skill in working with people in the way he handles Bartholomew; he knows it won't do any good to fight a prejudiced opinion with a reasoned argument, but if Bartholomew experiences Jesus for himself, he will change his mind that "nothing good can come out of Nazareth".  This same gift for dealing with people is shown in how he's the one approached by Greek out-of-towners who want to meet Jesus, how he later converts Samaria and then how he finds an opening for leading an Ethiopian government official to Christ through his reading material.  This also highlights something else about Philip: he's equally comfortable in the presence of the everyday joes and the people in power; and with people who are shunned because of race or religion.  So today's inner city Philip would be distinguished by his approachability and his organizational skills.

Bartholomew (aka Nathanael) reminds me a bit of my brother-in-law.  What you see is what you get.  He's a plain-speaking fellow who's not afraid to state his opinion, regardless of whether that opinion is complimentary or not.  Political correctness?  What's that?  Bartholomew doesn't really seem to have any.  But maybe because he's lacking in a verbal filter and honest to a fault, its probably not difficult for Bartholomew to see through the shams and scams of others.   He certainly knows that Jesus is the genuine article right from the very beginning.

Now, the Bible doesn't seem to have much info on James the son of Alpheus or Judas the son of James (aka Thaddeus) other than that they were disciples and apostles.  For all we know, Judas is James' son, or even Jesus' nephew, the son of His brother James who wrote the epistle.  The rest of the disciples seemed to like to bring along a family member: Andrew brought Peter, Philip brought Nathanael, James and John came together, and Thomas' Greek nickname is "Thomas the twin", indicating that he had a twin hanging around often enough for the Gospel writers to start calling him that.  But whether they were related or not, they've probably got the most "everyman" about them of any of the disciples.  Most people aren't famous, or even well-known outside their own little circle.  For all the leaders in any given group, there must be followers.  So they're not the take-charge kind of people, nor the kind who publish their memoirs-- big whoop.  I would dare say most of us aren't.  The fact that the whole world doesn't know their name just makes them a little more like you and me and the people down the street.

Judas Iscariot would likely be a politician, I think-- or at least a political aide.  Maybe a lawyer.  He likes to hang out with those in power, he likes to dip his hands into the group's funds, and he can be bought.  But despite doing all that, he's still able to put on an innocent face and exclaim in mock outrage when Jesus tells the disciples he will be betrayed by one of them.  His two-facedness, though, is not his only characteristic; he's also capable of deep remorse.  Likewise, his destructive tendencies can be focused inward as well as outward.  After setting someone up to be killed, he commits suicide because he can't live with the guilt.

And I think it is that propensity for guilt that sets him apart from the  Annaniases and Sapphiras of this world-- the 10% of all people who cheat on their taxes in any given year but don't let their consciences bother them.  Or the people who cheat on their spouses without caring about anything but being caught.  They may still go to church and give to charities, and they are visually indistinguishable from the crowd.

Now, heretofore, I’ve described a couple of characters who may have had some trouble with the law in their day.  But they are, for the most part, pretty law-abiding average joes.  Not so was Simon the Zealot.   You may not have known this before, but the Zealots were a militant faction trying to get the Romans out of Israel.  They ambushed the soldiers and rolled boulders down the mountainside at Roman convoys.  Today, we would call them terrorists, and they would be using car bombs, mines, and suicide bombers.  I mean, when you talk about the Zeal these guys had, it was an all-or-nothing, them-or-us, kill-them-if-you-get-the-shot, all-out hatred!  They firmly believed that the Romans did not belong in Israel and they were going to kick them out or die trying!  They had a cause, and it wasn’t one that everyone agreed with.  Even those who did agree with their sentiment didn’t always agree with their methods.  But they were out there in Jesus’ time and we still see them today.  Whether we're talking about Hezbollah, Hamas, the Unabomber, Al-Queda,  the IRA, ELN, the KKK, or Timothy McVeigh, Simon is the disciple who probably had the most trouble being accepted by the other disciples.  He also would likely be shunned by his former group as a sellout for hanging out with a man who preached paying taxes, carrying the occupying army's packs an extra mile for them, and letting people slap you in the face without hitting back.   Being Simon, whether in the first century or the twenty-first, would most likely be a lonely place to be.  it would require someone with great willpower, conviction, and energy.

Now, hopefully in this parade of characters you’ve seen someone enough like you (or your sibling or your friend or your neighbor) to give you something to think about.  But no matter which one of the disciples you see yourself as being most like or unlike, I hope that these descriptions have helped you to realize that the people Jesus hung out with were flawed and fallen people, just like you and me and everyone else on the planet.