Thank you for an amazing and invigorating thread of comments to last week's post.
This week I am going to "cheat" a little - time is pressing because our annual Clergy Conference begins today, and I am concerned that if I posted something controversial, then there might be many comments to moderate during the next few days when my mind needs to be focused on the conference and our collegiality there.
So, kind of a non-post, but definitely a question, noting the end of the thread to the last post (i.e. on Monday morning NZ time), where the question is posed, Why did the disciples follow Jesus?
That is, what were they hoping would happen (such as the overthrow of the Roman rule over Israel)? What spiritual need was beating in their hearts? What was it about Jesus that drew them to himself (noting, of course, that the same Jesus gathered a significant number of enemies during the days of his mission)?
Answers/suggestions from you will be posted as and when I am able to.
Have a great week.
Without checking in on the Gospel texts, I'll just copy and paste by intuitive response from the last thread:
ReplyDeletethey were attracted by the divine energy within Jesus himself, the way he encountered them with his charisma, being full of the Spirit, and what it stirred in their hearts and souls.
To which I'll add: who knows! Did his first disciples really know what they were doing? Much easier to write a gospel after the fact!
Blessings for Clergy Conference!
ReplyDeleteThat’s an interesting question.
The disciples had the testimony of John the Baptist about the lamb of God and the coming of the Spirit in John’s gospel. Apparently they had personal conversations with Jesus before the call to follow, according to John, which would surely have included the kingdom of God.
Matthew and Mark give the famous ‘Repent for the kingdom of God is near’ before the call, when Jesus is preaching in the synagogues of Galilee.
But Luke includes the teaching at Nazareth and I wonder if the
disciples were enthused by Jesus’ fresh take on the God and the Scriptures they were familiar with?
Furthermore, Jesus, later in John, says ‘These things I tell you that my joy may be in you and your joy may be full’. He was clearly full of the love, joy and peace of the Holy Spirit, full of Life!
Yet, in spite of all his teachings of the kingdom, and his preparation of them for his death and resurrection, in Acts 1 the question ‘Will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?’ shows they really never got beyond the presumable destruction of the Roman Empire and their placing at the top of an earthly kingdom!
This is fantastic, Moya. Thank you!
DeleteYes Moya, I second you on your concluding paragraph! I read that same Q yesterday - "Will you at this time..." and it seems pretty clear what the disciples' expectations and hopes were. I'm wondering if the real breakthrough in their understanding may have been when Peter had the vision of the unclean things offered from heaven as food, followed immediately by the visit from the Roman centurion's servant, and then the subsequent holy experience with the centurion and his household. That really shook things up! Thoughts?
ReplyDeleteI don’t find the disciples question surprising re Acts 1 because it was prophesied a King would come from the lineage of David (aka Jesus did and the disciples by the time the question was asked recognised Him as the Messiah)… I suspect (cannot know for certain of course lol) that from the disciples backdrop Jesus being King of Israel was as far as their minds could bend at the point, albeit it seems with the passages you quote Elizabeth, plus the Holy Spirit that came upon them, God led them into a new understanding.
DeleteI gi as we've all concentrated on the male disciples so far. In a sense, the female disciples were more faithful and received some striking encounters and experiences. What attracted them?
ReplyDeleteThat's a great Q, Mark, about what attracted the female disciples. Apart from Jesus himself and all that he did, I'm also thinking about Mary and Elisabeth and how spiritual they were - both of them having Holy Spirit experiences even before Jesus was born! I'm guessing that Mary must have been a wonderful mentor to the women who accompanied Jesus and she would've had so many stories to share about the amazing things that happened to her - and to Elisabeth & Zacharias. There must've been a real sense of awe and wonder (I imagine) among the women!
DeleteBeing honoured by Jesus as people capable of knowing and responding to God. See Mary of Bethany and Martha in John 11 as well as the various women who he was willing to be supported by. No wonder they stayed at the cross even to the burial and were first at the empty tomb. The disciples’ dismissal of their news shows a typical male response of denigrating the spiritual life and wisdom of women quite unlike Jesus himself!
DeletePS The woman who poured ointment on Jesus’ feet with tears and wiped them with her hair, had clearly had an encounter of some sort with him that convinced her she was loved. Why else would she brave Simon the Pharisee’s dinner party to lavish such love as she had on the feet of Jesus? That was worship!
DeleteTouching a man's feet in such a way, touching the feet of a a man who is not your husband, was, I understand, a most intimate act, let alone drying his feet with your hair. To this day, Hasidic women shave their heads as women's hair is often consistent seated "carnal" .
DeletePerhaps this is too simple an explanation but I will put it in mix anyway:
ReplyDeleteDid all the disciples have some grounding in the scriptures of the time or in the teachings of others (John the Baptist) or knew people who believed He was teh messiah, and then they experience Jesus for themselves and believed?
Maybe...but maybe it wasn't that neat, wasn't that "Protestant"?
DeletePlease don't forget about Everlee Wihongi in ICE detention. She was supposed to appear via Zoom with a Wisconsin court today, wouldn't you know - WiFi didn't work. Hmm. So hard on her and her family. https://www.webworm.co/everleemay21/
ReplyDeleteGood article on religious attendance in UK:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2026/22-may/news/uk/no-revival-of-attendance-at-religious-services-in-britain-says-sir-john-curtice
No revival. Number still lower than pre pandemic. Lowest among young. Elderly dropping the most. Tiny percentage of people attend church each week. Anglicans have more stable numbers than Catholics etc.
Folks, it's a deeply secular age!
Of course, if it is judged by attendance at a religious service! But there is so much more on offer online even of religious nature, that I suspect that spiritual searches continue quite widely.
DeleteI sang an old song, ‘God is still on the throne…’ You might prefer ‘Being is active’!!!!
Good call on all this Moya! You're completely right - church attendence is a poor measure of the spiritual search, including that search within Christianity (and even online). I "attended" a packed out town hall last night to see The Waterboys - so much transcendence and religious themes in modern music. Calling this a secular age misses so much.
ReplyDeleteWhy did the disciples follow Jesus? Everything in the world has (at least) two explanations: the mundane nexus of events, which we call 'history', which is itself full of incommensurate and imponderable facts (which, nevertheless, the ignorant mythographers of Marxism call "science"); and the mysterious working of the Holy Spirit shining the light of Christ in our hearts, as Saul discovered on the road to Damascus.
ReplyDeleteA blessed Pentecost to all.
Come down, O Love Divine.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh