Minions by the Bunch

When you hear the word “Minion” what do you think of?  For some, you think of little yellow people in blue pants. 

For others, you have your own favorite minions from years past.    The Disney films we grew up with were filled with Minions, albeit with other names.  Snow White’s Step Mother had her magic mirror.  Captain Hook had Mr. Smee, and Gaston had LeFou.

For those with more cultured tastes you might remember Pintel and Ragetti  who were minions for whoever was paying the best in the various Pirates of the Caribbean.

If you grew up with horror movies, Frankenstein had Igor and Dracula had Renfield.

And lest you think that Minions always worked for the bad guys remember that Batman had Robin, the Lone Ranger had Tonto, the Green Lantern had Kato and of course every Han Solo needs a Chewbacca. 

The Oxford dictionary defines a Minion as “A follower or underling of a powerful person, especially a servile or unimportant one.”

So in theory that would make the Vice President of the United States a minion.  Mike Pence might not think so but John Garner who was Vice President between 1933 and 1941 once told Lyndon Johnson “The office of Vice-President isn’t worth a bucket of warm spit.”   

I guess Lyndon Johnson might have disagreed with that on November 22, 1963.

But for most of us today when we think of Minions we think of Kevin, Dave and Stuart and their friends. 

These minions first made their appearance in the animated feature “Despicable Me” in 2010, which was followed by “Despicable Me 2” in 2013 and finally by their own movie “Minions” in 2015. 

Now the reality is that most of us would feel insulted if we were characterized as someone’s minion but the reality is that most of us serve as minions to somebody.

My Grandfather was fond of saying “Beware of the man who says he’s boss in his own home, if he’ll lie about that he’ll lie about anything.”   

Peter Moore is presently our assistant District Superintendent and after July, everything being equal will most likely be our District Superintendent.  Because I serve the district in a couple of different capacities I’m kind of a minion for Peter.  But the reality is, that when Peter first graduated from University he was my minion.

Over the next 7 weeks or so we are going to be looking at some of the folks in the bible who were cast as minions, those who didn’t get to play the lead role or have a place on centre stage.  Those who were asked to play second fiddle for God. 

Leonard Bernstein, the late conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, was once asked to name the most difficult instrument to play. Without hesitation, he replied: “The second fiddle. I can get plenty of first violinists, but to find someone who can play the second fiddle with enthusiasm – that’s a problem; and if we have no second fiddle, we have no harmony."

Let’s start with a whole bunch of minions, 12 to be exact.

If I was to ask you to name the Twelve Apostles I would suspect that many of you would be hard pressed to get all Twelve. 

Most of us would start with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  But only Matthew and John were actually apostles.  We could probably add Peter and James, most would get Judas and then we’d start grasping. 

I remember in my Systematic Theology  class in university a friend of mine was stumped by a particular question so he wrote “I don’t know the answer but the names of the twelve apostles’ were . . .” and then he listed them.  The Prof marked it wrong.  As my cousin Rob used to say “Mr Bridgeo had no sense of ha ha.”  

So what do we know about the twelve?  A number of years ago I preached a message called “Discovering the Twelve” and taught about each of the twelve apostles.  I’m not going to do that today, if you’re interested let me know and I’ll send you the manuscript.

This is a really, really important group of people. 

They may have scattered when Jesus was being crucified, but when public opinion was still on the other side they came back together.  And after Jesus’ death and resurrection and his return to the Father there were only 120 gathered in the upper room. 

That’s about a quarter of the number that call Cornerstone their church home.  And through the efforts and leadership of the eleven remaining Apostles those 120 people literally changed the course of history.

Now I understand that God was working, and the Holy Spirit was moving but it ultimately happened because of these men.  This was the group that God had chosen to accomplish his plan through.   And they changed the world that they lived in, without television or radio or the internet, without force or violence they reshaped humanity in a matter of half a century.

And while we might not know everything about the Apostles there are some things that we know about the twelve, let’s start with their call.

Mark 3:13-14  Afterward Jesus went up on a mountain and called out the ones he wanted to go with him. And they came to him.  Then he appointed twelve of them and called them his apostles. They were to accompany him, and he would send them out to preach. . .

They Weren’t Just any Minions, They Were Chosen Minions

Just so you understand, there were countless disciples but there were only twelve apostles.

The twelve weren’t the only ones to follow Christ during the three years he taught, Jesus had followers two thousand years before twitter, but the twelve were the ones who followed him the closest and he chose them for their role they would play in changing the world.

Jesus had come to the place that his mission and his message could no longer be fulfilled without the help of others.  He was working under constraints that he had put on himself by choosing to come when he came and choosing how he came. 

He came as a person and he came at a time when there was no social media, no mass media, no printed media and for that matter no media period.  If people were going to hear his message they would need to hear it in person. 

And I’m in no way suggesting that there would have been a better time or a better way, Paul tells us in Romans 5 that Jesus didn’t come at just anytime, he came at just the right time.

And because of that he needed help if his message was going to spread and if his message was going to stick. 

And so he choose the 12.  Notice that he didn’t chose 12 people who would do their own thing in their own way at their own time.  Instead He chose 12 who would function as a group.  From the very beginning Christianity was designed to be a social religion and wasn’t simply to be something we do by ourselves.

And so Jesus called the twelve to serve a couple of purposes.  He called them to be the steady and constant players in the drama of his mission. 

We would see others who would come and go, but for three years the 12 were with him.  And he called them to represent him, he couldn’t be everywhere so he multiplied his efforts when he called the twelve.  It’s a great example of synergy. 

And the scriptures were very clear the 12 were different than the multitude.

Why would he call these 12 and not 12 others?  Because he’s God and because of that He  ultimately he gets to choose Wesley wrote “With regard to the eternal states of men, God always acts as just and merciful. But with regard to numberless other things, he seems to us to act as a mere sovereign.”   

So, they were chosen, what else do we learn? Let’s keep reading. 

Acts 4:13-14  The members of the council were amazed when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, for they could see that they were ordinary men with no special training in the Scriptures. They also recognized them as men who had been with Jesus.  But since they could see the man who had been healed standing right there among them, there was nothing the council could say.

While they were Special Minions, They Were Ordinary Minions

So, who were these “Apostles” and what were they like?  Well let’s start by saying they were people, they weren’t statues or stained glass windows they were people.  Living breathing people with all of the faults and foibles, passions and vision that make us people.

Too often we elevate the apostles up on a pedestal and point to them and say, “Well I could never be like them.”  But they reality is that we are just like them and they were just like us.

You don’t have to dig very far before you discover that Jesus wasn’t recruiting from Ivy League universities or prestigious firms and institutions. 

He found Peter and his brother Andrew along with John and his brother James on the beach.   They were all fisherman. I’m kind of glad he still calls fishermen.

Matthew was a tax collector and Jesus found him in the tax booth.  We talked a little bit about tax collectors last Sunday.  

2000 years ago tax collectors weren’t anyone’s favorite people, I don’t even think their mother’s liked them.   If you do a search of tax collectors in the New Testament you find them mentioned with thieves and prostitutes, drunkards and sinners. 

And it wasn’t just because they collected the taxes, although to be fair that was a good part of it, it was who they collected the taxes for.  The tax collectors worked for the Romans, the occupiers and so they were seen as collaborators and traitors by their countrymen. 

On the other end of the spectrum was a man named Simon, and whenever he is mentioned it says in brackets (the Zealot) which meant he was on the far right on the political scale.   The zealots were nationalists and in reality, they were probably terrorists.  Depending on which side you were looking at them from. 

You would be hard pressed to have a zealot in the same room as a tax collector without a fist fight breaking out.   But from the very beginning Jesus insisted that the most diverse people should be able to get along.  

I’m pretty sure that Matthew and Simon never came to a place that their political views were in agreement, but that’s the great thing.  We don’t have to agree about politics or hockey or what type of music we enjoy or the food we like.  But we have to agree that Jesus is Lord.

And then there was Nathanial who was a little bit of a racist.  And you’re thinking “No, one of the apostles could never be guilty of something so base.” 

Really? Let’s pick up the story in the book of John. 

Andrew has introduced Philip to Jesus and now Philip goes to look for Nathanael and when he finds him he tells him told him in, John 1:45. . . “We have found the very person Moses and the prophets wrote about! His name is Jesus, the son of Joseph from Nazareth.”  

And I love the response that Philips gets from his friend:  John 1:46 “Nazareth!” exclaimed Nathanael. “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”   

Well maybe he wasn’t a racist, but he was a cityist. 

If’n I was Jesus, and I’m not but If’n I was not sure that would have endeared Nathanael to me.  I’m from Saint John NB, or at least that’s where I call home and if someone asked, and they probably have “Can anything good come from Saint John?”  I’d take it personal, even if there is a certain amount of truth to the statement. 

But before his encounter is over we read this  John 1:49 Then Nathanael exclaimed, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God—the King of Israel!”

We don’t know what the rest of the group did for a living, but what we do know is that it didn’t merit a mention.

William Barclay sums it up when he writes:  “Judging them by worldly standards the men Jesus chose had no special qualifications at all. They were not wealthy; they had no special social position; they had no special education—they were not trained theologians; they were not high-ranking churchmen and ecclesiastics; they were twelve ordinary men.”

So let’s keep going in the story:    Matthew 4:18-22  One day as Jesus was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers—Simon, also called Peter, and Andrew—throwing a net into the water, for they fished for a living.  Jesus called out to them, “Come, follow me, and I will show you how to fish for people!”  And they left their nets at once and followed him.  A little farther up the shore he saw two other brothers, James and John, sitting in a boat with their father, Zebedee, repairing their nets. And he called them to come, too.  They immediately followed him, leaving the boat and their father behind.

They Were Obedient Minions but They Weren’t Perfect Minions

I love this passage, Jesus says follow me and the response of Peter, Andrew, James and John is simple,  the bible says  “and they followed him.”   When Jesus called Matthew from his job as a tax collector we are told that “Matthew got up and followed him.”

Over and over again in the scriptures we see the Apostles obeying Jesus’ commands.   Hand out a few fish and buns to thousands of people, no problem.  Cast your net over the side of the boat, no problem.  Preach the word, no problem. 

And that was part of the deal, Jesus told them John 14:21  Those who accept my commandments and obey them are the ones who love me. And because they love me, my Father will love them. And I will love them and reveal myself to each of them.”

And it’s easy to see the apostles as super saints who had an incredible amount of faith and succeeded in everything they tried.  And again, that becomes daunting.  The Apostles are way up there and we are way down here.  And we can never be like them, so why bother trying?

But they didn’t always get it right.  In Matthew 17 we read the story where a man brought his son to Jesus to be healed and said “I took him to the minions and they couldn’t do anything.”  And Jesus said it was because they didn't have enough faith.

It was the apostles who couldn't stay up and pray with Jesus in the garden while had awaited his arrest.  Because they kept falling asleep.

And this was the group that scattered and hid after Jesus was arrested.

But even though they blew it sometime, and even though they didn’t always get it right, they tried and when they blew it they were willing to get back up, ask for forgiveness and get on with life.

 It’s so easy to be paralyzed by the fear of failure and refuse to do anything, but watch the apostles.  For all their faults, they tried. 

And here is a word of encouragement, there will be days you will blow it and days that if God could be embarrassed then you will embarrass him. 

But you still need to try and remember that in the end his forgiveness and his grace are there and they are bigger than your failures. 

Don’t be a Judas, and I don’t mean don’t betray Christ.  I mean don’t give up on Christ, he won’t give up on you.  I don’t know what your theology might be but I believe that  if Judas had of accepted the grace and forgiveness of Christ then he would have been forgiven, he just didn’t accept what had been offered.

Set your eyes on Christ, make it your goal to be obedient, but remember his grace is so much bigger than our failures. 

Acts 1:8  But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”    And finally we discover that When Ordinary Minions are Obedient Minions They Can Change the World  It was just forty days before Jesus had made that promise that the Apostle had scattered in fear.

If you were to ask anyone the day after the crucifixion, including the apostles, what the 12  might amount to the answer to paraphrase Vice-President Garner would probably be that they wouldn’t amount to a bucket of warm spit.

After the resurrection, there were eleven of the original 12 left, 11 ordinary people who chose to be obedient.

And they would literally turn the world upside down.  This was a group of men who had never travelled more than 100 km from where they were born, and yet before they died they had taken the gospel to the very edges of the known world.

Tradition tells us that Simon the Zealot went as far as the British Isles, that Thomas went to India and Peter went to Rome.  Philip we are told ventured to North Africa, Matthew went to Ethiopia and we are told that Andrew ventured as far north as the “Land of the Man-Eaters” which is thought to be modern Day Russia.

Sources indicate that by the time the last Apostle died that there were close to 1 million believers world-wide. 

The reality is that for two thousand years God has been using ordinary obedient people to change the world.  And he can use you, if you will let him.

So let me close with the words of  William Barclay who said “These twelve had all kinds of faults, but whatever else could be said about them, they loved Jesus and they were not afraid to tell the world that they loved him--and that is being a Christian.”