Matthew would have spent the remainder of his life sitting at tax tables, cheating his fellow countrymen, and throwing parties for his rabble-friends. His children would have been cursed on their way to school and his wife excluded from all but the coarsest company. He would have remained a lackey of the hated Romans, counting pennies for a living and growing hard from the abuses of his countrymen.
James would have continued to work in his father’s business. With his brother John, he would have spent his nights straining at the nets and his days mending them. Patching the sails, caulking the boat, sorting the catch, hauling fish to market - that would have been James’ lot. For the rest of his life, he would have smelled of the fish that he brought up from the depths to place on the tables of Capernaum.
We don’t know what occupation was practiced by Philip or Bartholomew, Thomas or Thaddaeus, Simon the Zealot or Judas. Perhaps they were merchants or shepherds or even carpenters. Whatever the occupation, each would have stuck doggedly to the work for which he was trained, work that had probably been his father’s and grandfather’s. These then would have raised their families and repaired their houses and prayed in the Synagogue on Saturdays. And, in time, they would have died, their memory buried with their remains. Anonymous men.
Except that each of these men met Jesus. One day, He had come by their table or boat or bench or store and called each of these men to higher living. No longer were they to spend their lives on fish or taxes or sales - Jesus invited them to adopt a higher purpose for their lives. Matthew wrote the great gospel which bears his name. James became a leader in the early church and the Christian martyr. Though billions of people have lived and died and quickly faded into oblivion, our children sing the names of these twelve and recall that through them Jesus turned a world upside down.
Jesus gives men and women significance. He makes them important. He involves them in the greatest work of all. He enlists them as partners in the progress of the kingdom. He calls them to ultimate things, to eternal realities. He fills their days with the substantial and the extraordinary and saves them from lives wasted on the trivial and trifling.
Copyright 1989, Tim Woodroof and Glen Gray, Lincoln Church of Christ, 820 N. 56th Street, Lincoln, NE 68504. Used by permission.