Saturday 27 October 2018

Psalm: Psalm 22:1-18

Background

When he was able to move on again, he went up a mountain – like Moses, he was into mountaintop experiences – and called his closest followers (this included a number of women). He selected twelve of them to be his inner circle, as well as travelling preachers, and he gave them some of his powers too. Because this is his story we don’t have any details of what they did but they were pretty successful. These are the twelve: Simon (who became ‘Peter’), James and John (the angry ones), Andrew, Philip, Bart, Matthew, Thomas, James, Thad, Simon (the Zealot) and Judas ‘the betrayer’ (more about him later).

John Bell offers a session on the followers of Jesus, both male and female. He challenged half of the congregation to name the male disciples from memory (it’s pretty challenging even with the Bible and a smartphone as the Gospel writers don’t offer one agreed list!) and also Jesus’ female disciples. For good measure this exercise included anything that we know about them. It doesn’t take too long before we realise that we know nothing about some of the men, only their names. The women on the other hand were actually the people who funded Jesus’ ministry, arranged the logistics and remained present with him throughout. Without the women there would be no Resurrection story or Gospel accounts. They get forgotten pretty easily though. Like Jesus, they need to be reclaimed and rediscovered in our foundation story.

To Ponder

• What can you do to ensure that when we think about Jesus’ first disciples it is not all about the men?
• How have you been struck by the pivotal role of women in Jesus’ story?