At the sight of the crowds, Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.” Then he summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to drive them out and to cure every disease and every illness. The names of the twelve apostles are these: first, Simon, called Peter, and his brother Andrew; James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James, the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddeus; Simon from Cana, and Judas Iscariot who betrayed him. Jesus sent out these twelve after instructing them thus, “Do not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town. Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, make this proclamation: ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, drive out demons. Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.” (Matthew 9.36-10:8)
An idiom that has become a part of our cultural lexicon is the phrase “Ordinary Joe.” Linguists, looking into the history of a word, like to say that this phrase had its start in the 1800s when Joseph was one of the most popular names for boys. The name Joe was used so often that it was ordinary to find someone carrying the name. As a result, there was nothing special about a guy named Joe, the likelihood of meeting up with a dozen or more over the course of the day was to be expected.
In time, the phrase took on another meaning, rooted in its common use. Now, you didn’t have to have the name Joe to be called Ordinary Joe. It began to mean someone who was completely average, a person who was unremarkable and with nothing exceptional about him. He might have a different name, but he was still Ordinary Joe because nothing about his person really distinguished him from anybody else. Just your typical guy, average in every way.
The female companion to Ordinary Joe became known as “Plain Jane,” the phrase not meant to be disparaging as we might typically think of the word plain, but used in the sense of not being noticeable, not standing out, not remarkable. Like Ordinary Joe, Plain Jane wasn’t someone you could pick out in a group. She was just part of it, blending in, so ordinary that she was another face in the crowd.
Difficult as it is for us to imagine at this point in our Christian history, the disciples of Jesus whom we meet today in the gospel for this Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time were just Ordinary Joes. Not a single one of them was remarkable in any way. Four of them were fishermen, the Maine lobstermen of their day, rugged in appearance, plain-spoken, and not a polished bone in their bodies.
One of them was a tax-collector, a common sight in the Roman Empire, and about as much liked in those times as the IRS is in our time. The other disciples were so unremarkable that we don’t even know what they did for a living. It’s never even mentioned. As for their personalities, the little bit we know about a few of them would not have us consider them terribly special in any way.
Two of them seem to have had a short fuse. Another one liked to get into scuffles. Peter, the one we know the most about, was impulsive, at least in what he said, often sticking his foot in his mouth, and was not a risk taker. None, so far as we know, were adrenaline junkies. Just the Ordinary Joes you’d meet in a bar on a Friday night, enjoying a brewskie or two from the tap after a hard week on the job. Probably rowdy after a few, maybe even finding themselves in a fist fight or two, depending on the loud-mouths at the other end of the bar.
Not one of them had a college degree. In fact, it’s doubtful most of them could read much if anything, with the exception of maybe Matthew who had to be able to do math. For the most part, you didn’t need to be literate to handle a fishing boat. Again, able to keep count of what you caught, but no Rhodes scholar for sure.
As far as religion, again there doesn’t seem to be anything particularly special about the lot of them. They weren’t known for being rigorous in their religious practices, often criticized for their lax attitude, pulling off heads of wheat and chewing on the kernels on a sabbath, driving the scrupulous religious leaders insane. Truth be told, not one of them could be identified as religious, not in the way we normally think of people who take their religion seriously.
And yet, when it came to whom to choose to take with him on the road, Jesus of Nazareth chose the Ordinary Joes and Plain Janes of Galilee to be his companions, not the elites in politics, in religion, or in the social hierarchy. The people he wanted at his side were people on the lower rungs of society and religion, including, apparently, a prostitute or two.
Why in the world did he choose this ragtag team of Ordinary Joes, surely rough around the edges, to be his constant companions and closest friends? Probably because they were very much the same as the people whom he felt called to serve and to help. We can glean as much from the gospel today when we’re told that Jesus’ heart was moved with pity at the sight of the crowds because they were troubled and abandoned like sheep without a shepherd.
In all likelihood, the disciples were little different from the crowds that followed Jesus, people troubled by the everyday anxieties of life, people abandoned by those who held the power both in religion and in high society, left to find their way in the world on their own, taking a day at a time because looking too far down the road only brought more fear and dread to their already full plates.
Jesus called them because they were ordinary, not extraordinary. He asked them to join in his cause because they had no claim to fame, no vested interests, and no name in a marquee. They were real people, just like the other people he met on the road, people who were looking for something to believe in, someone who took notice of them, unlike the higher-ups who couldn’t be bothered with the little people.
They had ordinary names–Simon, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, James, Thaddeus, Simon, and Judas–making a team of twelve like Canadian football. We can be sure that there were others, even if we don’t have their names. Ordinary Joes and Plain Janes. Called to partner with Jesus as he tried to make life better for the people who had a hard go of it.
He took them along with him on the trip because he wanted to teach them how to care for others in the same way that he did. He hoped that their hearts would be moved with pity for the lost sheep as much as his heart was. He understood it would be a learning curve for them, taking time for them to make his way their way, and he forgave them when they screwed up, telling them to try again.
Did he expect anything extraordinary from them? It depends on what you consider extraordinary. He asked them to care for the sick, to offer healing to those who suffered in mind or body, to bring life back to people whose spirits had been deadened by the daily grind of life, a life hard and harsh, every day one damn thing after another.
If that kind of stuff is extraordinary, it’s only because too many people in the world don’t lift a finger to help those in need, don’t offer food to the hungry, and don’t worry about how others are doing, instead wrapped up in their own little world. Maybe those who care are extraordinary, but Jesus didn’t see it as all that unusual. He saw it as what it meant to be human, to share a common humanity, to live together on the same street.
So, what does all this tell us today? The first and foremost thing it makes clear is that we can’t excuse ourselves from doing the same work because there isn’t anything special about us. There wasn’t anything special about the first disciples and they made it work. Sure, it took a while, but guided by Jesus’ word and by his way, they got the message and they took the message with them wherever they went after he had left their side.
Contrary to what they thought they were capable of doing, they found themselves becoming more caring, more generous, more concerned about others, not looking out for their own skin, but instead lifting up those who had fallen to the ground, offering a helping hand to those who struggled to walk on their own, and loaning a shoulder to cry on for those who had found life too hard to live.
The other thing that it tells us is that we don’t have to go outside our zip code to do the work of Jesus. He made it clear to the Twelve that they were to go to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel.” That was just another way of saying help the person standing in front of you. So, we don’t have to go to another country to be a missionary for Jesus. We just have to do his mission wherever we find ourselves.
The fact of the matter is we don’t have to search high and low for sick people in need of help, for outcast people whom the world has judged too harshly, for people troubled and abandoned. They’re everywhere. We just have to open our eyes to see them. And once we see them, we don’t allow ourselves to turn our backs on them. We walk with them until they can walk on their own again.
In all likelihood, our names won’t be remembered for doing the right thing. And that’s alright. The twelve got lucky. Someone wrote down their names, but even so, there’s still some discrepancy on a few of them. One thing we can be certain of. There were many more Ordinary Joes and Plain Janes who accepted the call and did the work of Jesus after he was gone, their names forgotten, their deeds remembered by a few at best, and their days on earth lost in the dust of the past.
But even that is okay because they didn’t do it to make a name for themselves. They did it because they strived to be more like Jesus in their lives. When they woke up in the morning, they asked themselves one simple question. How can I make someone else’s life better today? And with that question driving them, they went out their front door and looked for the sick, for the troubled, and for the abandoned, doing what they could, and asking the Lord God to do for them what they could not do.
Being the realist that he was, Jesus admitted that while the harvest was abundant ( meaning there always would be troubled and abandoned people in the world) the laborers are few (meaning people whose hearts are moved with pity for the sick and suffering in the world are few and far between); he nonetheless callsl the Ordinary Joes and Plain Janes of every time and of every place to continue his work in the world.
His heart continues to care for the little people of the world–it could not be otherwise for him. And so he asks us to lend him a hand, searching out the lost sheep as he did, and helping them in whatever way we can, showing the ordinary acts of kindness and goodness to people who aren’t used to seeing it. In the process, if we answer the call, we can change the world. Now, that truly would be extraordinary.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 